The problem with faction lock for the veteran PvP players

Nermy · April 2019

Iskiab wrote: »

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.

Something like this happens when we raid, we've noticed low level toons following us about on the map. As you say, could be a tin foil moment but you never know.

WoppaBoem · April 2019

I like it, for Vivec very good change and we get IC as a new campaign now so I expect me to split time between those really looking forward to it. For IC I can join with any toon I want and for Vivec I am already locked now the rest will be to.

DisgracefulMind · April 2019

Qbiken wrote: »

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.

Same, play how you want, right? The ESO way.

Tommy_The_Gun · April 2019

I can understand why ZOS is making those changes... but the way they are doing it is lazy to say at least. It is a step in the right direction, but it won't do much by itself. Some other things will have to be tweaked (scroll trolling (mostly by "guest" players) or night & mornning pvd that makes the true pvp "play to win campaign" almost pointless).

First, as far as I understand they make those changes for the "majority" of the player base. Also, if I understood this corectly, you will be prohibited from making the same campaign as a "home" campaign on multiple factions. So If you want to "play with you friends" , you will still be able to join to the same campaign on different alliance, but as a guest.

I suspect I know the real reason why they are making alliance lock. Many people use campaigns solely to farm transmute crystals. They play the absolute minimu just to get guaranteed 50 transmute crystals reward on all factions. After that they stop to play cyro and wait till the end of campaign to get 150 transmute crystals. I strongly suspect that this is the case and ZOS wants transmute crystals to be more of a grind. So if those players would want more than 50 transmute crystals, they will have to keep playing campaign to the end.

DisgracefulMind · April 2019

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

I can understand why ZOS is making those changes... but the way they are doing it is lazy to say at least. It is a step in the right direction, but it won't do much by itself. Some other things will have to be tweaked (scroll trolling (mostly by "guest" players) or night & mornning pvd that makes the true pvp "play to win campaign" almost pointless).

First, as far as I understand they make those changes for the "majority" of the player base. Also, if I understood this corectly, you will be prohibited from making the same campaign as a "home" campaign on multiple factions. So If you want to "play with you friends" , you will still be able to join to the same campaign on different alliance, but as a guest.

I suspect I know the real reason why they are making alliance lock. Many people use campaigns solely to farm transmute crystals. They play the absolute minimu just to get guaranteed 50 transmute crystals reward on all factions. After that they stop to play cyro and wait till the end of campaign to get 150 transmute crystals. I strongly suspect that this is the case and ZOS wants transmute crystals to be more of a grind. So if those players would want more than 50 transmute crystals, they will have to keep playing campaign to the end.

No, they're locking us completely out of going into that campaign on different alliances, even as a guest.

Also, most of those pvdoor zergs in oceanic/early US morning are faction loyalists. That's not faction hoppers doing that.

Gretzel · April 2019

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.

So pick an Alliance and stick with it. This should have stayed when it first came out. I hate dc and ad so this is perfect. You dont get to be on everyone's side at once anywhere.

Gretzel · April 2019

Iskiab wrote: »

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.

You know spying happens. Ive played every mmo under the sun and this happens in every single one of them that has factions. The "tinfoil hat" bullshitters are just trying to defend their game in an extremely unhealthy manner. You have thousands of people playing this: yes people are going to be pieces of *** and cheat and spy. Look at the real world.

DisgracefulMind · April 2019

Gretzel wrote: »

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.

So pick an Alliance and stick with it. This should have stayed when it first came out. I hate dc and ad so this is perfect. You dont get to be on everyone's side at once anywhere.

Not everyone PvPs for faction loyalty. Faction loyalists obviously don't like it when people aren't loyal, so why should be expected to be dedicated to faction loyalty? This game has never encouraged it, and this isn't going to change with suddenly putting in locks, it's putting a dent in an already struggling community.

RinaldoGandolphi · April 2019

Faction lock is a terrible idea for pvp at this stage of the games pvp life.

