Cyrodiil REALLY needs a faction balancer.

Lynxyn · April 2021

In literally any way possible. As of writing EP is sitting at 1 bar AD 3 (probably closer to 2) and dc has been poplocked for hours now holding all 6 scrolls and all emp keeps. DC could take back EP gate keeps and defend them with 1/4th of their player count while using the rest to overwhelm AD. Why even bother playing cyro if the 70% of the ball groups are going to faction stack blue and just win because there's 100 of them playing constantly vs like 7 red players with the only occasional challenge to them being when the yellow ball groups decide to get on at the same time as them?

Qagh · April 2021

The same situation with Gray Host (EU Server).

Poplocked AD for hours with 6 scrolls, emp AND Volendrung, 2-3 bars for EP and 1-2 bars for DC.

The faction balance is terrible after the alliance change token.

Bucky_13 · April 2021

Faction balance was bad before those tokens. Considering that rolling a new character have been an option for years, the impact of those tokens are more or less irrelevant. I've used 2 of them, to switch non EP chars to EP, I only PvPed on pact side, so the only impact that had was that I used different characters in the same faction. I'm not the only one.

I think zos intended volen to equal out faction imbalance, but it definitely doesn't work like that in reality. Better incentives for under populated factions would be better in the long run, the low pop bonus isn't potent enough

Faded · April 2021

Lynxyn wrote: »

In literally any way possible.

Ask them to remove the faction lock. People who want to stack in the "winning" faction and people who hate a single-color map and would like some PVP only being able to move around every 30 days gets you what you've got right now.

This is the completely predictable outcome a highly vocal portion of the community demanded.

Lynxyn · April 2021

Bucky_13 wrote: »

Faction balance was bad before those tokens. Considering that rolling a new character have been an option for years, the impact of those tokens are more or less irrelevant. I've used 2 of them, to switch non EP chars to EP, I only PvPed on pact side, so the only impact that had was that I used different characters in the same faction. I'm not the only one.

I think zos intended volen to equal out faction imbalance, but it definitely doesn't work like that in reality. Better incentives for under populated factions would be better in the long run, the low pop bonus isn't potent enough

Volen would need to instant kill 75 players to balance out the faction difference. Oh cool EP got hammer *instant entire dc faction pile anywhere they go* you cannot win a fight vs an entire poplocked faction with only 7 players. EP had low pop bonus last night and DC was still gaining 100 more points because they owned 3/4ths the map and 6 scrolls. And when dc logs off the ad guilds log on and night cap everything.

Basically what I'm getting at is don't pick EP if you want to win because you'll just get outmanned 5 to 1 the entire day by DC.

Tommy_The_Gun · April 2021

Tbh. It would not be happening if ZOS would introduce something to balance night / morning cap impact on potential points and final scoreboards. Because as if it stands now, it is PvE (PvD) activity, that decides who wins a PvP Campaign.

I do believe it should be the other way around. It should be PvP activity that has biggest impact on to who wins PvP Campaign. Playing for objectives during prime time, when factions have higher populations, should be the deciding factor point-wise and should have biggest impact on final score.

ZOS should make potential points to be bound to current population. So if you will night / morning cap the map, fighting only against NPCs and no actual players, you should literally have almost no points for that.

Alternatively, they could add something to motivate fighting vs winning faction (not more AP, because that will only cause players to re-log), so if you are 1st, you will have to face 2 factions. Because what is happening almost always is that players chose the "least difficult" path, so they do not fight the one who is winning (Emp buffs + all players stack in one last keep with a hammer on top).

Currently, what is happening is that players migrate to what faction is winning (over and over again), and we have one faction that is winning over & over again. There are also players who are loyal to their alliance, so they gave up, since they have no chance and realize that fighting for the objectives / map is pointless, and they simply quit & don't care about PvP...

But they would care again if scoring system would be fair again.

