PvZerg

Theignson · May 2022

Alliance war on PC NA GH used to be a lot of fun. This was on Eastern prime time. Huge fights, sometimes tri faction. Big keep defenses, big D ticks etc. Lots of fights and you could try different builds etc . A unique game experience!

Nowadays and for the last 18 months, on pacific time, it is no longer PvP, it is PvZerg. Every night AD is pop locked and EP 1-2 bars, DC 1-2 bars. A huge zerg just takes the whole map. They are PvDooring, but the EP/DC are PvZerging.

The situation is fundamentally unfair. I can't think of any other game/sport that makes you fight outnumbered 10 to 1. It is utterly pointless. It is not at all fun. I don't know how the AD players can stand it except that they get a lot of free AP. This probably happens at other times too and is equally unfair to the other factions.

"But players can't help where they live". This is the defense. True, but why don't they join other factions to even it out? Month after month they join AD and stomp players with 10 AD chasing every EP or DC.

The only solution I can think of, and it isnt perfect, is forced equalization of the factions, eg by queuing. Get rid of faction lock, so that if they can't get in on the zerg faction, they can get in on the other factions.

This at least would create equal fights. Or maybe that is exactly what people don't want?

Reverb · May 2022

We’re you as bothered by it when that same Zerg was on EP creating an imbalanced situation against lower pop enemies, or only now that they moved to AD?

Lebkuchen · May 2022

On Playstation EU GH we have EP zerging all night, while the other alliances are sleeping. But it is not really zerging, because there are not many players left in Cyrodiil, are there?

Cyrodiil has been neglected for way too long. LAGS and all kinds of bugs and performance issues killed the playerbase. What's left are some frustrated chat-warriors wondering why nobody likes them "Do this insult insult insult, no do that insult insult insult... I will report you for tbagging, i got all of your friends banned already..." Who cares? Why would anyone care? There is nothing happening. It makes no difference who wins the campaign. Why would anyone care about keeps or scrolls? Nobody in their right mind on gray host cares about alliance points. It is way easier to farm ap on an empty campaign with 2x or 4x ap bonus, noob enemies and better performance.

So why are people still trying to play gray host? I don't know, maybe because they want to fight other players instead of guards an wolves. Maybe they want to have big fights, big bombs, big action, group play, 1vx, 2vx, real PvP...

But fights are decided by a combination of sets like plaguebreak, convergence, caluurion and their best friend: LAG. Bigger fights are decided by whoever disconnects first. And 1v1 in Cyrodiil? Come on, there is always some sniper shooting you in the back. Or some group chasing you. Until you turn around, press 3 buttons, and your sets kill them all. Because the lag makes it impossible for them to block, break free or heal your op zerg buster set...

What i am trying to say: PvP is broken, the world is unfair, i am frustrated and have no idea what i am doing here.

But that does not answer your question, and i am sure you stopped reading in the middle of my second sentence. Good for you. There will always be unfair fights. Especially when one alliance is extremely outnumbered. The only solution i can think of is fixing the game, so more people actually want to play PvP again. There are so many ideas out there to make PvP more interesting and enjoyable. And yes, some updates or maybe even a big pvp dlc would be nice. But most important thing, again, fix performance! Lots of people will come back, new players will start playing, every alliance will have enough players, nobody will ever have to fight doors and npcs all night again. Or i am dreaming, it is already too late and this game will die, no matter what they are "working on".

PvP_Exploiter · May 2022

Some braniacs thought Faction Lock was a good idea.
They either have to level a new char or pay an extortion amount for an alliance change - purely for PvP btw, no other area of the game is effected by alliance.

divnyi · May 2022

Theignson wrote: »

True, but why don't they join other factions to even it out?

Maybe because players can't simply switch faction on their char?
I'm not logging in on some char I don't want to play atm just because I need to equalize.

The idea of characters being locked in alliance is fairly bad because it doesn't even represent anything - no zone would treat you differently because you are from other alliance. It is only cyro/IC thing. And it is huge limiting factor - I was once trying to lead casual player guild into open world PvP. Roughly half of them didn't have correct alliance.

MEBengalsFan2001 · May 2022

I've seen this type of behavior since I started to play PVP. It's normally EP that zerg down AD. While that is going on and AD is defending Fare or Blood Mayne DC comes down on Roe, Brindle and Black Boot where AD ends up losing both scrolls usually to EP do their zerg. And when I say zerg I mean it is usually 20-30 AD vs hundreds of EP. One time I sat dead and counted the number of EP that teleported in and move towards the scroll; well it was around 200 and there wasn't even 30 AD on at that time.

