How about reducing the cooldown of the Gray Host faction lock down to 4 hours, instead of 1 month?

Erickson9610 · March 3

Despite the attempts to stop players from switching teams during the faction locked campaign, there are still legitimate ways to do so.

For instance, you could pay for and play multiple accounts (not simultaneously — that's called Multiboxing and that is against TOS) and bind your accounts to different alliances in Gray Host. Here's a snippet from Bethesda Support just for clarification on that:

Not only that, but even if whole households could be locked to a single alliance per month, that wouldn't prevent people from griefing/trolling just for the fun of it. You could be on EP and purposely drop scrolls in the river so AD and DC can't retrieve them. You could grab Volendrung and just give it to the enemy factions because your friends on the other factions want it. Even if you are truly locked to one alliance, bad actors will continue doing what they're doing — whether their team benefits from their actions or not.

So why have a faction lock at all? I personally think that there is some merit to making it difficult to swap your team; while a faction lock doesn't totally prevent bad actors, it can at least dissuade some of them. Fewer people would grief if they couldn't swap teams to benefit from it.

My main issue is with how long the faction lock actually is. For an entire month, you dedicate your account to one faction on Gray Host. If you're part of multiple PvP groups, you're out of luck if they decide to move to Gray Host when you had previously played with a group of another faction. One month is a much longer commitment than four hours.

The purpose of a faction lock should be to dissuade faction swapping in the short term, not the long term. While we could operate multiple ESO accounts just to play with our friends on different factions, I believe that the faction lock is trying too hard to prevent something that can ultimately be bypassed through legitimate methods.

Alternatively, methods to diminish the effects of such griefing should be looked into. Maybe scrolls when dropped into rivers should be warped to the shoreline?

Major_Mangle · March 4

Completely agree. Would make it a lot more convenient to plan/organising sessions with different friend groups throughout the campaign duration. Bad actors will always exists but I find it to be a poor excuse to why I should be locked out of the only properly populated campaign for a month.

SerafinaWaterstar · March 4

Nah. Keep as it is.

Sone of us play pvp for our faction & want to win the campaign. If you want to play around with mates, then go to another campaign that allows that.

Orbital78 · March 4

I don't see the need, I would like a second faction locked campaign though.

Even more so during Whitestrakes!!!

Artim_X · March 4

No.

xylena_lazarow · March 4

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Sone of us play pvp for our faction & want to win the campaign. If you want to play around with mates, then go to another campaign that allows that.

Those campaigns are dead because there aren't enough players to support more than one campaign anymore. If all the faction swappers went to their own campaign, now you just have two dead campaigns.

Changing the rule wouldn't affect your personal loyalty. Real wars have spies and turncoats, why wouldn't a roleplay war? I'd argue your personal loyalty would be more meaningful if the game rules didn't artificially enforce it.

MincMincMinc · March 4

The game costs less than 5$ if people wanted to spy on a useless zone chat, they would just make an alt account for that purpose.

The game is dying because nobody wants to deal with the early 2000s quality of life concepts. Just remove the faction lock or make it a day specific thing. Or make it prevent you from obtaining all rewards. 90% of people only play on one faction, but there are a select group of players that only care to play with friends one last time and get stone walled into waiting a month. Which is long enough for people to lose interest again.

Stop incentivizing people to not play the game..... its not a smart business strategy.

SeaGtGruff · March 4

Regardless of how many Cyrodiil PvP players there are in ESO, they choose which campaign they want to play in. If there are a lot of players who dislike faction locking, they have a non-locked campaign for that. If the locked campaign has more players than the non-locked campaigns do, it would seem that most players do prefer the locked campaign.

Some have essentially argued that the numbers are the way they are because players are so lazy that they just click on the first option, but did that get changed? IIRC, during the event Gray Host was always the third campaign listed, out of five.

Besides, if players dislike faction locking strongly enough, surely they would take the time to choose a non-locked campaign?

Major_Mangle · March 4

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Regardless of how many Cyrodiil PvP players there are in ESO, they choose which campaign they want to play in. If there are a lot of players who dislike faction locking, they have a non-locked campaign for that. If the locked campaign has more players than the non-locked campaigns do, it would seem that most players do prefer the locked campaign.

Some have essentially argued that the numbers are the way they are because players are so lazy that they just click on the first option, but did that get changed? IIRC, during the event Gray Host was always the third campaign listed, out of five.

Besides, if players dislike faction locking strongly enough, surely they would take the time to choose a non-locked campaign?