Lynxyn · April 2021

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Tbh. It would not be happening if ZOS would introduce something to balance night / morning cap impact on potential points and final scoreboards. Because as if it stands now, it is PvE (PvD) activity, that decides who wins a PvP Campaign.

I do believe it should be the other way around. It should be PvP activity that has biggest impact on to who wins PvP Campaign. Playing for objectives during prime time, when factions have higher populations, should be the deciding factor point-wise and should have biggest impact on final score.

ZOS should make potential points to be bound to current population. So if you will night / morning cap the map, fighting only against NPCs and no actual players, you should literally have almost no points for that.

Alternatively, they could add something to motivate fighting vs winning faction (not more AP, because that will only cause players to re-log), so if you are 1st, you will have to face 2 factions. Because what is happening almost always is that players chose the "least difficult" path, so they do not fight the one who is winning (Emp buffs + all players stack in one last keep with a hammer on top).

Currently, what is happening is that players migrate to what faction is winning (over and over again), and we have one faction that is winning over & over again. There are also players who are loyal to their alliance, so they gave up, since they have no chance and realize that fighting for the objectives / map is pointless, and they simply quit & don't care about PvP...

But they would care again if scoring system would be fair again.

I mean I agree, but to be honest this doesn't do anything to actually balance faction population. DC outnumbers AD and EP half the day and then during prime time DC has a ton of ball groups AD has some and EP has none. I want to have fun but there's no fun to be had when we can't even take a home keep if a quarter of DC shows up.

adirondack · April 2021

Quite a turn around from a year ago when DC was the outnumbered faction.

A would support an attempt to balance either populations or AP gains. I honestly do not believe ZOS wants to put effort into this... more so, I doubt any effort would be met with universal approval.

So yes OP I agree with your frustration but nothing is likely to change. People moved to DC just because they like the Zerg. Good for them if they are happy, it’s not my place to judge. Still frustrating to be faced with obvious population disparity every day.

Minnesinger · April 2021

Unfortunately, the population (im)balance is left to the players. You can see what is the result of this. DC making the most of their points by pvdooring. PvP has suffered greatly again. Only if they could win in even numbers but their win is remembered only for the population mastering.

Kwoung · April 2021

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Tbh. It would not be happening if ZOS would introduce something to balance night / morning cap impact on potential points and final scoreboards. Because as if it stands now, it is PvE (PvD) activity, that decides who wins a PvP Campaign.

I do believe it should be the other way around. It should be PvP activity that has biggest impact on to who wins PvP Campaign. Playing for objectives during prime time, when factions have higher populations, should be the deciding factor point-wise and should have biggest impact on final score.

ZOS should make potential points to be bound to current population. So if you will night / morning cap the map, fighting only against NPCs and no actual players, you should literally have almost no points for that.

Alternatively, they could add something to motivate fighting vs winning faction (not more AP, because that will only cause players to re-log), so if you are 1st, you will have to face 2 factions. Because what is happening almost always is that players chose the "least difficult" path, so they do not fight the one who is winning (Emp buffs + all players stack in one last keep with a hammer on top).

Currently, what is happening is that players migrate to what faction is winning (over and over again), and we have one faction that is winning over & over again. There are also players who are loyal to their alliance, so they gave up, since they have no chance and realize that fighting for the objectives / map is pointless, and they simply quit & don't care about PvP...

But they would care again if scoring system would be fair again.

I have suggested a similar thing numerous times, of course the deaf ears and all thing. So I entirely agree, night capping needs to be made considerably less lucrative or harder to do across the board. Even something like the campaign score just stopping unless each faction has at least 2 bars of players online. You can still earn AP, still take keeps, but it should not affect the campaign score if your team is simply knocking on doors or taking resources with no one around to defend them.

Anyhow, all the factions are guilty of it, they all do it at one point or another. I used to play on Blackreach where AD did this consistently, the same 6 players would log in every night after everyone went to bed and literally cap the entire map, all the scrolls, etc.. with zero obstacle's in their way. We got fed up one month and my guild mates and I stayed up late almost every night to stop and reverse it on them, as they were horrible at PVP and very easy to stop, but someone just had to actually be there to do it.