It is frustrating that this is allowed. I hope the devs combine alliance into two vs. the three we have now. And each campaign a player gets assigned to one of the two pvp groups at random and is in that group for all of the various campaign until the campaign ends.

I also hope the scrolls are removed and bonus to stats is not done by scrolls or keep but is determined by the variance of player population between each battling group in PVP.

adirondack · May 2022

I played on NA PC GH last night until 1:00am PDT. This AD Zerg that the OP referenced did not materialize.

AD was completely destroyed by DC and EP pushing south again and taking both scrolls. Multiple ball groups (primarily one good EP one and some casual DC ones) ran all over the [snip] AD who tried to fight.

Most of the people I fight with just log off when this happens every night. Sounds like more people are planning to swap factions away from AD.

I dunno if this AD Zerg does or doesn’t exist. I haven’t seen it but I don’t play that late all the time. What I do see every night in Eastern prime time is the DC and EP push southward and AD getting rolled ultimately defending Fare. Sometimes successfully.

I agree with the OP that there is population imbalance that should be addressed somehow. I like Izy’s idea of AP scaling with the number of players on a faction. Which would make pvdoor activities less useful.

Oh well. My $0.02.

[edited for baiting]

Necrotech_Master · May 2022

i have a hard time playing on grey host lately because of performance issues, been playing a lot more in blackreach on PC/NA

performance is so much better there, but there are times where AD is flat outnumbered there (last night for example it was 2 bar yellow, lock for both red and blue) and logged out when AD started getting team purpled into submission

xFocused · May 2022

MEBengalsFan2001 wrote: »

I've seen this type of behavior since I started to play PVP. It's normally EP that zerg down AD. While that is going on and AD is defending Fare or Blood Mayne DC comes down on Roe, Brindle and Black Boot where AD ends up losing both scrolls usually to EP do their zerg. And when I say zerg I mean it is usually 20-30 AD vs hundreds of EP. One time I sat dead and counted the number of EP that teleported in and move towards the scroll; well it was around 200 and there wasn't even 30 AD on at that time.

It is frustrating that this is allowed. I hope the devs combine alliance into two vs. the three we have now. And each campaign a player gets assigned to one of the two pvp groups at random and is in that group for all of the various campaign until the campaign ends.

I also hope the scrolls are removed and bonus to stats is not done by scrolls or keep but is determined by the variance of player population between each battling group in PVP.

This. It's insane playing on AD these last few campaigns because we just cannot compete against EP. There has been days where EP will have 3 full bars and a queue from morning to night to morning again the next day, we just don't have the numbers or population that they have, we also can't play as long as they do, lol. I'd personally love a 2 faction system instead of 3, maybe in one of the smaller campaigns just to test the waters and see how it goes first

Theignson · May 2022

Reverb wrote: »

We’re you as bothered by it when that same Zerg was on EP creating an imbalanced situation against lower pop enemies, or only now that they moved to AD?

As I stated, it happens to every faction and is unfair/unfun in every case. My solution would solve it for all factions

Theignson · May 2022

divnyi wrote: »

Theignson wrote: »

True, but why don't they join other factions to even it out?

Maybe because players can't simply switch faction on their char?
I'm not logging in on some char I don't want to play atm just because I need to equalize.

The idea of characters being locked in alliance is fairly bad because it doesn't even represent anything - no zone would treat you differently because you are from other alliance. It is only cyro/IC thing. And it is huge limiting factor - I was once trying to lead casual player guild into open world PvP. Roughly half of them didn't have correct alliance.

I agree with both posts-- faction lock contributed to this.

There used to be groups of players who mainly wanted good fights and they would switch factions if things got too unbalanced. At least, that was the story. But ZOS in their wisdom for some reason decided they have to lock factions.

Theignson · May 2022

adirondack wrote: »

I played on NA PC GH last night until 1:00am PDT. This AD Zerg that the OP referenced did not materialize.

AD was completely destroyed by DC and EP pushing south again and taking both scrolls. Multiple ball groups (primarily one good EP one and some casual DC ones) ran all over the [snip] AD who tried to fight.

Most of the people I fight with just log off when this happens every night. Sounds like more people are planning to swap factions away from AD.

