Since I spent about an hour writing a comment on this subject and the thread was closed before it was done I thought I might as well do a new discussion page since there were no serious threads on the topic.

Faction lock used to be in the game, I am not 100% sure when trials were opened for all factions, or if they ever were locked. But pve overland zones used to be faction specific instances, effectively “faction locking” players from grouping in pve zones. This was changed with The One Tamriel update in late 2016. Before this ZOS had lifted the faction lock in pvp a little earlier the same year. in mid 2019 ZOS decides to again faction lock the pvp campaign after 3 years of faction having no effect on your gameplay outside of which side you fought on in the alliance war campaign. To me this seems like a game that does not know its own identity anymore

This brings me on to the subject of faction locked pve, which in essence makes a lot more sense than you might think, however it’s very hard to implement successfully.

Most people would say they’re fine as long as they can swap most their characters to whichever alliance they like. And this makes sense since Major changes like this in the middle of a games life span needs to give people the chance to reconsider their past decisions, that now are 10 fold more impactful on how they like to play.

But this would bring up one big problem, There is no doubt that every single good pve player would swap to the ebonheart pact or some other faction they decide to stack on. The other factions would be dead in terms of competitive pve. But also dead in terms of any real end game pve content.

But there are more down sides for this to implemented

The all race all alliance token is a major problem.

With this token no faction has an edge in "tanking" or "magicka dps" etc. This means there is no incentive for a sorc not just to roll a pact breton so that he is with the best pve faction.

leveling up a new character for a veteran player takes less than 2 hours. Which means even if they did introduce faction locked pve without allowing us to swap our characters. people would simply roll new characters on the pact side.


Faction Lock has to severely limit your ability to roll alts on other alliances outside of casual play

For this sort of system to make sense it would have had to be a core part of the game. What inspires the classic wow population to be an almost 50/50 split despite one faction being far superior in pve content "alliance" and the other in pvp content "horde" is the fact your faction means everything to how the game works for you. You can't roll a human warrior for pve content. And then roll your orc for pvp. Well you can “technically”, but the two characters have no effect on one another. and PvP servers are faction locked. Which means your choice of faction is very much based on your specific playstyle. Hardcore pvp players roll horde pvp. Min max pve’ers Alliance. But the Horde players will still have to raid on their inferior races in pve, while alliance players sit in Iron Forge most of the day, they will then have to deal with getting camped every time they want to go anywhere in the world because their pvp population is abysmal compared to the horde population. Casual players are hard to quantify because their choices aren’t always rational, but most players actually consider balance when choosing their race/faction.

For a system like this to work in eso there would have to be even more significant barriers than just “ you can’t group”.

first races are stuck in their faction “already mentioned”

While I have always been a proponent of character specific soul bound weapons and items, the least that would have to happen is faction specific banks. This means if you're a pvp player you can't just make a pact alt and farm gear with all the leet pve players.

the same goes for Faction locked Guilds, at least the bank

on top of that they would of course also have to faction lock, trade spots, Mail Box, crafting bag and homes.

It’s too late

It's too late for faction locked pve. ESO has gone in the direction of convenience ever since release. While I love the idea of actually splitting the player base in 3. The game is too matured for this sort of change to have a positive effect. As I mentioned earlier large population of veteran players will just stack on a single faction. With social networks such as discord this would not be a problem to organise. And with the exception of very few enherient faction loyalist. The vast majority of players have no ties to any faction, rather their friends, and they will go where their friends go, whom will also base it on where their friend goes, and where their friends friends go.

While some balance differences could be made to draw a certain crowd to a faction such as Altmers being the best magicka dps, but noone is going to give up their social network and friends for a 5% dps increase. I honestly think a lot of the content drought in pve in eso is a direct result of the megaserver and the lack of faction split in pve. The player pool for a team in pve is simply too high. Other MMORPGs have 10-15 maybe even more servers per region. This is a very natural split of the player pool, the fact that a game like wow have faction split as well effectively doubles this amount. In general this dilutes the overall skill cap of the player base. While ESO does have the MMO fantasy of the “dream team” → stacking the 12 best players in their roles and see what they can do. In general, a diluted player base effectively keeps content relevant for longer, while nothing prevents good players from stacking on single servers, most people tend to choose their server based on where their friends play. Still effectively dividing the general population somewhat equally across several realms i terms of skill.

Overall the idea of faction specific pve is actually not bad, it's just a little too late "about 5 years". It would have brought a lot of inconveniences to the player base. That always comes with splitting it up. But on a positive note keep pve content relevant for longer by diluting the player base significantly, it would make faction pvp suddenly not just a pain in the arse but a natural part of the game. Overall it was a sensible part of the game, and something a lot of people actually cared about on release. I for one thought this game would be all about the factions with open world pvp when I first saw the trailers. Unfortunately ZOS did not realise how much of an asset player pool dilution would be to their game, especially in a game run on a mega server, till this year. Instead they choose to appeal to the more casual player. Today faction loyalty serves as a meme to most pve players. I could not for one name the alliance faction on a single character other than the ones I actually play in pvp.