Unfortunately, one campaign was all we could keep it up for, and we did win that time, but the next month was back to the same. It wasn't even worth trying to catch up, just grab your AP, Glad Box, call it a day and leave Cyro. We ended up moving our guilds events to Greyhost, where the scoreboard seems considerably closer, PVP actually happens and the faction on top changes regularly.

deleted210809-001958 · April 2021

it would be great to have a dynamic population cap like 10ppl at the base, and +10 when every faction reaches this value, and then another +10 when reaches 20, etc (or -10 when population decreases). but 99% sure it won't happen

Iriidius · May 2021

Maybe score should be dependent on players online, so when less players are online, score increase is slower. But nightcappers shouldnt be able to increase score by themself, so maybe only number of enemy players. But players of weaker factions also shouldnt leave to decrease enemy score gain.

Greasytengu · May 2021

Make the score based off AP earned. This way you can still contribute to the score by taking empty keeps, but there is a finite amount you can contribute without any actual fighting. Primetime fights will actually matter, Field and milegate fight will actually matter, quest turn-ins will matter, being able to do more with fewer people helping you will matter.

Soul_Demon · May 2021

I think personally the best solution is just in pure AP gain changes....not tough to do and certainly would incentivize the players choices.

Attack/take/kill 1st place Alliance in score= 200% normal AP gain
Attack/take/kill 2nd place Alliance in score= 100% normal AP gain
Attack/take/kill 3rd place Alliance in score= 50% normal AP gain

I think this would be a much better and easier system to use to create incentives to balance out naturally. I suspect the change would take less than a month for us to see dramatic results from and it would be player driven.

CSose · May 2021

The solution is to fix the performance issues so more people play. (and restore the old population caps so each faction can have more than 100 players online at the same time) As it is now many to most won't put up with the perennial performance issues, so participation is tanking.

We don't need gimmicks to provide balance. We need the game to work as it used to work is all.

Wolfpaw · May 2021

Lynxyn wrote: »

In literally any way possible. As of writing EP is sitting at 1 bar AD 3 (probably closer to 2) and dc has been poplocked for hours now holding all 6 scrolls and all emp keeps. DC could take back EP gate keeps and defend them with 1/4th of their player count while using the rest to overwhelm AD. Why even bother playing cyro if the 70% of the ball groups are going to faction stack blue and just win because there's 100 of them playing constantly vs like 7 red players with the only occasional challenge to them being when the yellow ball groups decide to get on at the same time as them?

New Faction
Marauders (Factionless) - Introduction of new race Goblins.
-Attacked at PvE main cities
-No Cadwell story or main storyline of other factions.
-New Goblin main City, and caves, similar thieves den.
-New Goblin story to advance through
-Zone quests, delves, PD, PvP, & dungeon leveling

No Emperor
Big bonuses for attacking & taking 1st place faction, keeps, resources, & players.
2nd place resources, & keeps reduced damage from Marauders
3rd place keeps & resources take no damage.
Marauder keeps and resources taken don't show on map when attacked, except by 1st place faction.
New artifact Spear of Bitter Mercy - Only can be wielded by a Marauder, spawn only visible by Marauders.
Home cave (keep) added, tunnels open for 1st place faction attack.

https://en.m.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Spear_of_Bitter_Mercy

A Goblin using an artifact isn't unheard of, lore "friendly".

"Circa 4E 201, a tribe of goblins migrated out of Cyrodiil using subterranean tunnels beneath the Jerall Mountains. They emerged into the Rift and took up occupation of a cave known as Gromm's Pass. The hunter of this group, a goblin named Gogh, was seemingly blessed by Hircine or Malacath as he was in possession of a Spear of Bitter Mercy. Gogh was fiercely protective of the weapon, which rejected anyone else that tried to claim it."