I dunno if this AD Zerg does or doesn’t exist. I haven’t seen it but I don’t play that late all the time. What I do see every night in Eastern prime time is the DC and EP push southward and AD getting rolled ultimately defending Fare. Sometimes successfully.

I agree with the OP that there is population imbalance that should be addressed somehow. I like Izy’s idea of AP scaling with the number of players on a faction. Which would make pvdoor activities less useful.

Oh well. My $0.02.

This is interesting because on 5/3 I also played past Midnight on PC GH NA, and AD was poplocked and EP 2 bars. However, you are right, for some reason the AD poplocked zerg did not take the whole map as they usually do late at night.

But I agree 100% this zerging happens to all factions and it is not fun.

A different issue, embedded in the whole 3 alliance structure, is double teaming. My solution would not prevent that.

[edited to remove quote]

Wolfpaw · May 2022

Faction hoppers riding the easy win wave is a big problem. Guilds/players move to a faction, create large queue, and realize how boring it's to outnumber PvE door...next campaign rinse & repeat.

Since ZOS makes so much money off these players we're kinda stuck with it.

My 2¢, ZOS should find ways to split faction server zergs up. The only things that come to mind is systems from other games like WoW AV & GW2 WvWvW.

No more automatic upgrades from taken resources, make players escort upgrades if they want the upgrades.

A 4th faction unable to emp - Cyrodiil beast races like Goblinkin and/or Minotaur - bonus AP for attacking 1st place, no AP gain for attacking 3rd. Underground home base, multiple caves that spawn on map depending on winning faction.

Tools/weapons/monsters (like a op version of wondering boss) that can be summoned by losing faction.

BazOfWar · May 2022

adirondack wrote: »

AD was completely destroyed by DC and EP pushing south again and taking both scrolls. Multiple ball groups (primarily one good EP one and some casual DC ones) ran all over the [snip] AD who tried to fight.

Incompetent?

Some people just want to login after work or at weekends to relax and have fun you know. Not everyone takes the game so serious like mind numbingly boring and predictable ball groups.

Just because they are random people who are trying their best while having some fun doesn't make them incompetent.

[edited to remove quote]

divnyi · May 2022

Theignson wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

Theignson wrote: »

True, but why don't they join other factions to even it out?

Maybe because players can't simply switch faction on their char?
I'm not logging in on some char I don't want to play atm just because I need to equalize.

The idea of characters being locked in alliance is fairly bad because it doesn't even represent anything - no zone would treat you differently because you are from other alliance. It is only cyro/IC thing. And it is huge limiting factor - I was once trying to lead casual player guild into open world PvP. Roughly half of them didn't have correct alliance.

I agree with both posts-- faction lock contributed to this.

There used to be groups of players who mainly wanted good fights and they would switch factions if things got too unbalanced. At least, that was the story. But ZOS in their wisdom for some reason decided they have to lock factions.

Well I don't think we ever had an option to switch alliance on the character - it used to be even worse that you couldn't buy alliance change tokens.

TechMaybeHic · May 2022

Alliance lock has not been the problem. In fact; you can often see the unlocked campaigns entire map cycle colors as it only takes so many to just swap each time and get mass AP taking an undefended map.

The same thing has just happened with faction locks now. Things were relatively competitive for scoring, with different factions seemingly each having their turn of running the map; but AD won a couple campaigns and then the bandwagoners shifted. There is your evidence that more players go to the winning side than self balance when they can.

Only hope is that like a year or 2 ago when a chunk good EP players finally did move off EP as the map got crushed at all hours; happens again. It's not quite to that level yet though; honestly. It's mostly off hours so far that would need it.

xFocused · May 2022

BazOfWar wrote: »

adirondack wrote: »

AD was completely destroyed by DC and EP pushing south again and taking both scrolls. Multiple ball groups (primarily one good EP one and some casual DC ones) ran all over the [snip] AD who tried to fight.

Incompetent?

Some people just want to login after work or at weekends to relax and have fun you know. Not everyone takes the game so serious like mind numbingly boring and predictable ball groups.

Just because they are random people who are trying their best while having some fun doesn't make them incompetent.

Agreed. This is one of AD's biggest downfalls on PS4/5 NA. Majority of us work full time or have outside engagements with friends & families and so our playtime is limited. I wouldn't call any of us incompetent, we just don't live on ESO like others seem to do. Even right now, I maybe get 3-4 hours of gaming after work and that's if I feel like playing after working all day, lol

[edited to remove quote]