Faction Lock (on main campaigns) is wrong & a bad decision

DirkRavenclaw · April 2019

I run only AD Toons and when my Friends and Guildmates meet me in Cyrodiil and they arent AD then they are free Game, i warn them regularly about that. I have Pride in representing AD and wanna win every Campaign if possible, and yes, i also PVE a lot. Thank you ZOS for listening, overall, if we not talk about NB, what i only play in PVE, i play ,more Stam and Mag DK in PVP, this Patch looks quiet good

Stibbons · April 2019

Factipn lock in nice. No more stupid streamers and spotters for enemies.

ks888 · April 2019

@Stibbons you do realize people will still stream and those so inclined can still send tells to those on other factions and talk in guild chats - faction locking changes none of this. It's almost like people don't understand how trolling actually goes down.

Zavijah · April 2019

Even if it's not the answer, it's a step forward in a direction to work out what kind of encouragement or deterrent would encourage people to more evenly distribute.

templesus · April 2019

+1. Faction locks are terrible.

BattleAxe · April 2019

Seriously give one valid reason to not faction lock campaigns.

I wanna play with my friends. That’s what battlegrounds is for.
Why are you and your friends not on the same alliance?

This game released with faction lock and it was fine then so give a valid reason to not faction lock campaigns

Dracan_Fontom · April 2019

Or ZoS could make it so that choosen alliances in character creation were obsolete and make it so that players choose campaign to campaign which alliance to fight for. That way people can play with their friends AND still have faction loyalty by restricting future alliance changing till after the campaign ends.

Drdeath20 · April 2019

Gnozo wrote: »

It just hurst pvp thats all.

We mainly play DC and we found a really good player in EP side who created and DC character just to play with us in Vivec. Why Vivec? Other campaigns are simply dead....

So what will this so? Force him to pick a side and force him with wich friends He can play pvp for 30 days.

If He picks DC to come with us, He wont be able to play his EP chars on the popular campaign. Shor is simply not populated enough to play there on a regular Basis. Thats basicly RIP for him.

Also what if your faction is dominating cyro. Having all keeps and Scrolls and just farming the game other alliances on their gates. Do you consider this fun? We normally switched to the Underdog to get decents fight and restore the Balance. Not possible anymore.

PvP will just become more zergy then ever before and a dominant alliance will be even stronger cause players wont be able to switch to restore the Balance.

Do you guys think it will prevent spies or AP farming? No. It wont.

Spies will simply home Sotha and guest on Vivec to freely swap around alliances.

Ap farm doesnt require to switch sides tbh.

Thats kinda the entire point. The game was left in the hands of players for too long and what happened. Strong players were cherry picked from different alliances because well the gitguds dont want competition but dominance.

Drdeath20 · April 2019

dazee wrote: »

Ermiq wrote: »

It makes me laugh. People complain about alliances in alliance-based PvP.
Devs are preventing abusing and exploiting in PvP. And people complain about that.
This community is the most irrational community I've ever seen.

Your alliance is different depending which character you're on. no matter what alliance you fight for you fight for your alliance. even if that alliance is different sometimes. why is this so hard for you people who only play one character or alliance to understand?

You insist that others be forced to play the way you do, and you finally got your way. now its time to discover you cant force people to play the way you do becuase they'll simply choose not to play at all if they cant play in the way thats fun for them. Enjoy your empty campaigns.

Except they wont be empty.

templesus · April 2019

BattleAxe wrote: »

Seriously give one valid reason to not faction lock campaigns.

I wanna play with my friends. That’s what battlegrounds is for.
Why are you and your friends not on the same alliance?

This game released with faction lock and it was fine then so give a valid reason to not faction lock campaigns

I don’t like fighting on the faction with the most people, as that results in laggier fights. I just want fights, which are much easier to find when on the lesser populated faction. In tangence, it’s much harder to find fights against opposing factions with low population.

