Vengeance Camp Needs Faction Locked

Goldie · July 2

Vengeance Camp Needs Faction Locked.

Thank you for your time.

wilsonwjesse · July 3

It's just a rotation of fully conquering the map and farming AP.

Luneca · July 3

It's already dead and you want it more dead? Wow!

johnjetau · July 3

Its really frustrating seeing someone who grouped up with you to get your scrolls back, only to be on another faction 10 mins later trying to take the scroll they just returned.

Erickson9610 · July 3

Make two Vengeance campaigns, one of which does not have Alliance Lock, and the other one which does have it.

Since Vengeance is fundamentally a different kind of Cyrodiil from Gray Host and Blackreach, having two versions of Vengeance would introduce parity. We've had 4+ campaigns open simultaneously before.

aetherix8 · July 3

I made a poll recently, and the majority voted against a faction-locked Vengeance.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/694787/vengeance-alliance-lock

wilsonwjesse wrote: »

It's just a rotation of fully conquering the map and farming AP.

johnjetau wrote: »

Its really frustrating seeing someone who grouped up with you to get your scrolls back, only to be on another faction 10 mins later trying to take the scroll they just returned.

There should be a faction lock in Vengeance, in my opinion. But it should be a 24-hour lock that resets at 5am. It would prevent people from switching alliances multiple times per day just to farm AP while zerging mindlessly, and it would allow people to play with friends when scheduled and to reinforce weaker factions.

Other than that, Vengeance needs a lot of improvements, especially more build options. But also end-of-campaign rewards: why are we getting repair kits that only work in GH or BR? Coldfire ballista would be a much more fitting reward.

Goldie · July 3

Luneca wrote: »

It's already dead and you want it more dead? Wow!

It isnt dead, there are plenty of players on daily. The population maximums differ slightly from GH or BR, and that causes the 'population bars' that show how many are in the campaign to always show as low, but the camp actually holds MANY more players than the other campaigns.

Faction locking the campaign also wouldnt cause it to be 'more dead' , if anything the exact same players currently playing would STILL be there, they just wouldnt be able to faction swap and AP farm back and forth all day and would instead have to stick with and fight for the their faction until the campaign completed and they could then choose to enter on another faction. It just makes sense.

If players want to farm AP and faction swap to help their buddies on other factions stack the scoreboard with Emperor Scores, the can still do it in Blackreach.

Goldie · July 3

johnjetau wrote: »

Its really frustrating seeing someone who grouped up with you to get your scrolls back, only to be on another faction 10 mins later trying to take the scroll they just returned.

Not only this, but that same player that helped return your scroll, is also at the number 1 spot for Emperor because their friends all died to them at a resource to stack their AP a million points higher. This leads to abuse of the Emperor system and AP farming by groups which actually DOES ruin gameplay for players genuinely and fairly trying to grind and fight to become Emperor.

Goldie · July 3

aetherix8 wrote: »

I made a poll recently, and the majority voted against a faction-locked Vengeance.

There is no way to gauge that the respondents to your poll have even spent time out in Veng. A majority rule poll or voting system isnt always the best option to gather data.

I have spent a LOT of time out in Veng in the testing phase as well as since release, and have played on both EP and DC during that time, and I can confidently tell you from the players that I have seen discussing this that a majority of players do agree with faction locking the campaign.

johnjetau · July 4

We had a really ridiculous situation happen when we we're trying to de-throne the EP emperor the other night.

DC went to BRK and opened the door and started to siege the keep. A few EP were there offering resistance, as they were also down at Alessia fighting the AD who were also attempting to de-throne. We had about 20 DC killing guards and sieging.

Suddenly we noticed DC started to disappear. No one thought anything of it, maybe they crashed.

Then about 4-5 mins later as we were on the flags, a whole zerg of EP including the Emperor ran into the keep. They overwhelmed the DC forces. And then we realized what happened.

The same DC that disappeared, were now on EP characters, fighting the very DC they were helping not 5 mins ago - Different faction, character names, but same @names . We ended up getting wiped and the EP successfully defended the keep.

When you can leave in a middle of a fight to join the other faction and kill the one you just left is absurd. This type of stuff should not be allowed to happen.

ZOS needs to really sort this non-sense out. The fact they could log out and log in onto other characters during fights should not be an option at all.

aetherix8 · July 4

Goldie wrote: »

aetherix8 wrote: »

I made a poll recently, and the majority voted against a faction-locked Vengeance.

There is no way to gauge that the respondents to your poll have even spent time out in Veng. A majority rule poll or voting system isnt always the best option to gather data.

I have spent a LOT of time out in Veng in the testing phase as well as since release, and have played on both EP and DC during that time, and I can confidently tell you from the players that I have seen discussing this that a majority of players do agree with faction locking the campaign.

Some of the respondents in this poll did spend some time in Vengeance. If you click on View Results and check the icons, you can see a variety of players there: some Vengeance opponents, others who prefer this mode. I recognize quite a few either from Cyro or from the forum. I can say with certainty that their votes were informed.

My only critique of this poll is how small the sample is; given that the result is really close it doesn't give a clear 'aye' or 'nay', but it does point towards the fact that the faction lock question doesn't have a clear 'yes, lock it' answer.

There are some good arguments against a 1-month faction lock on Vengeance, and that's why I would rather see a 24h lock.

Luneca · July 4

johnjetau wrote: »

We had a really ridiculous situation happen when we we're trying to de-throne the EP emperor the other night.

DC went to BRK and opened the door and started to siege the keep. A few EP were there offering resistance, as they were also down at Alessia fighting the AD who were also attempting to de-throne. We had about 20 DC killing guards and sieging.

Suddenly we noticed DC started to disappear. No one thought anything of it, maybe they crashed.

Then about 4-5 mins later as we were on the flags, a whole zerg of EP including the Emperor ran into the keep. They overwhelmed the DC forces. And then we realized what happened.

The same DC that disappeared, were now on EP characters, fighting the very DC they were helping not 5 mins ago - Different faction, character names, but same @names . We ended up getting wiped and the EP successfully defended the keep.

When you can leave in a middle of a fight to join the other faction and kill the one you just left is absurd. This type of stuff should not be allowed to happen.

ZOS needs to really sort this non-sense out. The fact they could log out and log in onto other characters during fights should not be an option at all.

People made the same argument for locking Gray Host. The reality? The people just move to the faction they expect to win and log of when it doesn't. Locking won't change anything. The problem is the game.

If you lose in this game, literally anywhere in ESO, your time is ultimately wasted. What that means is that you need to win. And you need to win, win, win, no matter what. Because if you don't, not only do you have the salty taste of losing in your mouth -- you've gained absolutely nothing for the time you put in.

This system that the devs put in with ticks, rewards, etc. -- all of it feeds into the toxicity that you see on the surface in PvP and PvE.

If it weren't the case that rewards were so heavily tied to winning instead of actually having fun in both PvE and PvP, then what would happen if somoene asked: what's wrong with losing?

See, what game devs think is that when someone asks that, there would be no motivation to win and thus grind and "engage" the game in a "meaningful" way. But they are wrong about that in ESo, because the grind is meaningless and the engagement and chaos comes from the fact that people are willing to lose in the first place. You've just highlighted where that chaos got disrupted and the result was shifted to the obvious one rather than one with any possibility otherwise.

^ That's the problem. The game is poorly designed in PvP and PvE when it comes to rewards, esp. considering the fact that "losing" is part of what the game needs to increase engagement and generate chaos in an otherwise ordered system in the first place.

Isn't it great whoever is in charge at ZOS does not understand that or seem to care? Yay!

Locking the campaign won't do anything to increase engagement among players that don't want their time wasted. What will happen is that they just won't play. The game's overarching system that prioritizes winning or no reward makes it a waste of time to bother playing if you can't win, which is why many people log off after getting killed (or failing in PvE) after certain numbers of attempts -- it's a literal waste of time with no progression towards any goal or reward.

