JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

RaddlemanNumber7 wrote: »

Another adjustment would seem necessary

I personally don't think ZOS should adjust it.

This event is basically a race between the two megaservers for each platform. And when you organise a race, you don't set different distances for each runner depending on their very own weaknesses.

If I'm watching a race between ten 100m runners, it wouldn't be fair to add 20 extra meters to the one who runs the fastest.

But... that's precisely how it's set up.

XBEU has a lower population, so the 'distance' they need to reach is much less than for more populated servers like PC. They straight up confirmed that was the case.

And as a result, all servers have a different goal for their percentage (and we don't have that number), which means the entire race is utterly contrived and it's planned from the start which server will win and who will get to the end in which order.

Except that you're comparing different platforms.

Of course, we should set different targets per platform. If PC is the most used platform, then of course we need a bigger target compared to Xbox and PS, because PC has the biggest theoretical pool of players.

That's not the case for the same platform. If I want to play on NA from Belgium, I can. If a US player wants to play on EU, he can. On the other hand, a PS player will be stuck on PS servers and won't be able to play on Xbox servers.

To use my previous comparison with races again: it's normal to have a category for male (PC) and for female (Xbox/PS), because both have significantly different resources. But that doesn't mean we should set different objectives within the same category. That wouldn't be fair at all, in my opinion.

What I don't want is to set different targets for the same platform, because the whole thing is based on a race between EU and NA. It's not a race between platforms. This is a competition between EU and NA, not between PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. That's why it's logical to set different targets per platform, but not per server.

Yes. But that's not how it is. Each server has a different goal. Not every server is equally populated, so there are 6 different end goals.

I already reacted to this:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8381490/#Comment_8381490

Do we have any official information about a same platform having different targets per megaserver?

If it's true then I would find it completely stupid.

Of course they’re not going to come out and say it, because the intention is for people to think this is a fair fight, because then they will be inspired to grindgrindgrind and make their active population numbers look good. There will naturally be no evidence of them saying it’s all fake because the point is to make people think it is real.

But if it were real, then they’d give us hard numbers. Let’s go back to your race analogy: what kind of a race would it be if they don’t tell you what the route looks like for each racer? You just see the runners outside a huge building, then they go inside and you just sit out there waiting for the winner to come out while the announcer says “Oh this racer is at the halfway point!”. Are you still going to think it’s a fair race if you don’t know how long it is and you don’t even see the track?

If it were legit, they’d be able to tell us how many quests it would take to finish phase 1. We’d be able to do one and see the number tick down and know that we made progress. And then we could see that the different regions have the same target. But we don’t know any of that.

Our skill bars have set values of XP needed to advance if you hover over them. Our AP bar has set amounts of AP to earn to get to the next rank. The Wall progress bar is a black box - we have a random bar from 0 to 100%, not a bar that says “Wall battle progress 0 - 153,346,357,245.” Each quest gives “Writhing Wall Progress!” Ok, so how much? Is it more important to do Souls or crafting dailies? Or are they all the same? Do different servers have the same end goal? The same progress per quest?
Or are we expected to just trust?

There is a general rule in life: the less information you have, the more chance that there’s a factor at play that you don’t know about. It’s ZOS’s job right now to say whatever they can to make people think that they’re doing their part, so they spend more time in game and try to get their friends to come back to pad those player numbers.

Maybe EU players are spending their time playing the event while NA players are spending their time online complaining about it.

Gabriel_H wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

Once again, if it's not a race and if each platform has different targets per megaserver, what a shame ZOS depicted it as a race. Because it's anything but a race if you add 50 extra meters to the best runner.

It's box standard typical marketing. There is a semblence of a race but due to the population, to make it fairer, there are different end goal amounts, with ZOS altering the tick completion rate to fit into their time frame. Every MMO community event in every MMO does this.

Well, that’s your theory, and you might be right.

My personal theory is simply that there are more active EU players in this event than NA players.

Again, we will never know the truth since ZOS will probably never tell us how they calculated the progression for each serv.

kevkj wrote: »

Putting aside that it might not be scaled fairly, I think it does indicate a higher degree of participation in the console population and EU in general. There's been posts on and off claiming Xbox EU is a dead or dying server and whether or not that's true it seems the remaining players are very dedicated to the game.

If had to theorize, people in 'underdog' servers are more likely to want to win just for the sake of winning.

