It is beyond time to unlock Grey Host and make it a 7 day campaign

Vaelix_Stormrend · March 2021

As it stands currently, and it has gotten worse during "No-Proc", Ravenwatch and Blackreach are completely dead for 20 hours of the day.

There is around a 4 hour window (between 9pm CST and 1 am CST) where there is enough population to begin to actually play cyrodiil (aka: take keeps) on a map that has been gated by one faction for the past 20 hours.

So, if you don't happen to play in that 4 hour window than you are out of luck if the class you want to play happens to be faction locked out of the only campaign with people in it, which is ridiculous.

Unlocking Grey Host has other benefits as well, with the next biggest benefit being that faction balance will improve.

There is nothing worse in Cyrodiil than having your faction completely dominate a map. It is not fun for the factions getting gated and it is even less fun for the faction that is dominating the map. It makes Cyrodiil mind-numblingly boring.

Unlocking Grey Host would allow players to swap to a low pop faction and begin to pvp against the populated faction. This happened all the time prior to the faction lock.

Lastly, Grey Host needs to be a 7 day campaign.

Many are going to argue that "no one cares about the score" but that is just a complete misconception.

The score being "close" is what draws a lot of people into Cyrodiil. When a faction falls behind a great deal in the first week than the faction is almost non existent for the rest of the campaign.

Haderius, a 7 day campaign, was the greatest Cyrodiil campaign to ever exist and being a short campaign made it so.

zaria · March 2021

Now an problem in Cyrodil is that most people play during prime time as its the time they are not at work or at sleep or do other RL stuff.
You still have to balance for prime time.

Now 7 days campains might make more sense now as most get the transmutes from pledges and random dungeons and the 50 key geode from 30 days is less important.

jle30303 · March 2021

Basically, no matter whether it's Grey Host or others, *there should always be at least one 7-day campaign available both for CP and no-CP*.

30-day campaigns are simply too long. When one team gets too far ahead, there's no catching them: when one gets too far behind, there's no recovery.

As for the race for Emperorship, the top one or two players for each team - who have basically been fed free alliance points usually - can never be caught: anyone who wants to be Emperor pretty much has to make the effort in the first few days, maybe even the first few hours, of any campaign, or they're waiting a month because there is no way to catch up with APs gained by other members of your own team. Things being out of reach, discourages people.

Ideally, a campaign would *close* properly when it ends - everybody currently in Cyrodiil being punted back to the normal world (people in delves can remain there, but if they leave the delve, it goes back tot he main world: and a new instance would begin, with all the factions back at their starting point of holding 6 keeps, 18 resources, 2 outposts and 2 elder scrolls in their temples, with the borders at the Western Milegates, the Northern Milegates and the Niben Bridges.

Sanctum74 · March 2021

If the other campaigns are empty it would make more sense to learn from the popular campaign and lock them and make them 30 day also. Ruining the only popular campaign doesn’t make much sense.

nukk3r · March 2021

Chief_Wiggums wrote: »

There is nothing worse in Cyrodiil than having your faction completely dominate a map. It is not fun for the factions getting gated and it is even less fun for the faction that is dominating the map. It makes Cyrodiil mind-numblingly boring.

Unlocking Grey Host would allow players to swap to a low pop faction and begin to pvp against the populated faction. This happened all the time prior to the faction lock.

Why do you think it's a good thing? I'd hate to play alongside people who t-bag and send me hate whispers on a daily basis.

kargen27 · March 2021

There is a reason Grey Host is the popular campaign. It has been the popular campaign since it became locked. Faction locking a campaign is a good example of developers listening to players and giving them what they want.

Yeah, with an unlocked campaign a player can jump onto another faction that is under populated hoping for a good fight. All kinds of bad behavior is also possible when faction hopping is allowed. Locking the campaign fixed some problems for a lot of players.

AlnilamE · March 2021

I mean, if it helps, they could list Blackreach first and Grey Host second to see if being first on the list attracts more players?

But the 7-day campaign, when it existed, was the deadest of them all, and it was unlocked.

Vlad9425 · March 2021

No Grey Host is perfect as is. The problem is other empty campaigns which in my opinion should just be removed. Make Grey host and Ravenwatch the only campaigns in the game and you will have no issues with populations.

Wandering_Immigrant · March 2021

Let's see if I'm reading this right, comprehension isn't my strong suit.

Your problem is that locked is more popular than unlocked, and your solution is to unlock the most popular campaign? Is that about the gist of it?

lillybit · March 2021

Grey Host (and whatever it was called before that) has always been the popular campaign. Your changes would just take it back to how it was before the lock was introduced - there was very little difference in population (one busy 30 day campaign and the rest dead most of the time) and a lot of difference in toxicity levels

AlnilamE · March 2021

Vlad9425 wrote: »

No Grey Host is perfect as is. The problem is other empty campaigns which in my opinion should just be removed. Make Grey host and Ravenwatch the only campaigns in the game and you will have no issues with populations.

No, thank you.

I need Blackreach to play on off-alliance toons to help guildies that need to level in PvP.

itscompton · March 2021

The sheer amount of self entitlement displayed in this post is astounding. If people wanted to play in an unlocked campaign Blackreach would be full and Grayhost would be empty.
Your request might have found some support if you had asked to change the campaign that is already unlocked from 30 to 7 days to see if it makes it more popular but instead you ask the Devs to discount EVERYONE else's choice to play in a locked campaign and force them to conform to your desires.

VaranisArano · March 2021

The logic is "The most popular campaign has a ruleset I don't like while the campaigns with the rulesets I do like are unpopular. ZOS, please change the popular campaign's ruleset to one that I do like. This will make everything better for me."

AlnilamE wrote: »

I mean, if it helps, they could list Blackreach first and Grey Host second to see if being first on the list attracts more players?

I'm sure that the order of the "Alliance-locked" and "Standard" campaigns in the Alliamce War was truly the deciding factor for many players...rather than that a number of players who wanted to be in the Alliance-locked campaign made sure they were playing in there as soon as the servers opened up. Players who don't really care gravitate to the most-populated campaign. That was Gray Host, not because of alphabetical order but because it attracted players who wanted to be in the faction-locked campaign from hour 1.