Now someone is going to bring up "ah you just want a participation trophy" -- but it's kinda stupid and a dumb argument to make when we're literally talking about time being wasted after you've put in work. It's not a participation trophy to expect something for work put in, which you actually have to put more in if you're on the losing side or in a failing group in PvE.

You know what? Let me stop. No one will read this comment or care anyway. That's the nature of these forums. And that's also why I just fire siege.

aetherix8 · July 4

Luneca wrote: »

johnjetau wrote: »

We had a really ridiculous situation happen when we we're trying to de-throne the EP emperor the other night.

DC went to BRK and opened the door and started to siege the keep. A few EP were there offering resistance, as they were also down at Alessia fighting the AD who were also attempting to de-throne. We had about 20 DC killing guards and sieging.

Suddenly we noticed DC started to disappear. No one thought anything of it, maybe they crashed.

Then about 4-5 mins later as we were on the flags, a whole zerg of EP including the Emperor ran into the keep. They overwhelmed the DC forces. And then we realized what happened.

The same DC that disappeared, were now on EP characters, fighting the very DC they were helping not 5 mins ago - Different faction, character names, but same @names . We ended up getting wiped and the EP successfully defended the keep.

When you can leave in a middle of a fight to join the other faction and kill the one you just left is absurd. This type of stuff should not be allowed to happen.

ZOS needs to really sort this non-sense out. The fact they could log out and log in onto other characters during fights should not be an option at all.

People made the same argument for locking Gray Host. The reality? The people just move to the faction they expect to win and log of when it doesn't. Locking won't change anything. The problem is the game.

If you lose in this game, literally anywhere in ESO, your time is ultimately wasted. What that means is that you need to win. And you need to win, win, win, no matter what. Because if you don't, not only do you have the salty taste of losing in your mouth -- you've gained absolutely nothing for the time you put in.

This system that the devs put in with ticks, rewards, etc. -- all of it feeds into the toxicity that you see on the surface in PvP and PvE.

If it weren't the case that rewards were so heavily tied to winning instead of actually having fun in both PvE and PvP, then what would happen if somoene asked: what's wrong with losing?

See, what game devs think is that when someone asks that, there would be no motivation to win and thus grind and "engage" the game in a "meaningful" way. But they are wrong about that in ESo, because the grind is meaningless and the engagement and chaos comes from the fact that people are willing to lose in the first place. You've just highlighted where that chaos got disrupted and the result was shifted to the obvious one rather than one with any possibility otherwise.

^ That's the problem. The game is poorly designed in PvP and PvE when it comes to rewards, esp. considering the fact that "losing" is part of what the game needs to increase engagement and generate chaos in an otherwise ordered system in the first place.

Isn't it great whoever is in charge at ZOS does not understand that or seem to care? Yay!

Locking the campaign won't do anything to increase engagement among players that don't want their time wasted. What will happen is that they just won't play. The game's overarching system that prioritizes winning or no reward makes it a waste of time to bother playing if you can't win, which is why many people log off after getting killed (or failing in PvE) after certain numbers of attempts -- it's a literal waste of time with no progression towards any goal or reward.

Now someone is going to bring up "ah you just want a participation trophy" -- but it's kinda stupid and a dumb argument to make when we're literally talking about time being wasted after you've put in work. It's not a participation trophy to expect something for work put in, which you actually have to put more in if you're on the losing side or in a failing group in PvE.

You know what? Let me stop. No one will read this comment or care anyway. That's the nature of these forums. And that's also why I just fire siege.

Many PvPers don't care about winning; what they care about is having good fights. There are many different players with different objectives in Cyrodiil; some want to win a campaign for their faction; some want to win every single fight to inflate their k/d ratio and boost their ego; some want to participate in fights that feel competitive no matter the outcome. For that last category of players, there is no such thing as wasted time or effort.