Minnesinger · May 2021

PC GH the only hope would be that enough DC players got bored of their domination and switch factions. Apparently, all the DC guilds have grown into the zergs and benefits of the campaign win seems to be so good to them that the majority of DC are content with pvdoor. Everyone else can only imagine what reasons they have to kill the pvp there.

ResidentContrarian · May 2021

Minnesinger wrote: »

PC GH the only hope would be that enough DC players got bored of their domination and switch factions. Apparently, all the DC guilds have grown into the zergs and benefits of the campaign win seems to be so good to them that the majority of DC are content with pvdoor. Everyone else can only imagine what reasons they have to kill the pvp there.

Why should DC players change factions to "balance" the campaign?

Wasn't the goal of faction lock to stop cross-faction and inspire faction loyalty? There is absolutely zero reason to swap to a faction and help them with locks around, esp. if they are losing.

Also, it's well known that AD is the faction that can accomplish little without a huge faction stack...

Wolfpaw · May 2021

I think we have more to worry about with new Cyrodiil changes, pvp in general.

Performance fix=spread pvp community paper thin.

No-Cp Cyrodiil (possible no-cp no-proc & proc)
No-proc Cp Cyrodiil
Proc Cp Cyrodiil
Below 50 Cyrodiil
No-proc IC
Proc IC
No-proc BG
Proc BG

I'm not seeing many pvp battles with this many options.

ResidentContrarian · May 2021

Wolfpaw wrote: »

I think we have more to worry about with new Cyrodiil changes, pvp in general.

Performance fix=spread pvp community paper thin.

No-Cp Cyrodiil (possible no-cp no-proc & proc)
No-proc Cp Cyrodiil
Proc Cp Cyrodiil
Below 50 Cyrodiil
No-proc IC
Proc IC
No-proc BG
Proc BG

I'm not seeing many pvp battles with this many options.

I doubt anyone will really be in the no-proc campaigns because balance is skewed too heavily toward Warden, Necro, and Sorc.

The classes aren't balanced, and I doubt anyone not playing those classes are having much fun in no-proc, especially casual players.

Wolfpaw · May 2021

ResidentContrarian wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

I think we have more to worry about with new Cyrodiil changes, pvp in general.

Performance fix=spread pvp community paper thin.

No-Cp Cyrodiil (possible no-cp no-proc & proc)
No-proc Cp Cyrodiil
Proc Cp Cyrodiil
Below 50 Cyrodiil
No-proc IC
Proc IC
No-proc BG
Proc BG

I'm not seeing many pvp battles with this many options.

I doubt anyone will really be in the no-proc campaigns because balance is skewed too heavily toward Warden, Necro, and Sorc.

The classes aren't balanced, and I doubt anyone not playing those classes are having much fun in no-proc, especially casual players.

With PC as the test, us console players will be watching. Hopefully this works out.

Minnesinger · May 2021

ResidentContrarian wrote: »

Minnesinger wrote: »

PC GH the only hope would be that enough DC players got bored of their domination and switch factions. Apparently, all the DC guilds have grown into the zergs and benefits of the campaign win seems to be so good to them that the majority of DC are content with pvdoor. Everyone else can only imagine what reasons they have to kill the pvp there.

Why should DC players change factions to "balance" the campaign?

Wasn't the goal of faction lock to stop cross-faction and inspire faction loyalty? There is absolutely zero reason to swap to a faction and help them with locks around, esp. if they are losing.

Also, it's well known that AD is the faction that can accomplish little without a huge faction stack...

Why would they? To start pvp in a faction that has challenging fights. That is really boring to play in the most populated faction. One could add anything pvp related as a reason. Note to you, not all DC need to change but enough to balance. Weird that you would not want people to change their factions because that is the main reason DC became so populated. Ex EP players chose to balance the campaign by hopping to the least populated faction. Think it is time some of them head back to EP.

