Someone still care about winning campaigns?

Marcus_Aurelius · July 2021

I mean, when you have things like this every morning seems a bit pointless to me.
Current campaign score is 39k against 25k.

I think it is time to rework as score is calculated. I don't think this is healthy for the game when no one cares anymore about an aspect that should be the core of it.

Note: this is not about DC, would be bad regardless of color of the map.

Jackey · July 2021

I usually stop caring when this happens.
The other team or my team can zerg the map like this all they want. It's dumb and boring.
I jump in later when the population is more balanced and find some fun fights.

Rarely have the teams been balanced throughout the entire campaign but when it happens it's the best and most exciting part of ESO in my opinion.

vesselwiththepestle · July 2021

As a DC player I don't even log into the map when it looks like that. What would be the point. Even when during the day DC helds everything from Chalman to Roeback (at least) it usually doesn't make sense to get into that (as DC player). The score is screwed for a while so, DC is just currently taking it to a new extreme and the new thing is, that it's DC dominating through night and morning cap. (The last two years or so it was AD. So I imagine many new players are noticing this as an issue for the first time.)

Maybe there could be done something about the Alliance Lock. I mean, we already don't have an Alliance Lock, but the Alliance of my character still determines on which side I am allowed to play. If I could my usual pvp characters on AD or EP side on a map like that, now that would be different. Another thing might be working on the population caps, maybe dynamically changing them to create better balance.

Hymzir · July 2021

Winning sucks lot less than losing, so on that note, I think most players prefer their side to win.

However... Campaigns are won and lost during night and morning caps - the side that has the most stable and reliable pool of cappers is going to win. Period. Nothing that takes place during the so called "prime time" is going to make a lick of difference. One hour of dedicated PVDooring in the wee hours is going to have larger impact on the campaign score than 5 hours of back and forth between fully locked factions.

Some years ago, there were still those that did try to marshal their faction during prime time to recoup the gains made by night cappers, but it was always to no avail. The faction with the cappers always won. These days only new players play the map during prime time. Veterans know that such actions have no bearing on the results and just go wherever the most entertaining fights are at that moment and the map be damned.

Most players are ultimately not interested in doing the sort of things it takes to actually win one of these things. I.e. painting the map monocolor while the other factions sleep. That's why there has been constant calls over the years for some sort of dynamic scoring system to be implemented. Because we do care about winning, but also would like our actions to have an impact on which side carries the day, and not have the thing decided by killing NPCs in otherwise empty keeps.

PVDooring to the win is the inevitable result of the way ESO scores campaigns. I can't blame players, who do genuinely want to win, for playing the game in the way that makes most sense. And heck, I'm not even sure if the cappers are all that motivated by winning as such - morning caps give lot of AP for very little effort. It's an easy way to grind some extra skill points via alliance war ranks for an alt.

I'm also pretty sure that some cappers do it to ensure that they have all the buffs on their side when prime time begins. And that is the one bit that does kinda annoy me, and the reason why I've argued for years now, that we should get rid of all such buffs. They just tend to promote unhealthy play.

At this point, Cyro needs a major overhaul, a total work over. The scoring should be more dynamic, and not just a snapshot of one second out of every 3600. And there should be some way to factor in populations and keep them balanced. Not only for scoring but for the general number of players each side has available. It's no fun to be steamrolled by three bar faction while trying to defend your home keeps with just one bar of troops. It also doesn't really help that 90% of Cyro is dead and devoid of any action 90% of the time. Even when the factions are poplocked, there is just way too much space for the number of players involved in the "war." The problem is that Cyro is designed in a way that requires full faction population for all sides 24/7 and that just does not reflect reality. And it was originally designed for lot larger populations than what the game allows these days.

I honestly don't see how Cyro could be salvaged at this point. It would take way too much work to be worth it financially, and the end result would be too far removed from what we have now to be sensible approach to take. ZOS should just declare the three banner war over and come up with a completely new system that serves the actual reality of ESO's PVP community. But that too would take way too much money to implement for ZOS to ever bother thinking about it.

So the Cyro we have is the Cyro we will have to put up with, and that means that campaigns are won by capping. If you care about the campaign score, then you need to start PVDooring. That's just how the thing is designed.

Recremen · July 2021

The night map always fluctuates campaign to campaign yet AD was still able to win last campaign despite all the overnight map flips. It's true that some of the scoring could use some tweaking to make scenes like this less devastating to the hard-earned score distributions of the larger segment of players, but this isn't some irrecoverable thing. It's not like pugs are able to hold the map in this configuration once the guilds get on.

LarsS · July 2021

I made some suggestions in another thread I started. Which would go some way to make the campaigns more intersting:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en-gb/discussion/574023/campaign-system-revision#1

Kory · July 2021

Not enough blue territory just sayin.

Agrippa_Invisus · July 2021

Until they give good rewards again, there's not really a point in trying other than pride. And pride only gets you so far with all the systemic issues inherent in how the score is generated.

vgastel · August 2021

Sigh, it is becoming increasingly hard to care about anything PvP.