The 30 day "main campaign" (or whatever you want to call it) has always been the most populated regardless of whether it had faction locks or not. People go to whatever campaign has the most players, simple as that. If ZOS all of a sudden made Blackreach faction locked and GH not locked I sincerely doubt a large majority of players would swap campaign.

Having a small cooldown on swapping faction wouldn´t remove and "faction loyalty" aspect for those who want to do so. As someone above said, add some kind of punishment for swapping (like missing out on end of campaign rewards or something).

And the PvP population is so small that it can´t fill multiple campaigns, not even now during midyear did I see most of the campaigns being locked (I exclude sub 50 from this) which kinda proves my point, so the entire "if enough people,......" argument isn´t really holding up much these days.

ajkb78 · March 4

Alliance locking wasn't there from the start, it was brought in because of player demand.

Before the main campaign was alliance locked there was significantly more behaviour that PVP players by and large didn't like, so we asked for it to be brought in. If you care enough about the history I'm sure you can find it in the archives of these forums.

If alliance locking is removed, the behaviour that caused us to request it will return.

I'd prefer to see the return of a non-alliance locked 7-day campaign than the removal of alliance locking from GH. 7-day campaigns were fun, and often felt like they had a lot more energy as the result was changeable for a much greater proportion of the campaign.

xylena_lazarow · March 4

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Regardless of how many Cyrodiil PvP players there are in ESO, they choose which campaign they want to play in. If there are a lot of players who dislike faction locking, they have a non-locked campaign for that.

Again. Not enough players for more than one campaign. The unlocked campaign is dead. We split, now there's two dead campaigns. If I didn't want open world, and only wanted to fight my friends, I have dueling or BGs for that.

Exclusive clubs are only exclusive if there's a line of people desperate to get in. There is no line to get into Cyrodiil anymore. Excluding players who prefer friends over factions? Now you're just shooting yourself in the foot.

SeaGtGruff · March 4

Again...

People claimed that the faction-locked campaign is the most populated because it was at the top of the list and players are in the habit of simply clicking on the first option in a list of options. The faction-locked campaign is now the third option in the list, with "Standard No-CP" listed first and "Standard" listed second, so that excu...-- I mean, explanation-- of why the faction-locked campaign is always the most populated is no longer tenable.

People now claim that the Cyrodiil PvP population isn't large enough to support multiple campaigns, and that the reason why the faction-locked campaign is always the largest is because players go to whichever campaign has the greatest numbers. That is circular reasoning which completely side-steps the fact that if the faction-locked campaign is always most populated, and if the excuse about the order of the campaigns in the list is no longer tenable, then most players must be choosing the faction-locked campaign on purpose rather than by accident.

In fact, alliance locking was specifically added at the request of PvP players. Whether or not it actually prevents the types of undesired behavior that players wanted to eliminate is irrelevant to the fact that it was instituted by request.

If, as some people now claim, most players don't even care about faction locking and merely go to whichever campaign has the greatest population, then the players who do not want faction locking should play on one of the non-locked campaigns and try to enlist as many of this presumed "I don't really care about it" majority of players to go play on that campaign, too, at which point the locked campaign should lose its spot as "the most populated campaign."

Erickson9610 · March 4

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

In fact, alliance locking was specifically added at the request of PvP players. Whether or not it actually prevents the types of undesired behavior that players wanted to eliminate is irrelevant to the fact that it was instituted by request.

Faction locking is effectively useless, regardless of whether players asked for it or not. I'd argue that Gray Host has secured itself in people's minds as "the default campaign" just because it's popular with the people who came before them.

Reducing the cooldown from 1 month to 4 hours isn't going to kill the Gray Host population, by the way. It would still have faction lock.

SeaGtGruff · March 4

Whether faction locking is a smashing success, completely useless, or somewhere in between is irrelevant to the fact that it is an option that was added at the request of players. And there are other options for players who do not want faction locking.

Reducing the "cooldown" on faction locking to four hours is basically the same as removing faction locking entirely, because the whole idea behind faction locking is that the campaign is locked to that faction for each account, and the campaign lasts for a month, not for four hours. There are no four-hour campaigns.

Removing an option that was added at players' request would just upset those players. And based on which campaign is the most populated, that would be more players upset than not upset.

If you don't like an option, choose an option that you do like-- but don't ask that the option you dislike be removed.

Erickson9610 · March 4

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

Reducing the "cooldown" on faction locking to four hours is basically the same as removing faction locking entirely, because the whole idea behind faction locking is that the campaign is locked to that faction for each account, and the campaign lasts for a month, not for four hours. There are no four-hour campaigns.