Right now the population simply isn’t there for that. Over half of the players on all 3 factions leaderboards play multiple alliances. When one faction becomes too dominant they swap to help the underdog.

This is the only thing that has prevented Vivec from becoming Haderus 2.0. Most probably don’t remember the “PVDoor Lords Of Haderus” that due to faction locks AD had a ridiculous population advantage and would gate camp
The other factions 24/7.

With these faction locks EP will dominate Vivec just like AD dominated Haderus and things will turn out roughly the same as Thornblade. EP has a significant population advantage over the other two factions, the devs even said EP has the most people. I’d often see EP players in DC fighting alongside me against AOTP and other mega zergs, that will be gone now.

With the games current pvp population faction locks only benefit the faction with the most people and will end up killing competitive campaigns because folks can’t help the underdog when the most populous faction has a mega Zerg like Haderus with faction locks. Good luck 👍

IxSTALKERxI · April 2019

NirnStorm wrote: »

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.

Can't you just play the same faction as each other?

DisgracefulMind · April 2019

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

NirnStorm wrote: »

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.

Can't you just play the same faction as each other?

The guild plays twice a week, the rest of the week everyone plays their main alliance.

That won't be possible anymore. That's a really huge problem.

They could just allow us to "guest" and not get the rewards, why isn't that being considered over a total lockout?

/sigh

frostz417 · April 2019

ManwithBeard9 wrote: »

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.

2 locked servers are the only active servers while the others are completely dead or just PvDoor land.

Zevrro · April 2019

PvP really doesn't have the player base right now to add these kinds of restrictions. I feel like it will create far more problems than its going to solve.

IxSTALKERxI · April 2019

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

NirnStorm wrote: »

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.

Can't you just play the same faction as each other?

The guild plays twice a week, the rest of the week everyone plays their main alliance.

That won't be possible anymore. That's a really huge problem.

They could just allow us to "guest" and not get the rewards, why isn't that being considered over a total lockout?

/sigh

Ah ok cool. Yeah the people I know who have hopped from AD in the past have done so for social reasons so they have someone to play with. Kinda sucks in that regard.

I'm lucky I'm a faction loyalist so it doesn't impact me that much.

It's a pretty crazy change this late in the game but I am optimistic. As terrible as it sounds I think the community will be able to adapt to the change and it could mix things up a bit. It might even make some good small scale fights on Haderus who knows. Could be a lot of new players with next update to and then there is Volendrung etc. Hopefully AD loses pop during oceanic on vivec, maybe a guild will hop if they don't.

MipMip · April 2019

ks888 wrote: »

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.

Thank you for the excellent OP of this thread! I agree with everything and especially the part I quoted above. Same for my two (former?) subscriptions.

idk · April 2019

Joy_Division wrote: »

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.

If what I have read is correct, that the faction lock will be brought back but for new campaigns it would seem campaigns like Vivec will not be affected. So players that want locks can have it and those that do not can avoid it. That is something I think most of us think is fine.

If I have read incorrect information and Zos is adding faction lock to all campaigns then they would be wrong it would bring back more subs that they will lose. Players did not leave because of faction lock as it did not cause any real issues. They left becase of the poor management of this game we have seen since before launch and has been a determent to the performance in Cyrodiil. As long as Zos manages this game with a lack of vision, as they have for over 5 year, Cyrodiil will not experience great growth. Put crap in get crap out. Remember they ignored calls about the GF not working properly and in the end lied that they thought it was fixed.

Also, those vocal about wanting faction lock did not put forth did not present a good case. They merely presented vague thoughts of what they felt was happening which much of it happened in spades via different mechanics when we did have faction locks. Zos merely listened to the vocal crowd.

So, I have no objection to faction lock campaigns being added without affecting existing campaigns. If the majority of players end up choosing faction lock the great. However, if this is an across the board change being forced on all players it will be just another bone head move from Zos.

Delsskia · April 2019

I think it would have made more sense to open a GvG server that uses Battle Spirit to disable ALL proc sets and requires a minimum group size of (pick one, 8, 10, 12) to enter. That would be a fun server to fight on.

Diundriel · April 2019

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

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".

i agree and i don’t have the time to wait 60min queue all time...
they really wanna hurt smallscalers even more... and guilds like mine which wont be able to have variety to fight other guilds on the same campaign. little example we mainly play ad, but also have ep. if we want to fight another guild in openworld cyrodil, we HAVE to change to another faction on THE SAME campaign for that evening. With faction locking you make us fight all the time the same guilds as most guild don’t change campaigns.
and what am i supposed to do if i am in 2 pvp guilds of two different factions or want to spend the evening with someone who plays another faction...they simply remove that option....
You made the game more open with one tamriel and now you want to reverse that change...

why don’t you log in to cyro and ask in zone chat people whether they want faction lock or not??? in every faction you got 2-10 people that scream in zone chat all time, that are the people ZoS listens to, but why don’t you look at all the people that don’t scream in chat all the time?
the sad thing tho is that you have no clue how to handle it as you went in one direction at the beginning of the game and changed it by 180 with summerset and now want to change it again....
if you introduce that’s, pls test it before you put it on all pvp campaigns, just on one campaigns and look if it is empty or not.
The most said thing is even if we complain about it ZoS not gonna listen.

btw i hope that zos recognized that most pvp advertising is done by smallscalers and good pvp guilds, not by zone chat warroirs

cheers

mknepfler · April 2019

I know on PS4, the only campaign that ever has anyone in it is VIvec. The rest are 0 bars at all times, even primetime. I have DC and EP toons like I like to play in pvp, but now some of them are going to get screwed because of this.

DisgracefulMind · April 2019

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

NirnStorm wrote: »

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.

Can't you just play the same faction as each other?

The guild plays twice a week, the rest of the week everyone plays their main alliance.

That won't be possible anymore. That's a really huge problem.

They could just allow us to "guest" and not get the rewards, why isn't that being considered over a total lockout?

/sigh

Ah ok cool. Yeah the people I know who have hopped from AD in the past have done so for social reasons so they have someone to play with. Kinda sucks in that regard.

I'm lucky I'm a faction loyalist so it doesn't impact me that much. It's a pretty crazy change this late in the game but I am optimistic. As terrible as it sounds I think the community will be able to adapt to the change and it could mix things up a bit. It might even make some good small scale fights on Haderus who knows. Could be a lot of new players with next update to and then there is Volendrung etc. Hopefully AD loses pop during oceanic on vivec, maybe a guild will hop if they don't.

I'm hoping for the better 7-day camp fights, but I'm not optimistic as the habitual pattern of players on our server are to play in the 30-day where the most action is. Could that end up the 7-day, possible, but I doubt it.

And yeah, my biggest concern is oceanic timeframe

zyk · April 2019

I think the first few days of a new locked campaign should be unlocked so players in low population time intervals can make adjustments if necessary.

Either that, or perhaps every account could have the option to change factions once up until the end of the first two weeks; which would also remove reward eligibility on the faction being exited.

I also think ZOS needs to look at adjusting the reward system because it's what has been driving a lot of issues in AvA lately. I think there should be more reward tiers for scoreboard placement with highly coveted rewards for top performers.

If -- for example -- the top 1% of each faction were to earn an arena weapon, that would encourage enthusiasts who wished to compete for one to spread out across each faction for a better chance at winning.

Adding more tiers of rewards -- say 1%, 2%, 5%, 10%, 25%, 50% -- would encourage a wider range of players to spread out.

AP rewards would need to be adjusted immediately to avoid otick grinding. We need a greater emphasis on earning AP by contributing to kills to promote combat between players.

In the long run, AvA needs more intelligent scoring and greater scoring depth.