HowlKimchi · April 2019

Why are you guys immediately concluding that the unlocked campaigns are dead? With a *** ton of people not liking faction locks, i'm pretty sure a lot more are gonna go and play in the unlocked campaigns so this happens:

The overpopulated VIvec becomes less zergy because of the migration of the pro-unlocked people,
the underpopulated <Unlocked Campaign Name Here> becomes more active.

labambao · April 2019

I still think best way to faction lock is account lock.
Just pick the side to fight for every 30 days at the start of campaigns. And all your chars will belong to this side. And delete alliance pick at all from the char creation window.

BattleAxe · April 2019

templesus wrote: »

BattleAxe wrote: »

Seriously give one valid reason to not faction lock campaigns.

I wanna play with my friends. That’s what battlegrounds is for.
Why are you and your friends not on the same alliance?

This game released with faction lock and it was fine then so give a valid reason to not faction lock campaigns

I don’t like fighting on the faction with the most people, as that results in laggier fights. I just want fights, which are much easier to find when on the lesser populated faction. In tangence, it’s much harder to find fights against opposing factions with low population.

Battlegrounds imperial city or a different campaign will all solve your complaint I recommend imperial city or battlegrounds since Cyrodiil objectives don’t seem to be a factor for u

BattleAxe · April 2019

labambao wrote: »

I still think best way to faction lock is account lock.
Just pick the side to fight for every 30 days at the start of campaigns. And all your chars will belong to this side. And delete alliance pick at all from the char creation window.

Problem with ur idea is without any race any alliance you can’t choose certain races without selecting certain alliance

juhislihis19 · April 2019

The problem I see is faction hopping aka glory hunting. Zerglings switch sides when the favor turns for another alliance. 99% of the campaigns are won by the side with biggest zergs (especially at night).

In example:

If you see an alliance with the whole map, scrolls (bonuses), emperor and server population of 3 bars vs. 1 bar, who will a generic, occasional gamer pick? They are not going to pick the alliance who's getting zerged, so they just pick the bigger zerg. Big zergs -> easy AP. And I'm talking about PVE players, occasionally visiting Cyrodiil.

Also many small scale PVP'ers will pick the alliance with scroll and emperor bonuses as well. They don't care about the campaign. Some might pick the underdog alliance, but a lot just go with the bonuses.

Can they cap the servers so that neither alliance couldn't have more than 2 bars full, unless the other two have 2 bars as well? So that there wouldn't be a 3 bars vs 1 bar situation.

labambao · April 2019

juhislihis19 wrote: »

The problem I see is faction hopping aka glory hunting. Zerglings switch sides when the favor turns for another alliance. 99% of the campaigns are won by the side with biggest zergs (especially at night).

In example:

If you see an alliance with the whole map, scrolls (bonuses), emperor and server population of 3 bars vs. 1 bar, who will a generic, occasional gamer pick? They are not going to pick the alliance who's getting zerged, so they just pick the bigger zerg. Big zergs -> easy AP. And I'm talking about PVE players, occasionally visiting Cyrodiil.

Also many small scale PVP'ers will pick the alliance with scroll and emperor bonuses as well. They don't care about the campaign. Some might pick the underdog alliance, but a lot just go with the bonuses.

Can they cap the servers so that neither alliance couldn't have more than 2 bars full, unless the other two have 2 bars as well? So that there wouldn't be a 3 bars vs 1 bar situation.

Tbh most time me & friends pick alliance with lowpop bonus. So we are sure we got pugs fight to and getting increased ap reward.

Zorgon_The_Revenged · April 2019

Can't raid with your ball group then zerg surf with another faction when the raid ends......tragedy.

How about an 8 hour lock-out from playing a different faction in the same campaign.

Lapin_Logic · April 2019

MipMip wrote: »

Firstly, let’s consider this: 30 days campaigns are the most popular and players will continue to go there. Even players who are disappointed by faction lock will tend to grudgingly go there because they do not expect to find enough action on the other campaigns. So saying that there is a choice is hypocrisy.

This means faction lock is being forced on everyone, whether we enjoy playing for a faction or not. Until now, faction loyalists could play for their factions and others could play for their other objectives.