I disagree. The purpose of faction locking isn't to pledge loyalty to a faction for the duration of the campaign. The purpose of faction locking is actually to dissuade people from swapping teams to troll and grief others.

xylena_lazarow · March 4

SeaGtGruff wrote: »

If you don't like an option, choose an option that you do like-- but don't ask that the option you dislike be removed.

Even if the entire tri faction legion left Gray Host, it wouldn't be enough to make a functional campaign, because Gray Host itself doesn't have enough for a functional campaign. Existing players shuffling around is not bringing new players into PvP, it's just collapsing one campaign to fight doors on the other. Neither are you pulling in new players to PvP by advertising it as a faction loyal exclusive club when the seats are obviously empty.

If anything, new players come here, regret their 30 day commitment 3 hours in, uninstall to go play a fantasy action PvP that doesn't require such an arbitrarily large and immediate time commitment to something so unpredictable.

LadyGP · March 4

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Completely agree. Would make it a lot more convenient to plan/organising sessions with different friend groups throughout the campaign duration. Bad actors will always exists but I find it to be a poor excuse to why I should be locked out of the only properly populated campaign for a month.

I'd like to take this argument and then say we should move calculations to client side.

BetweenMidgets · March 4

I'd be happy with them getting rid of the faction lock entirely, but if there MUST be a faction lock for whatever braindead reason, 4 hours seems reasonable to me.

PVP is not in a healthy state as it is, the faction lock is just another barrier.

AlnilamE · March 5

There is a standard unlocked campaign and a standard no-CP campaign.

If you want to swap factions during the duration of the campaign, you can go to either of those two. Organize with your friends there.

People are voting with their feet, and you can too.

Erickson9610 · March 5

AlnilamE wrote: »

There is a standard unlocked campaign and a standard no-CP campaign.

If you want to swap factions during the duration of the campaign, you can go to either of those two. Organize with your friends there.

People are voting with their feet, and you can too.

What are your options when your group is set on going to Gray Host only? Wait for them to move to Imperial City after the action dies down?

spartaxoxo · March 5

Erickson9610 wrote: »

AlnilamE wrote: »

There is a standard unlocked campaign and a standard no-CP campaign.

If you want to swap factions during the duration of the campaign, you can go to either of those two. Organize with your friends there.

People are voting with their feet, and you can too.

What are your options when your group is set on going to Gray Host only? Wait for them to move to Imperial City after the action dies down?

Find a group that wants to play the same way you want to play.

Orbital78 · March 5

I think this would just lead to one side pvd rotations like nonfaction locked campaigns. The map rotates to one sided dominance and pvd ap farming.

xylena_lazarow · March 5

AlnilamE wrote: »

People are voting with their feet, and you can too.

Pretty sure the vote was to quit PvP instead of wasting time on a dead campaign.

TheAwesomeChimpanzee · March 5

SerafinaWaterstar wrote: »

Nah. Keep as it is.

Sone of us play pvp for our faction & want to win the campaign. If you want to play around with mates, then go to another campaign that allows that.

Any argument similar to this is completely ridiculous. The reality is that campaigns outside of the main one are at an all-time low in population. During the week, it’s rare to find any campaign with a decent population (consistently hitting 3 bars or more across all factions), and while weekends might offer some good fights, they’re typically limited to prime-time hours only. Blackreach—the so-called "unlocked" standard campaign—is no longer a real alternative to Grey Host.

The 30-day campaign model, whether it is locked or unlocked is fundamentally outdated in a game with a shrinking PvP player base. The rewards are abysmal, so there’s little incentive to actually compete for campaign victory. And even if there were meaningful rewards, the reality is that with the current population levels, the main campaign is only truly active during prime-time hours on weekdays and, on weekends, mostly in the afternoon. The outcome of a 30-day campaign often comes down to which faction can night-cap the most uncontested objectives.

This outdated system is long past its expiration date. ESO’s PvP scene has needed a better approach for years now, and faction lock only serves to further restrict an already dwindling population

BXR_Lonestar · March 5

There is a reason Grey Host is the most populated server: People WANT the alliance lock for the duration of the campaign. Having played in both campaigns (alliance locked and non-alliance locked), there is far less shenanigans in the alliance locked campaigns vs. the unlocked campaigns. Are there ways around it? Sure! But it takes exceedingly more effort than it does when you are playing the non-alliance locked campaign, and as a result, there are far less shenanigans to deal with. There is still some, but you can't expect to be able to eliminate all of the problems (sometimes it's just a player/human issue and not a game design issue), but it is a relief to go into the campaign and have to deal with less nonsense, like fighting right next to someone at one fight, only to run to the next keep and be fighting against that same person on a different color, players spying on/monitoring the opponent's chats and callouts, hammer and scroll shenanigans, etc.