IMO, very well designed reward system could have solved most issues related to faction hopping.

Beardimus · 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?

Really? The whole trying to devalue the need for faction lock behind spies jokes are getting stale.

AP boosting is a thing, emp flipping, scroll moving, turning round of siege, sure some suffer from spies but it's the general bad behavior of some that created the need and reason for the locks. Enough players have asked, ZOS have looked at the data and agree. End of story.

You can still play with friends (just plan it for that period / shor if ad hoc)
If it's as you say shor won't be dead, all the hoppers will be there
Vivec is only a zerg fest now....this may spread players out, that's a good thing...
See above as to if those campaigns will remain dead.

I'll reiterate, I'd gladly take a locked shor / Sotha / kyne over Vivec, as vivec playstyle isn't enjoyable for me. It's odd they have done it this way, but they can see the data and have their reasons.

Change is good.

Beardimus · April 2019

Enkil wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

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?!?

Spot on. The debate needs balance, and options for both.

- Not all switchers are boosters, we get that
- Likewise some of us care about alliance loyalty and decent campaign play without cheating

Both are right.

And having options for both is a great step by ZOS. and clearly they are thinking more holostically too on how to reduce lag, by spreading players out.

BUT reading comments on here people seem reluctant to change and belligerently want to play Vivec just 'cos'.
Had the lock been Sotha,shor, kyne i think most would appear happy - but that clearly isn't ZOS direction looking at the bigger picture / issues in Vivec.

Beardimus · April 2019

DisgracefulMind wrote: »

Gretzel wrote: »

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.

So pick an Alliance and stick with it. This should have stayed when it first came out. I hate dc and ad so this is perfect. You dont get to be on everyone's side at once anywhere.

Not everyone PvPs for faction loyalty. Faction loyalists obviously don't like it when people aren't loyal, so why should be expected to be dedicated to faction loyalty? This game has never encouraged it, and this isn't going to change with suddenly putting in locks, it's putting a dent in an already struggling community.

Because the folks using it to cheat where wrecking the game for others. Direct the angst at them rather than those of us that want faction loyalty.

DisgracefulMind · April 2019

Beardimus wrote: »

Enkil wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

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?!?

Spot on. The debate needs balance, and options for both.

- Not all switchers are boosters, we get that
- Likewise some of us care about alliance loyalty and decent campaign play without cheating

Both are right.

And having options for both is a great step by ZOS. and clearly they are thinking more holostically too on how to reduce lag, by spreading players out.

BUT reading comments on here people seem reluctant to change and belligerently want to play Vivec just 'cos'.
Had the lock been Sotha,shor, kyne i think most would appear happy - but that clearly isn't ZOS direction looking at the bigger picture / issues in Vivec.

It's not just "cos". It's because there isn't the population for this in off-hours and oceanic, which is what inspired many of us to play multiple factions in the first place. There is usually 1 bar EP and DC and 2 bar AD currently on Vivec PC/NA almost every single night. We will HAVE to lock in to a 30-day campaign playing oceanic. There won't be a choice playing the 7-day because it quite literally will be dead. So when we do play in more populated hours, we'll get stuck on the faction with the massive zerg train (which is EP for PC/NA). I'd love to see the 7-day more populated, but it's just not going to happen during most hours of the day

Off-hours are quite similar for PC/NA, we're barely hitting 2 bar across them until right around primetime. Weekends as an exception.

Legitimate points like this are what I'm trying to convey, how is that just "cos". I want to PvP, I don't want to be stuck on a side with more population or an awful map to fight on.

This will possibly spread some people out in primetime to the 7-day, but there isn't people to spread out any other time of the day, and that's what's concerning.

Dreyloch · April 2019

Ranger209 wrote: »

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.