I had wanted to say something a bit similar about the degree of participation, but I had decided not to because I was afraid it might sound like I was bashing on the PCNA playerbase.

And keep in mind, I consider PCNA to be my primary server, so I really don't have any desire to bash the PCNA playerbase.

But I can't help wondering whether the EU and NA playerbases as a whole tend to embrace different attitudes and playstyles. For example, are a lot of players on the EU servers doing all of the event dailies on multiple characters, whereas a lot of players on the NA servers are doing only a few of the event dailies and only on one character?

And what about players who are refusing to engage with the event at all? Are there more of those players on the NA servers than on the EU servers?

Personally, I don't think the race is "fixed" the way a lot of people seem to think it is. I think it's probably more a case of the target numbers per server being based on the number of active players-- or possibly the number of characters-- per server, in expectation that an equal percentage of players on each server will be engaging with the event. And I'm afraid there might be too many players on the NA server who don't care about the event and are opting out of it instead of chipping in to help their server gain access to Eastern Solstice.

In short, I think there might just be better team spirit on the EU servers than on the NA servers, which makes me sad.

wolfie1.0. wrote: »

Honestly, I think that the bulk of players on PC-NA just dont care because the rewards vs effort required are just not worth it and are the most disgruntled about how this event has gone.

I don't agree that the bulk of players "just don't care". My anecdotal experience isn't gospel or anything, but my guilds and zone chats are full of people doing their best to participate, even if they aren't especially happy with how this Event is playing out. I don't see the apathy, and I don't see a glaring lack of people either.

I really dislike that some people's take away from this is "PCNA doesn't care and didn't try", especially given all the developer-side bugs and manipulated stats. PCNA sure seems to be trying from where I'm standing.

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

RaddlemanNumber7 wrote: »

Another adjustment would seem necessary

I personally don't think ZOS should adjust it.

This event is basically a race between the two megaservers for each platform. And when you organise a race, you don't set different distances for each runner depending on their very own weaknesses.

If I'm watching a race between ten 100m runners, it wouldn't be fair to add 20 extra meters to the one who runs the fastest.

But... that's precisely how it's set up.

XBEU has a lower population, so the 'distance' they need to reach is much less than for more populated servers like PC. They straight up confirmed that was the case.

And as a result, all servers have a different goal for their percentage (and we don't have that number), which means the entire race is utterly contrived and it's planned from the start which server will win and who will get to the end in which order.

Except that you're comparing different platforms.

Of course, we should set different targets per platform. If PC is the most used platform, then of course we need a bigger target compared to Xbox and PS, because PC has the biggest theoretical pool of players.

That's not the case for the same platform. If I want to play on NA from Belgium, I can. If a US player wants to play on EU, he can. On the other hand, a PS player will be stuck on PS servers and won't be able to play on Xbox servers.

To use my previous comparison with races again: it's normal to have a category for male (PC) and for female (Xbox/PS), because both have significantly different resources. But that doesn't mean we should set different objectives within the same category. That wouldn't be fair at all, in my opinion.

What I don't want is to set different targets for the same platform, because the whole thing is based on a race between EU and NA. It's not a race between platforms. This is a competition between EU and NA, not between PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. That's why it's logical to set different targets per platform, but not per server.

Yes. But that's not how it is. Each server has a different goal. Not every server is equally populated, so there are 6 different end goals.

I already reacted to this:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8381490/#Comment_8381490

Do we have any official information about a same platform having different targets per megaserver?

If it's true then I would find it completely stupid.

Of course they’re not going to come out and say it, because the intention is for people to think this is a fair fight, because then they will be inspired to grindgrindgrind and make their active population numbers look good. There will naturally be no evidence of them saying it’s all fake because the point is to make people think it is real.

If you're right, then this event is even worse that I thought it was.

I mean, their thumb has to be on the scale. What if, say, (example) Xbox na said you know what. We're not doing this. Or if PS EU has so few players active that they had no chance of getting it done in a reasonable time. While just examples, obviously, imagine how embarrassing that would be to Zos. What sounds better to big daddy MS, people didn't want to do our event, the population on a server is too small so their not completing it thereby not getting access to the content they paid for? Or does Golly gee, it's a neck and neck race, the office has a huge pool going and we were gobsmacked by the results, so excited, sound better?