I happen to like the idea that players who play the campaign have to make a commitment to their chosen alliance for the month. Having seen how toxic it can get in the unlocked campaigns, I'm actually surprised they even have an unlocked campaign option. I would prefer to see just one alliance locked campaign for the duration, and make people commit to one alliance or another for the duration. Stop playing both sides!

Vulsahdaal · March 5

All Im gonna say on this is nope. Cyro PvP (especially GH) has enough issues where too many times lately I am wondering why I even bother. The two biggest issues to me are ball groups and stuck in combat (many ball groups last night including one running amuck inside Sej of all places- now picture that, youre not gonna kite them there, its very frustrating) however you wanna add alliance change on a whim??? Like there isn’t enough problems with zc spies and hammer giveaways etc

Too many issues right now, why add to them? Im not sure why you need this when there are other campaigns to play on where alliance locks don’t exist. The only reasons I can think I can think of is you either want to be able to switch to whatever faction has the highest points to win, or you want to spy/troll the other side, or you want to join your friends ball group but you’re the wrong faction and don’t want to wait until the end of the month.

Whatever, doesn’t matter, however if they unlock GH, Im done, and I know Im not alone. We are there putting up with all the bs that happens there because we want to play on an alliance locked campaign. They change it to unlocked PvP will lose even more players.

HumbleThaumaturge · March 5

[snip]

ZOS has provided many options for Cyrodiil gameplay. I, my guildmates, and many others prefer "Gray Host" just the way it is, thank you very much: faction-locked, 30-day duration, CP applied, proc-applied. If "Gray Host" has the highest populations, it's because more PvP players prefer its parameters. You don't like "Gray Host"??? Fine. ZOS has an optional campaign more to your liking (variations without faction locking, shorter duration, without CP). Stop trying to vitiate the fun of other players (by ruining their preferred campaign) when other campaigns exist for the likes of you.

[Edit for bait]

Major_Toughness · March 5

There is, and never has been, a good reason for faction lock.

If you want to be a loyalist, then be so, having no faction lock wouldn't change how you want to play.

Erickson9610 · March 5

[Quoted post removed]

[snip]

Second: These tips for getting around limitations (the faction lock in question) are recognized as legitimate by ZOS. They literally say we can operate multiple accounts. It's only our accounts that are bound to a single faction per campaign; not us, the players.

Further, these notes about how to grief others (i.e., passing the hammer to enemies, dropping the scrolls in rivers, intentionally letting someone on an enemy team become Emperor) are well-known by the PvP community by this point. I mention them in my post because I want to emphasize how ineffective the current faction lock rules are at stopping this behavior.

[Edit to remove response to removed post]

Hapexamendios · March 5

The no faction lock already exists in the Blackreach campaign. Whenever I want to get a character to tier one awards I go there precisely because it isn't bound to one faction. Pretty much everything you described could be done in Blackreach without issue. So I don't think you have provided a compelling reason for the proposed change.

BXR_Lonestar · March 6

Hapexamendios wrote: »

The no faction lock already exists in the Blackreach campaign. Whenever I want to get a character to tier one awards I go there precisely because it isn't bound to one faction. Pretty much everything you described could be done in Blackreach without issue. So I don't think you have provided a compelling reason for the proposed change.

Exactly this. And it is also the least populous game server out of the CP-enabled servers for cyrodil (At least on Xbox NA), which tells you exactly what players' preferences are. Like it or not, an alliance-locked server cuts down on a LOT of shenanigans that you otherwise have to deal with in the unlocked campaign. It's not perfect, there are still problems to deal with, but the number of problems you have to deal with on any given night are far less in the locked campaign vs. the locked campaign.

Pretty much the only reasons why my guild plays in in Blackreach (unlocked campaign) are 1) no que in prime time, vs. greyhost which often has a 30-60 que during primetime (that tells you that far less people like to play this kind of campaign); 2) because there is a lower population, server performance is sometimes better, especially in bigger battles; and 3) all the players we love to kill are in mainly in Blackreach (we sometimes encounter them in Greyhost though).