Whoa, wait, hang on. Where was it mentioned that they are starting 4 new servers? Like as in new hardware? Or just re-naming the current ones with these new added locks? Please don't get my hopes up on new hardware that could potentially reduce the laggy mess that Cryodiil (yes, im coining the phase now. CRYodiil) is currently. Please provide dev statements/pictures/video, or it didn't happen!

ks888 · April 2019

We had faction locks before and this was when the guilds I played with almost exclusively stayed on the 14 days campaigns. You know what happened? After a few times getting wiped, the groups we fought turtled up in one keep or just peaced out to the 30 day campaign so they could zerg surf, PvDoor and mow down 5 players with their 24 man. This is what "PvP" is now.

People want easy AP and don't actually want to fight. So yes, I have little confidence this will do anything but serve to reward laziness. Maybe during primetime there will be a little more pop on the smaller campaigns, but more than likely it will be just that and the other 20 hours of the day they will be ghost towns, just like last time. We don't have faction locks now and Shor is dead outside of NA primetime.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · April 2019

Beardimus wrote: »

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?

Really? The whole trying to devalue the need for faction lock behind spies jokes are getting stale.

AP boosting is a thing, emp flipping, scroll moving, turning round of siege, sure some suffer from spies but it's the general bad behavior of some that created the need and reason for the locks. Enough players have asked, ZOS have looked at the data and agree. End of story.

You can still play with friends (just plan it for that period / shor if ad hoc)
If it's as you say shor won't be dead, all the hoppers will be there
Vivec is only a zerg fest now....this may spread players out, that's a good thing...
See above as to if those campaigns will remain dead.

I'll reiterate, I'd gladly take a locked shor / Sotha / kyne over Vivec, as vivec playstyle isn't enjoyable for me. It's odd they have done it this way, but they can see the data and have their reasons.

Change is good.

AP boosting - not affected by faction locks at all.
Emp flipping - not affected by faction locks.
Scroll moving - not affected by faction locks
Turning of siege - not affected by faction locks
Spies - not affected by faction locks

There is only one fix to all of the issues you raised above and that is a time machine along with prevention of all cross faction communication.

Zos has an incredibly poor history with analysing data. Like the time they said the highest ap/h of any player was 3 ppl who made 70k/h back when people were streaming themselves making 250k/h just standing around bleakers on EU shor. (And groups like zs and drac farming 100-200k/h comfortably with normal combat (back in those patches)

Or the time where they said no cp doesn't lag as badly. EU sotha completely unplayable says hello lol.

Playing with friends requires there to be enemies. Shor the dead campaign isn't a solution to this.

But it's fine. Let's just farm some pve mobs for a reskinned GoT cat mount right?

ks888 · April 2019

Also to the person who commented about a player following and griefing. If I felt like it, I could follow a group regardless of the faction and all that would change is whether or not I had to sneak or use invis pots to do so. It's called scouting. Also, on Viv - the patterns each side exhibits haven't changed since launch. EP spends way too much time trying to siege Aleswell from the farm side (every day). DC takes Dragon back and about 10 minutes later they siege Kings (every day). AD takes Crops, a few minutes later they go Drake or Sej (every day). I don't need to spy to predict this because it's the same groups, day in, day out. That will never change and if you're getting called out, try changing it up. 99.999% of the time, it's not a spy, just someone who plays every day and observes the same group with the same patterns of behavior.

VaranisArano · April 2019

CatchMeTrolling wrote: »

ManwithBeard9 wrote: »

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.

I actually think that's the point.

ZOS has stated that lots of players in the same campaign, in the same place, leads to a lot of lag. They've tried spreading players out by offering more objectives (which hasn't helped because certain objectives are just more important than others).

So now they are trying to spread players out between multiple campaigns, either between ones dominated by different factions or between the faction-loyal vs "I wanna play with my friends" crowd.

If its actually the case that ZOS is trying to spread players out, hoping to lessen the lag by lowering the number of players in the campaigns, I don't think the arguments for or against faction lock are going to do any good.

Personally, I think its a bad way to try to lessen the lag, since low-population brings its own host of issues to Cyrodiil.