Sometimes yes, usually no.

If ZOS fixed original Cyro PvP more people will want to play and the issue will naturally work itself out.

Cyrodil was designed in a way that only functions when the whole server is pop locked. Otherwise you have one faction control the map and log out. On the flip side the other factions say oh we are losing.....and also log out.

This lead to the u50 new player campaign to die out. Likewise this also caused the nocp campaign to die out.

Greyhost will slowly die out as there are no new players being introduced to cyrodil. On PCNA the final wave of players from u50 that rolled into the nocp have finally graduated to grey host. Unless zos finds a way to bring new players into cyrodil I give it only 2 or so years.

Looks like EP is nightcapping the poll atm

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Score and winning or losing campaign means absolutely nothing, getting fun fights is the only thing that matters.

Probably why pvp lost the casual crowd almost a decade ago. There is no gain to trying to take keeps for them.

They could throw in a gift basket of random currencies or season pass style unlockables to the tier rewards. Rewards for the worthy gear drops is just a poorly functioning system.

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Score and winning or losing campaign means absolutely nothing, getting fun fights is the only thing that matters.

My concern is the campaign rules and individual rewards are actually work against a situation where fun fights are common. The way I see it, if people were only interested in fun fights, the factions would be numerically balanced also when not at capacity. But no, it is not at all uncommon to find one faction owning the whole map after off-peak hours. So whoever is doing that is evidently motivated by something other than 'fun fights'. IMHO whatever that is needs a counterbalance.

I don't feel comfortable choosing any of the given options.

Yes, I think it's a problem if there's an imbalance between two or more PvP teams. For instance, it wouldn't be fair to hold a tug-of-war contest between two teams if one side had ten people pulling and the other side had only one person pulling. And it wouldn't be fair to hold a baseball game if one team consisted of ten people and the other team was just one person.

Of course, warfare by its very nature isn't a fair game, and in warfare the various sides (whether two or more) can be totally unbalanced as far as the number of fighters/defenders, their capabilities, and the tools and resources at their disposal. We're talking about a game of warfare, not an actual war, so it isn't exactly the same thing-- similar, yet different. It needs to be fun, otherwise the players on a team that's struggling against overwhelming odds can get disgusted or discouraged, quit trying, and just walk away from the war game. And if only one team is left on the playing field, there can be no PvP, only PvE.

Fortunately, I don't think it ever gets quite that bad-- there's nearly always at least one player on any given side; maybe not all 24 hours of the day, but eventually.

I don't really like the idea of trying to force the three sides to be equal. How would that even work? Should ZOS restrict the number of players who can log into a Cyrodiil or IC campaign based on the current population of the smallest faction? That wouldn't work, and would be frustrating for the players who weren't allowed to log in. Should ZOS boot players from the more populated factions as the players from the less populated faction log out? That wouldn't work, either, and would be frustrating for the players who got summarily booted from the campaign in the middle of their game session.

What about assigning players to three different factions as they log in and fill up the campaign, to try to keep those three factions balanced? That wouldn't let players play together with their friends or guild mates, plus there's still the issue of what to do as players from any given faction decide to log out for the day. What if 20 players log out of the same faction at the same time-- should the game arbitrarily boot 20 players from the other two factions to maintain the balance? Cyrodiil warfare isn't like Battlegrounds where the teams are small and the battles are short, so players are going to want to be able to join in whenever they want and keep playing for as long as they want.

What about letting players change sides at will-- meaning on their current character-- if the sides start to get out of balance? That could be abused to make things even more unbalanced, such as if players decided to go over to the winning faction-- not to mention, how would that work with Alliance Points, the campaign leader boards, and emperorship?

I don't see how this is a problem that ZOS can magically fix. I think it's up to the players to either "fix" it themselves by doing things like trying to coordinate players in their alliance to log in at specific time periods throughout the day, or by deciding to switch to other characters in whichever alliances are starting to lose population numbers.

Edit: Or, just resolve themselves to live with it.

Muizer wrote: »

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Score and winning or losing campaign means absolutely nothing, getting fun fights is the only thing that matters.

My concern is the campaign rules and individual rewards are actually work against a situation where fun fights are common. The way I see it, if people were only interested in fun fights, the factions would be numerically balanced also when not at capacity. But no, it is not at all uncommon to find one faction owning the whole map after off-peak hours. So whoever is doing that is evidently motivated by something other than 'fun fights'. IMHO whatever that is needs a counterbalance.

Yes and that's also been a problem since the start of the game.

Enemy keep & enemy scroll bonuses are designed with the intention that both the other factions would be fighting the dominating faction however people are weak and choose the path of least resistance so the two weaker factions more often than not fight eachother. Meaning the dominating faction only has even more advantages in fighting either of the other two factions.

A vast majority of players on all sides are not motivated by "just having fun fights". People are still playing to win the campaign 11 years later and I can't remember any campaign result whether we won or lost. It does baffle me.

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Major_Toughness wrote: »

Score and winning or losing campaign means absolutely nothing, getting fun fights is the only thing that matters.

I like to play for the underdog too, but when it's 10 randoms vs 50 zergers including a ball group... I go to a back resource or outpost and nobody responds for an hour, then the 50 show up to zerg me down... no fun fights here.

No ball group plays with a friendly zerg, especially against so little enemies.
Now there may be a guild or friends but not every group is a ball group.

And yes it can be tough, and frustrating. Honestly it has been pointless to play cyro solo for like 5 years unless you play Magsorc. I only go cyro in duo.

Major_Toughness wrote: »

A vast majority of players on all sides are not motivated by "just having fun fights". People are still playing to win the campaign 11 years later and I can't remember any campaign result whether we won or lost. It does baffle me.

On the positive side, if you're right, that would also mean the imbalance problem could be solved by changing the rules and rewards.