Faction loyalists have been asking for faction locked campaigns. It’s difficult to understand why they want everyone else to play the same way as they do, but if they want campaigns where they can be among themselves, that’s ok as long as there are also campaigns without faction lock. This is not what is being offered in this update, if it goes live as currently described.

The faction lock as currently announced will not achieve what faction loyalists hope for: since other players will be more or less forced to play in the locked campaigns there will be many players in those campaigns who will not care about the score and will pursue other objectives.

A solution that has been mentioned in many threads is soft locks: be able to play on all sides but be on the leatherboards only on one.

This is extremely disappointing for many of us as ESO players, gamers (who might consider other games) and as customers (who might unsubscribe, not play, not visit the crown store etc).

Also I believe this will not help ESO compete for the player base against other games. Versatility has always been ESO’s strength.

The faction lock is to minimise the AP farming keep flippers who spend all day ball zerging the map Red, then log in to another toon and flip it Blue, then log again and turn it Yellow. It is aimed at making the 3 banners war.... the 3 banners war and mean something, not the 1 zerg war that rotates alliances steam rolling the few playing solo/ small group.

If you want to AP farm play the 7 day, if you want a war, make a contribution or get glory, play 30 day faction locked.

Just give us Faction change tokens then I can put all my toons on 1 alliance

aetherial_heavenn · April 2019

BEST CHANGE SINCE THEY REMOVED LOCKS.

although faction swap tokens usable once only per character would make me happy.

Tommy_The_Gun · April 2019

With new chapter, we are all getting one free character slot. So for those who want to play "with friends", you and your friends can decide what faction to play as and create new characters if necesery. You can still "switch teams" when campaign ends & new one starts, or play the one with no
alliance lock. So imho "play with friends" argument is kinda weak - because it will still be posible.

The thing is, ZOS wants to remind players (at least some of them) that it is still a big "team based" pvp, only in larger scale. Primary goal is to win a campaign. As the time passed ppl simply forgot why are they even fighting and it was all reduced to AP farming.

I realy hope that at some point ZOS will also implement some population based scoring to minimize night / morning cap PvE PvDoor that affects scoring way too much.

MipMip · April 2019

Lapin_Logic wrote: »

The faction lock is to minimise the AP farming keep flippers who spend all day ball zerging the map Red, then log in to another toon and flip it Blue, then log again and turn it Yellow. It is aimed at making the 3 banners war.... the 3 banners war and mean something, not the 1 zerg war that rotates alliances steam rolling the few playing solo/ small group.

If you want to AP farm play the 7 day, if you want a war, make a contribution or get glory, play 30 day faction locked.

Just give us Faction change tokens then I can put all my toons on 1 alliance

Especially when I play in small groups many of my friends & guildies and I want to be able to change to the current underdog faction to get good fights (not to help that faction, as most of us don't care about the score, but our behavior still contributes to balancing the map). And no, we are not AP farming, AP is a side effect. We are looking for good PvP which will be harder to find if faction locks go live.

ks888 · April 2019

Those of us who have been playing the game for 5+ years now have friends, and for many of us, guilds on 2-3 sides. For a long time, my time was split between AD one half of the week and EP/DC the other 1/2 of the week because it got really boring fighting the same few groups of players over and over and over and over and over... If you can essentially predict what the opponent will do because nothing ever changes, I might as well go do trials and dungeons.

Maybe I'm just cranky because I've been fighting off an upper respiratory infection all week, but what I have always personally observed is the people who cried the loudest to implement faction locks again are often times the same people complaining about hacks in zone when someone beats them or are just generally unwilling to try something new.

We did the faction lock thing before and it didn't work, campaigns were still dead and we reversed it. So why revisit something that already didn't work once before? Rant over. Time for more tea and decongestants.

NirnStorm · April 2019

Totally agree @ks888, and hope you feel better soon!

It's funny but like 4 years ago, back when I was still a pretty awful player, one of my friends was faction hopping and that was the first time I ran into a conflict with possibly having to attack my friends in cyro.