Faction loyalty as a reason is so far off the goal to many players. Good players choose pvp over such made up loyalties. Plus I want to say, faction change is easy at the end of the campaign and bonus is it is FREE.

Ranger209 · May 2021

Minnesinger wrote: »

ResidentContrarian wrote: »

Minnesinger wrote: »

PC GH the only hope would be that enough DC players got bored of their domination and switch factions. Apparently, all the DC guilds have grown into the zergs and benefits of the campaign win seems to be so good to them that the majority of DC are content with pvdoor. Everyone else can only imagine what reasons they have to kill the pvp there.

Why should DC players change factions to "balance" the campaign?

Wasn't the goal of faction lock to stop cross-faction and inspire faction loyalty? There is absolutely zero reason to swap to a faction and help them with locks around, esp. if they are losing.

Also, it's well known that AD is the faction that can accomplish little without a huge faction stack...

Why would they? To start pvp in a faction that has challenging fights. That is really boring to play in the most populated faction. One could add anything pvp related as a reason. Note to you, not all DC need to change but enough to balance. Weird that you would not want people to change their factions because that is the main reason DC became so populated. Ex EP players chose to balance the campaign by hopping to the least populated faction. Think it is time some of them head back to EP.

Faction loyalty as a reason is so far off the goal to many players. Good players choose pvp over such made up loyalties. Plus I want to say, faction change is easy at the end of the campaign and bonus is it is FREE.

It doesn't matter one way or the other, faction locked or unlocked. The players that do this play at non-peak times, and always ALL eventually end up on the same faction. It's like there is a dominant group, or groups during various non peak times, and if they change the rest of the people that they initially dominate also change factions to join them so that they can no longer dominate them. On faction lock this can occur over a couple campaigns, in unlocked it can happen in an hour.

Amottica · May 2021

I have never seen large-scale PvP such as Cyrodiil designed to be balanced and I do not see a solution that would not have a strong negative impact by restricting gameplay which would be detrimental to the game. It seems as though Cyrodiil is not intended to be truly competitive in any manner. It is really just how has the masses and how effective those masses are. It is a great PvP experience for those that are very skilled and lesser skilled but it is not intended to be balanced by design.

Something like BGs is where competitive PvP should be sought.

xDeusEJRx · May 2021

ResidentContrarian wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

I think we have more to worry about with new Cyrodiil changes, pvp in general.

Performance fix=spread pvp community paper thin.

No-Cp Cyrodiil (possible no-cp no-proc & proc)
No-proc Cp Cyrodiil
Proc Cp Cyrodiil
Below 50 Cyrodiil
No-proc IC
Proc IC
No-proc BG
Proc BG

I'm not seeing many pvp battles with this many options.

I doubt anyone will really be in the no-proc campaigns because balance is skewed too heavily toward Warden, Necro, and Sorc.

The classes aren't balanced, and I doubt anyone not playing those classes are having much fun in no-proc, especially casual players.

There's an argument to be made here, I agree casuals might not be enjoying no proc however I argue proc cyrodiil is more of a chore because with all sets enabled what happens is, it creates a need to grind relentlessly for gear. I imagine a lot of people grinded for hours to get malacath, pale order, the other mythics, maelstrom, asylum weapons, etc. Gear grinds are not fun at all, and are frankly annoying. I prefer no proc because gear isn't much of an issue anymore because you can just use crafted stuff and still be using a setup that's "meta". Sure you can use this crafted gear in proc cyrodiil, but it's always far eclipsed by most of this dungeon and arena gear that's far better. In order to keep up you will have to just end up dropping it, it's the same reason people resort to making high health tanky builds or healing sets like chokethorn or crimson, because damage goes up so much some people need the added survivability to compete. As the damage ceiling increases, people need better gear to stay caught up, and that better gear is unfortunately mostly dungeon or arena gear with a few exceptions to some exceptional crafted gear.

Wing · May 2021

well DC was afraid that AD would sweep the three campaigns of no proc cp2.0 and decided to become the biggest trash can of a faction to make sure they they were able to eek out a win, if you want to call what they have done, in fact, winning.

GoodFella146 · May 2021

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Currently, what is happening is that players migrate to what faction is winning (over and over again), and we have one faction that is winning over & over again. There are also players who are loyal to their alliance, so they gave up, since they have no chance and realize that fighting for the objectives / map is pointless, and they simply quit & don't care about PvP...

I used to love playing Cyrodiil (PS4 NA) but the factions are so imbalanced that there's no point. Blue wins every campaign and both red and yellow won't focus blue because it's easier to fight each other as the fights are more balanced. Since zos won't do anything the only option has been to quit playing.

Akinos · May 2021

Cyrodiil will never have faction balance, just not enough people in Cyrodiil anymore, and let's be real here, the number one reason people don't want to play in Cyrodiil is because of the continued poor performance.

Soon as the performance gets fixed, if ever, people will flock back to Cyrodiil and to ESO in general and the faction balance will get better. Not alot of time left for ZOS to improve performance though with all the new MMO's coming out. There will be even less people in Cyrodiil once a few of these new games start going into open betas.

Indigogo · May 2021

GoodFella146 wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Currently, what is happening is that players migrate to what faction is winning (over and over again), and we have one faction that is winning over & over again. There are also players who are loyal to their alliance, so they gave up, since they have no chance and realize that fighting for the objectives / map is pointless, and they simply quit & don't care about PvP...

I used to love playing Cyrodiil (PS4 NA) but the factions are so imbalanced that there's no point. Blue wins every campaign and both red and yellow won't focus blue because it's easier to fight each other as the fights are more balanced. Since zos won't do anything the only option has been to quit playing.

Red can't focus blue because AD is too busy messing with arrius rather than ungating themselves.
Believe me, Ep would love nothing more than to play a campaign where you all attack the person in 1st place/has scrolls/emp, but tell that to the bananas. Literally destroying every campaign due to their blind hatred of red.

Dc just gets to capitalize.

Joy_Division · May 2021

Indigogo wrote: »

GoodFella146 wrote: »

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Currently, what is happening is that players migrate to what faction is winning (over and over again), and we have one faction that is winning over & over again. There are also players who are loyal to their alliance, so they gave up, since they have no chance and realize that fighting for the objectives / map is pointless, and they simply quit & don't care about PvP...

I used to love playing Cyrodiil (PS4 NA) but the factions are so imbalanced that there's no point. Blue wins every campaign and both red and yellow won't focus blue because it's easier to fight each other as the fights are more balanced. Since zos won't do anything the only option has been to quit playing.

Red can't focus blue because AD is too busy messing with arrius rather than ungating themselves.
Believe me, Ep would love nothing more than to play a campaign where you all attack the person in 1st place/has scrolls/emp, but tell that to the bananas. Literally destroying every campaign due to their blind hatred of red.

Dc just gets to capitalize.

Many of us have no idea when a campaign starts, when it ends, who is in first, if we even have emperor (though that eventually gets figured out because of the health increase), what's the score, who won last campaign, etc., all the sorts of questions campaign related. I know that I don;t I know the the lead of our group doesn't. So every single decision that out group makes is 100% based on what the map looks like at the moment and where the best fight can be had. If we "Bananas" show up at Arrius, that is why. It's not because we hate red. If anything, we spend more time in our comms commenting on Blues.

DrSlaughtr · May 2021

Having 3 alliances is flawed to begin with. Anyone who's played Risk with 3 players can tell you exactly how it'll go.

On XB NA in both GH and BR, blue will rarely take the south. Even if they own every red keep. Yellow will rarely push north west, because they would rather backend red who are defending him DC pushes than increase their own chances of getting 2nd or 1st.

BR on XB especially is constantly being manipulated by cross faction party chat groups. That at least didn't happen much in GH.