They have to make sure the event completes. They also have to make sure console can't win until after update 48 drops for us. Imagine that. Psna wins in a crazy victory on Nov 7th. Aaaaaaannnnd nothing. No wall coming down cause the other side of the wall isnt even in the game yet. Imagine the back lash on that. Or if PC wins before console could even play the content. How many would just love that in console land?

So, the wall will come down at the appointed day and hour. For the predetermined winner, whoever makes for the best PR win. Probably Xbox EU. So a console can win for once and the least popular server can be shown to big daddy MS to be Xbox. Balloons fall from the ceiling.
This has been my ted talk about how we're being manipulated.

I mean, we can also make the claim that the winning server gets the end of the event and first access to the content they already paid for, while the losing server gets more days worth of gold boxes (and therefore more chances at the style pages and the house jackpot)

So… in that case, who’s the real winner?

tomofhyrule wrote: »

I mean, we can also make the claim that the winning server gets the end of the event and first access to the content they already paid for, while the losing server gets more days worth of gold boxes (and therefore more chances at the style pages and the house jackpot)

So… in that case, who’s the real winner?

I guess that the real question. For myself, I don't care, I'm not liking the event. The poor rewards killed it for me. I understood the marketing hype, wasn't fooled but I don't mind grinding for cool stuff. Alas that was not to be the case. Until yesterday when the increased the furnishing drops from field marshals. Really though all I care about now is the rest of the Q4 dlc I paid for. (Almost an insult to Q4 dlc) And the dungeon thing. It sounded like a trial at first but I'm assuming it can be smashed by 2 or 3 people.

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

tomofhyrule wrote: »

JiubLeRepenti wrote: »

RaddlemanNumber7 wrote: »

Another adjustment would seem necessary

I personally don't think ZOS should adjust it.

This event is basically a race between the two megaservers for each platform. And when you organise a race, you don't set different distances for each runner depending on their very own weaknesses.

If I'm watching a race between ten 100m runners, it wouldn't be fair to add 20 extra meters to the one who runs the fastest.

But... that's precisely how it's set up.

XBEU has a lower population, so the 'distance' they need to reach is much less than for more populated servers like PC. They straight up confirmed that was the case.

And as a result, all servers have a different goal for their percentage (and we don't have that number), which means the entire race is utterly contrived and it's planned from the start which server will win and who will get to the end in which order.

Except that you're comparing different platforms.

Of course, we should set different targets per platform. If PC is the most used platform, then of course we need a bigger target compared to Xbox and PS, because PC has the biggest theoretical pool of players.

That's not the case for the same platform. If I want to play on NA from Belgium, I can. If a US player wants to play on EU, he can. On the other hand, a PS player will be stuck on PS servers and won't be able to play on Xbox servers.

To use my previous comparison with races again: it's normal to have a category for male (PC) and for female (Xbox/PS), because both have significantly different resources. But that doesn't mean we should set different objectives within the same category. That wouldn't be fair at all, in my opinion.

What I don't want is to set different targets for the same platform, because the whole thing is based on a race between EU and NA. It's not a race between platforms. This is a competition between EU and NA, not between PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. That's why it's logical to set different targets per platform, but not per server.

Yes. But that's not how it is. Each server has a different goal. Not every server is equally populated, so there are 6 different end goals.

I already reacted to this:

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/comment/8381490/#Comment_8381490

Do we have any official information about a same platform having different targets per megaserver?

If it's true then I would find it completely stupid.

Of course they’re not going to come out and say it, because the intention is for people to think this is a fair fight, because then they will be inspired to grindgrindgrind and make their active population numbers look good. There will naturally be no evidence of them saying it’s all fake because the point is to make people think it is real.

If you're right, then this event is even worse that I thought it was.

Another piece of evidence: someone tracked the percentage for all servers over the first 9h of the event:

TheMrPancake wrote: »

I have tracked the percentages shown on the website over the last 9 hours. Here is a graph of them.



(Data was polled once every 5 minutes. Every horizontal major gridline is 1 hour.)

We can see at around the half-hour mark that only XBEU moved, XBNA actually went up like 10 mins later so they could not have both moved down together. Also PSEU drops at the 40 min mark and PSNA doesn’t move, so again it seems like the NA and EU servers are not linked.

If both regions had the same end goal, shouldn’t shifting the goalposts force *both* servers to change their current percentage at the same time?

Meanwhile at the main camp on PCNA: