EP Sabotaged!

Mathius_Mordred · August 10

Two things whilst in Gray Host last night.

Whilst in a keep that was under attack, the amount of EPs just standing around doing nothing was ridiculous. It was then I was told that other alliances, if they are not actively taking part in the game, would login to Gray Host with their EP characters and fill the keeps with useless AFKers just to fill up the cap for EP, Some even have second accounts just for this purpose. Does anyone know if this is true? It certainly looked that way.

Second thing, some person put a forward camp over the well near Aelswell Castle, so if you used it, you were stuck, you could not move and if under attack couldn't even use a recall stone. We couldn't take much damage, so we couldn't die to respawn. The only way to get out would be kill the game. Some DC took pity on us and managed to kill us with a CF ballista. I put a message in zone chat asking not to put forward camps over wells and got a reply XD from someone, so I assume they did it. This cannot be done accidentally.

Are EP so feared that other alliances have to resort to these tactics?

magnusthorek · August 10

If it is on purpose or not, I can't say, but considering EP always fights the green team instead of either yellow or blue, I wouldn't be surprised

SkaiFaith · August 10

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

Two things whilst in Gray Host last night.

Whilst in a keep that was under attack, the amount of EPs just standing around doing nothing was ridiculous. It was then I was told that other alliances, if they are not actively taking part in the game, would login to Gray Host with their EP characters and fill the keeps with useless AFKers just to fill up the cap for EP, Some even have second accounts just for this purpose. Does anyone know if this is true? It certainly looked that way.

Second thing, some person put a forward camp over the well near Aelswell Castle, so if you used it, you were stuck, you could not move and if under attack couldn't even use a recall stone. We couldn't take much damage, so we couldn't die to respawn. The only way to get out would be kill the game. Some DC took pity on us and managed to kill us with a CF ballista. I put a message in zone chat asking not to put forward camps over wells and got a reply XD from someone, so I assume they did it. This cannot be done accidentally.

Are EP so feared that other alliances have to resort to these tactics?

"First time?"

I won't delve in "conspiracy theories" about players but it's been years hearing stories about how "Cyro PvP is a mafia", if not here, on Reddit, YouTube, etc... When I've experienced it myself I've totally lost interest in Cyrodiil, Emperor title and everything associated.

Unfortunately I don't think there's anything the devs can do to change this situation.

MJallday · August 10

Teams or guilds when running together will often afk for a few mins at a keep or a gate - particularly if they’ve been running for a few hours and need a comfort break

Our team does that all the time.

On your second point there’s nothing stopping people putting camps anywhere. And multiple camps can also be deployed.

I don’t think anything untoward is going on

Four_Fingers · August 10

Amazing what people will come up with for conspiracy theories, as if players actually communicate enough to coordinate such an operation.

preevious · August 10

"When my team wins, we were the best"
"If one of the other teams wins, there must have been a conspiracy"

-_-'

Tommy_The_Gun · August 10

Well, unfortunately it is nothing new & stuff like that has been going on for a couple of years now. I have been there & saw that way too many times. I guess that sometimes it might be a coincidence & sometimes an actual planed "sabotage". Stuff like this happens to all alliances & all servers.

Generally - this is what happens when there is no in-game moderation / monitoring. The only monitoring system that ZOS added was some kind of chat-bot AI that can ban people for swearing in 18+ game (at least this is what I have heard).

For the most part, actual player reports of "unfair" or unindented toxic behaviour go into limbo. Classic example would be "elder scroll trolling" - when a player from different alliance will login as other alliance and during scroll recovery operation will snatch the scroll and drop it into water or cave near Cropsford or worse - will pass the scroll to their "fiends" - so the scroll, effort & time spend is wasted.

Something like this makes you feel hopeless & it destroys any kind of combat spirit / alliance loyalty as you realise that nothing matters. Even if people will report players who do stuff like this - again - those reports go into limbo. The message we are getting here is that basically - since reports go into limbo - that Cyro is PvP sandbox and there are no rules (as every exploit even major one is ignored). Basically - players are rewarded for being toxic. If at the very least there were some know cases of players getting banned for doing various on-purpose exploits like this - then at the very least there would be less of those as players would be afraid of doing this in a 1st place.

Again - this is what happens when there is no in-game moderation and instead you expect every one to be nice to each other.

Vulkunne · August 10

Mathius_Mordred wrote: »

Two things whilst in Gray Host last night.

Whilst in a keep that was under attack, the amount of EPs just standing around doing nothing was ridiculous. It was then I was told that other alliances, if they are not actively taking part in the game, would login to Gray Host with their EP characters and fill the keeps with useless AFKers just to fill up the cap for EP, Some even have second accounts just for this purpose. Does anyone know if this is true? It certainly looked that way.

Second thing, some person put a forward camp over the well near Aelswell Castle, so if you used it, you were stuck, you could not move and if under attack couldn't even use a recall stone. We couldn't take much damage, so we couldn't die to respawn. The only way to get out would be kill the game. Some DC took pity on us and managed to kill us with a CF ballista. I put a message in zone chat asking not to put forward camps over wells and got a reply XD from someone, so I assume they did it. This cannot be done accidentally.

Are EP so feared that other alliances have to resort to these tactics?

That is the tip of the iceberg. It's for reasons such as these that I have made changes to the way in which I approach PvP.

Ball groups in same Alliance standing around not fighting with you, just letting you die, then refusing to rez but (intentionally?) wiping at Sej 40s later. PvP Guilds basically on a 'rogue' hunt for what they refer to as elitist folks even though they so brazenly and unapologetically display extreme elitist behavior themselves. How so? If the 'wrong' person picks up ham or a scroll, even after 'their' man died once or twice with it, they announce that zone should abandon them and of course everyone does and lets the other faction take them down. Joining a group and having the most hated DC Emp and his friends have a mole in there broadcasting your exact location in Cyrodiil. Add to that grief bombers coordinating from AD/DC.

Then there's other spiteful things like placing a scroll in a keep and they have someone on the inside already ready to steal it back while the capturing faction is celebrating, they finally took their scroll back. Less that 2m later the ball group steals it back. Then there's less offenses but just as bad when you single handedly save a faction from losing a Camp, 1xX consistently but they act really tacky towards you like they never realized you existed. Guild Officers announcing in zone the faction doesn't need solo players and that they should leave; Being asked to leave 'their' server because you made a joke or a point that bothers at least (1) person... the same person who always speaks their mind and never apologizes... like ever.

I could go on but like I said it gets worse.

LPapirius · August 10

During this same time frame last evening/afternoon a former AD player on EP was bragging about being a spy.

Are they? I don't know. But I do know they said they were in a fashion daring us to do something about it....as if there is anything we can do.

PC NA Greyhost

valenwood_vegan · August 10

Every single time I'm in Cyro, regardless of faction, zone chat is filled with allegations that the other two factions are teaming up on us, and often other deeper and more sinister theories about highly organized schemes to sabotage and troll us; and people convinced that the other factions always show bad behavior and are the most toxic.

Maybe some of this stuff does happen, who am I to say? But cyro is kind of a free-for-all... you'll always find toxic or rude people or those who try to exploit things in a large enough group of random gamers... and people who just don't know what they're doing and put a camp in the wrong place or make some other mistake... or a guild that has their own agenda and may not be doing what's best for the faction... chances are that it's not always some grand conspiracy against [insert today's faction here]. If you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.

Tyralbin · August 10

Lols, in PCEU it yellows against purples.

EP and DC always gang up on AD and then say AD can't pvp.

Well when 2 alliances are going against 1 I am not surprised.

mook-eb16_ESO · August 10

But Gray Host is faction locked, so cant login with another faction.

Tyralbin · August 10

mook-eb16_ESO wrote: »

But Gray Host is faction locked, so cant login with another faction.

With the new achievements for each faction there are groups that rotate the factions they play.

KiltMaster · August 10

Every faction thinks they're being teamed up against by the other two. However, that's just kind of how this game mode works with 3 alliances.

Mathius_Mordred · August 10

Interesting replies, thanks, I guess all's fair in love and war after all.

Marronsuisse · August 10

I dunno, I doubt enough players are so dedicated to being trolls that they'd have a second account to have a different faction character log into GH, or bother with their main if they're not actively playing the game. There are people who troll, spy, etc. in all factions, but not on a massive, coordinated scale (that I know of, anyway).

It could have been a guild or a pug standing around chatting on a private channel. And then EP has quite a lot of solo players who will hang around hoping to figure out where people are planning to go next. It's been a while since I played the other factions, but I remember AD and DC being more coordinated in zone chat lol

LadyGP · August 10

This is nothing new. There are A few, very well known individuals who Have mulTipUle accounts and do this for AD. They have done it on all factions.

Tyralbin · August 10

Marronsuisse wrote: »

I dunno, I doubt enough players are so dedicated to being trolls that they'd have a second account to have a different faction character log into GH, or bother with their main if they're not actively playing the game. There are people who troll, spy, etc. in all factions, but not on a massive, coordinated scale (that I know of, anyway).

It could have been a guild or a pug standing around chatting on a private channel. And then EP has quite a lot of solo players who will hang around hoping to figure out where people are planning to go next. It's been a while since I played the other factions, but I remember AD and DC being more coordinated in zone chat lol

You don't need a second account to have different alliances. You just rotate your chars to whichever alliance is winning in Grey host.

katanagirl1 · August 10

I believe the afk players from other factions on alt accounts, we can be pop locked, only have 3 keeps, and literally no one is fighting for us. There’s a lot of tactical info posted in zone chat, followed by “oops wc.” Something similar happened to me. I said in zone chat that I was outside an enemy keep waiting for others and someone on my faction said “enemy near X keep, oops wc” where X was the keep I was near. That player has been a spy for another faction for years. I got killed trying to defend one of our keeps and he/she just stood there and teabagged me while the other faction killed everyone else. No one touched them.

I’ve seen one of our players pick up the hammer and run like a bat out of hell solo immediately to the largest group of enemy players they could find, boom hammer dead and now another faction has it. Happens all the time. Sometimes they gloat about it in zone chat.