The scoring system indeed biases nightcapping. Barring a few changes as to how many campaign points scrolls and resources are worth, the system is not timely anymore, as people pointed out on numerous occasions.

Promised new servers haven't arrived.

Promised performance improvements haven't happened, despite limiting group size and (I believe genuine) efforts in code optimization

The last major PvP addition was Battlegrounds. This came with Morrowind, which was before blackwood, Graymoor, elsweyr and Summer set, so now 4 years ago.

Campaigns are barely pop locked anymore, at least on primetime PC EU gray host (DC on two bars) and PC EU raven watch (AD on two bars). Populations are steadily declining.

And then I and many others notice strange quirks, like lag going away during MYM and coming back afterwards.

And then there is excessive lag when fighting (and getting killed by) certain "good" players who are apparently fortunate enough to have less lag than most of us. For all I know, they run add-ons that create excessive server traffic thus lagging everyone but themselves out (ddos principle).

And the ladders to the districts in IC not working properly even when IC is empty.

And getting stuck in delves in Cyro without the possibility to get back out.

And the endless 47000 day unfixed debuffs that are supposed to do nothing, but still prevent sprinting (the one from streak) and cause you to break free endlessly.

And the in-combat bug...

I stop writing, I am getting depressed. Can't think of an incentive to play atm. Except maybe for the lovely people in my guild.

Cirantille · August 2021

I mean for 20k and some gold rings from forgotten sets, 30 days of work?
It is not motivating
Nothing changes when you win or lose
Ps. Also you can get golden rings without winning the campaign which are still not Rewards for the "Worthy"

Faulgor · August 2021

Hymzir wrote: »

At this point, Cyro needs a major overhaul, a total work over. The scoring should be more dynamic, and not just a snapshot of one second out of every 3600. And there should be some way to factor in populations and keep them balanced. Not only for scoring but for the general number of players each side has available. It's no fun to be steamrolled by three bar faction while trying to defend your home keeps with just one bar of troops. It also doesn't really help that 90% of Cyro is dead and devoid of any action 90% of the time. Even when the factions are poplocked, there is just way too much space for the number of players involved in the "war." The problem is that Cyro is designed in a way that requires full faction population for all sides 24/7 and that just does not reflect reality. And it was originally designed for lot larger populations than what the game allows these days.

Yeah, I feel at this point we need Cyrodiil 2.0. The current version still has too many legacy issues from the initial design that just didn't work, chief of which that the map was designed for a much larger population that the tech just couldn't support in the end.

Call me crazy, because I am, but I think a possible solution to keep scoring relevant, would be if your keeps/resources/whatever couldn't be attacked or repaired unless you have a certain number of players online in the campaign. This way, 3 people couldn't take the whole map while everyone else is asleep. Obviously there would have to be a grace period so your keep doesn't suddenly become immune/vulnerable when one person logs in or out, but still.

Additionally what I'd like to see for this overhauled Cyrodiil, and I'm just shooting some ideas here because I haven't seen this discussed at length (most people just want better performance):

Smaller map. Maybe focus around Lake Rumare, along the Red Ring Road.
Less but more diverse keeps. There is just too little variety in PvDoor sieging.
Visual upgrade. First, the zone looks like dog *** compared to the rest of the game, and second, it looks nothing like Cyrodiil in TES4. Green the place up a little, it looks like all the trees have been dying for 7 years.
Overhauled reward structure. I can't be more specific than this, but the current one blows. Since the Cyrodiil buffs no longer carry over into PvE, there is virtually no incentive to do well in your campaign. Even if you're looking for AP you're better off grinding BGs.

.

DrSlaughtr · August 2021

Sad truth is every campaign is decided by which alliance has the best off hours players.

If red has a group of 6 badasses from 3 am to noon, guess who's winning?

ResidentContrarian · August 2021

Don't tell anyone, but I play on all sides, even in the locked camp, so it doesn't matter to me who wins.

I rather be with losers than winners any day, though. Winning is extremely boring because it almost always results from a huge population imbalance or cheese tactics (20+ group consisting of all bombers, etc.).

The game is not really competitive, even in a 1v1 situation for the most part.

Sindrik8x · August 2021

I just wish EP was more organized in Ravenwatch. I tried my best to help last few campaigns and get people interested, but we have a very solo play style mindset. There are a couple doing a solid job, but it relies on the average and mediocre casuals trying to pull folks together. All the good guilds left for AD and DC.

If anyone is interested in running there with me, my tag is the same as here. My son and I play regularly.

@Sindrik8x
PC NA EST

My son's tag is @ThorinIIx

If one is on, the other usually is as well. We're going to be reworking our builds for this new non-proc playstyle in coming weeks, but we will definitely be aiming to at least get tier three rewards on our main pvp'ers this upcoming campaign (Sunday). We each have 2 - 3 alts we play. He has a magblade bomber, stam dk and stamplar. I have a stam dk and a stamblade ganker.

Kaelthorn_Nightbloom · August 2021

The rewards in Cyrodiil aren't enough to care about winning. I'll join for 30-45 minutes before I've had enough and go back to battlegrounds and duels. The lag doesn't help either.