I was trying so hard to convince him not to swap to play with other friends of his because once he does he will be annoyed with the game, he'll be fighting his friends, he'll ruin his own immersion and a bunch of random reasons I gave him.

Four years later I realize how dumb that was of me.
Now as someone with friends on all factions, who plays all factions as well, I know that playing on multiple teams doesn't detach you from one but just raises your interest with all.
Instead of 'breaking my immersion' I am having more and more interesting scenarios to fight in and I have a much better time playing the game!

Without friends I've met on other factions it's very likely I wouldn't have stayed on ESO all this time since beta.
And it would break my heart having to play only with some of them and never being able to enjoy the others again...

dazee · April 2019

BattleAxe wrote: »

Seriously give one valid reason to not faction lock campaigns.

I wanna play with my friends. That’s what battlegrounds is for.
Why are you and your friends not on the same alliance?

This game released with faction lock and it was fine then so give a valid reason to not faction lock campaigns

Becuase not everyone enjoys the same races and alliances? some people like one more than the other and nobody is wrong? Why is this so hard for you to wrap your head around it's really not hard.

ArchMikem · April 2019

Jimmy_The_Fixer wrote: »

The soft lock idea is clearly the best choice, lock rewards to one faction but allow people to play with their friends. It’ll stop people from playing a faction for in-game reward but allow for socializing (what?! Social play, in an MMO?!) with people who normally play another faction.

And no, going to a dead campaign with nobody to fight is not an viable option.

If enough people go to a dead campaign, suddenly its not dead anymore.

Shocker i know.

Stigant · April 2019

Flag campaign as AD only receive AP and rewards on AD characters and so on. If you go there on other alliance to play with friends or have good fights, so be it. But be rewarded only for contributing to the alliance you chose at the beginning of the campaign. If you don't care about alliance you fight for and the outcome of your actions, why should you be rewarded Alliance Points? Be rewarded by the fun you 're having while playing.

Everyone is happy...

Now I'd like to hear all those "I go there to play with friends only" and their opinion.

Stibbons · April 2019

Youtube streamers are the problem. Just stupid when they have spotters on your same side and you cannot do anything to them. Yes sure try to kill someone when he/she has radar guy next to alert on everything! Sure they can make cool camera agles, but that is just cheating.

ks888 · April 2019

@NirnStorm same if it wasn't for the people I look forward to talking to when I log in, I wouldn't still be here either. It's the same reason I stayed with WoW as long as I did - people. I had something pretty big happen in my life this past week and I was just as excited to tell my gaming buddies as I was my irl friends. The cyro performance isn't what keeps me logged in, it's the people I enjoy.

BattleAxe · April 2019

dazee wrote: »

BattleAxe wrote: »

Seriously give one valid reason to not faction lock campaigns.

I wanna play with my friends. That’s what battlegrounds is for.
Why are you and your friends not on the same alliance?

This game released with faction lock and it was fine then so give a valid reason to not faction lock campaigns

Becuase not everyone enjoys the same races and alliances? some people like one more than the other and nobody is wrong? Why is this so hard for you to wrap your head around it's really not hard.

Again a valid reason to not lock faction campaigns is lacking you have friends u wanna pvp with go to a non locked campaign do a battle grounds match or go to imperial city. Any race any alliance is an option to buy to choose your preferred alliance. I myself have friends and am in several guilds that are multi faction I have warned all my friends I fight under one alliance so if they come across me in cyrodil they are open game as am I. Faction lock is gonna do a multitude of things for all campaigns. Dead campaigns will see action and the 30 day campaigns will free up from faction spying players joining a faction just to help their main faction and will allow ZoS to see where performance issues are in pvp and possibly fix them.

echo2omega · April 2019

Faction locking does not fix population imbalances.

Faction locking does not stop overnight capping.

Faction locking does not stop spying.

Faction locking is not going to make anyone care about the campaign.

Faction locking is not going to stop zerging.

Faction locking is not going to stop the server lag.

Cyrodiil as a whole needs a fundamental change in how things work

Like making the max group size 12 for example.