Just today a small group got our scroll from Farragut and the player with the scroll took it to Arrius and farmed it until it was dropped, luckily someone else on our team got it and brought it back. Same thing happened yesterday and we lost the scroll that way.

I was using a lancer to defend a keep and another player came up and repaired it while I was using it. I hopped off to say “thank you” and a second player took my lancer. They didn’t fire it or anything, just sat on it so I could not use it or pick it up again. The other player kept repairing it. I waited for several minutes but they would not give it back. I let them know I would report them, waited a few more minutes, then gave up and left. I recorded the video, reported the player for stealing my lancer that I got an antiquity lead for and dug up, but was told it was not a violation.

You would not believe what some players will do to win in this game. You can say I’m imagining things but you weren’t there.

kargen27 · August 11

As others have pointed out at some point and time each faction has complained that the other two always team together. I'm not sure I believe players log in with EP characters just to block the population on Gray Host. There isn't incentive to do so. If they log in with EP that locks them out of the other alliances for the duration of the campaign so they miss on any reward they might have received.
I do know some players who don't much care for PvP will get into Gray Host and then just park in a key keep hoping to get defensive ticks. They basically want free AP. A few will watch zone chat and try to port to keeps being attacked even though they have no intention of fighting. They just hope the defense is successful so they get AP.
I don't know if it still happens but long ago some guilds wouldn't help crown an emperor until their guy was in the lead. For a while a DC and an AD guild would work together taking turns getting emperor either for guild mates or other players willing to pay. It was easier to control back then because if you got to far away from a keep before it officially was either defended or taken you wouldn't get AP. The strategy was take a keep then everybody but the one player quickly run away so the one player got all the AP.

Orbital78 · August 11

mook-eb16_ESO wrote: »

But Gray Host is faction locked, so cant login with another faction.

ZoS gave out thousands of free Epic accounts that can be used as disposable accounts for nefarious or legit use.

I saw someone trying to pvp vs EP faction in chat last night, unsure if they were just a troll or actually a spy. I don't take pvp very serious and am mostly in Cyrodiil to farm and pve with only the random zerg ride or defense for level 1 transmutes.

WalkingBomb · August 11

It's rather amusing to see people in this thread actually believing in their own conspiracies simply because they're not winning a campaign; is it so hard to believe that sometimes people just neglect to log out? Every alliance base has people standing around, assuming they all have malicious intentions is questionable at best. I will concede some people use ToS-violating methods to stay logged in, which is a separate issue, but that would be one of the least efficient ways to lead your campaign to victory, one more EP or less won't make much of a difference 9 out of 10 times.

Guilds rigging emperorship in non alliance locked campaigns is also another (separate) issue, but the premise of this thread ain't it.

Veinblood1965 · August 11

This happens with all factions.

I play DC and sometimes we will have maybe two or three keeps and be at two bars yet hardly anyone is doing anything. Where are they? They are not taking resources, or keeps or doing anything. You see them sitting around the home bases or in the keep courtyards. It's obvious something is off.

As for that well, I know about the well and recently I placed a camp over it because I wasn't thinking, was in a rush and it was the only open spot there and BAM people got stuck. First time I've done that but it did happen.

Northwold · August 12

On the well maybe they should make it impossible to place a camp there (and any other locations with the same issue).

Mathius_Mordred · August 12

Northwold wrote: »

On the well maybe they should make it impossible to place a camp there (and any other locations with the same issue).

Yep, but I doubt they will!

MincMincMinc · August 12

Guys its not 2014 anymore, nobody cares about the campaign or scoreboard. Cyrodil is dead and there are no rewards worth anything substantial. There is no new player experience anymore, and hardly any vet player experience. Nobody is cheating or spying on your faction. There is no point to alliances or faction locks other than zos selling alliance change tokens for $25

The faction pop caps are so low that they are around 50-64 players for Greyhost. Each faction basically boils down to:

a 24 man zerg guild that has some players in it with group sets. They are either Pvdooring keeps or afk waiting for crown.
two 12 man ball groups sitting within 8m of their crown afk spamming all of their buffs and group stacking effects to lag the server for no reason. Half the time they are off to the side of the map just dueling other ball groups......effectively taking up server space on the main campaign while also lagging the server for everyone else.
Then fill the remaining 10-20 player slots with
- brand new players that wont have fun because the elite groups stacking 100x the stats of solo players create a no contest fight.
- 1vX players who don't fight each other and just sit around bored maybe getting one fight a week that is decent. All while wasting the most expensive food in the game. Running to every fight on the map, just to find out they are the ball groups dueling each other.
- players afk in spawn for fear of losing one of the few non group slots left for the night.

By some miracle you may get a few nights a month where a zerg guild and the ball groups are not logged in at the same time. Which actually allows the server to fill up with solo and small groups of newer or random players. Ever wonder why previous MyM events seemed to be more fun or perform better? It was because the servers were diluted with new players and the performance ruining group interactions were not all on one server. Look what happened with vengeance 2, all they had to do was introduce the resto skill line with aoe hot effects stacking unlimited within groups.