The rewards are lackluster, frankly. And the Rewards of the Worthy more than compensate for the engagement because they give more transmutes than the End of Campaign rewards. So, the unhealthy urge to win every single campaign comes from some misguided faction loyalty, and not because of how rewards are structured.

And a faction lock would help fix the issue of players switching factions multiple times per day just to reinforce a zerg that is already overwhelming. Players should be able to play on different factions, just not during the same day.

React · July 4

Vengeance population is already 1/3rd of what it aimed to be. Ironically I think if you faction locked it, you'd actually lose another 50% of the little population in there because many of those people are not interested in PVP in general, but instead enjoy the easy AP from going to whichever faction is most dense and steamrolling the map.

YandereGirlfriend · July 4

Luneca wrote: »

johnjetau wrote: »

We had a really ridiculous situation happen when we we're trying to de-throne the EP emperor the other night.

DC went to BRK and opened the door and started to siege the keep. A few EP were there offering resistance, as they were also down at Alessia fighting the AD who were also attempting to de-throne. We had about 20 DC killing guards and sieging.

Suddenly we noticed DC started to disappear. No one thought anything of it, maybe they crashed.

Then about 4-5 mins later as we were on the flags, a whole zerg of EP including the Emperor ran into the keep. They overwhelmed the DC forces. And then we realized what happened.

The same DC that disappeared, were now on EP characters, fighting the very DC they were helping not 5 mins ago - Different faction, character names, but same @names . We ended up getting wiped and the EP successfully defended the keep.

When you can leave in a middle of a fight to join the other faction and kill the one you just left is absurd. This type of stuff should not be allowed to happen.

ZOS needs to really sort this non-sense out. The fact they could log out and log in onto other characters during fights should not be an option at all.

People made the same argument for locking Gray Host. The reality? The people just move to the faction they expect to win and log of when it doesn't. Locking won't change anything. The problem is the game.

If you lose in this game, literally anywhere in ESO, your time is ultimately wasted. What that means is that you need to win. And you need to win, win, win, no matter what. Because if you don't, not only do you have the salty taste of losing in your mouth -- you've gained absolutely nothing for the time you put in.

This system that the devs put in with ticks, rewards, etc. -- all of it feeds into the toxicity that you see on the surface in PvP and PvE.

If it weren't the case that rewards were so heavily tied to winning instead of actually having fun in both PvE and PvP, then what would happen if somoene asked: what's wrong with losing?

See, what game devs think is that when someone asks that, there would be no motivation to win and thus grind and "engage" the game in a "meaningful" way. But they are wrong about that in ESo, because the grind is meaningless and the engagement and chaos comes from the fact that people are willing to lose in the first place. You've just highlighted where that chaos got disrupted and the result was shifted to the obvious one rather than one with any possibility otherwise.

^ That's the problem. The game is poorly designed in PvP and PvE when it comes to rewards, esp. considering the fact that "losing" is part of what the game needs to increase engagement and generate chaos in an otherwise ordered system in the first place.

Isn't it great whoever is in charge at ZOS does not understand that or seem to care? Yay!

Locking the campaign won't do anything to increase engagement among players that don't want their time wasted. What will happen is that they just won't play. The game's overarching system that prioritizes winning or no reward makes it a waste of time to bother playing if you can't win, which is why many people log off after getting killed (or failing in PvE) after certain numbers of attempts -- it's a literal waste of time with no progression towards any goal or reward.

Now someone is going to bring up "ah you just want a participation trophy" -- but it's kinda stupid and a dumb argument to make when we're literally talking about time being wasted after you've put in work. It's not a participation trophy to expect something for work put in, which you actually have to put more in if you're on the losing side or in a failing group in PvE.

You know what? Let me stop. No one will read this comment or care anyway. That's the nature of these forums. And that's also why I just fire siege.

I read your post and think it is really thoughtful and well-observed.

Like basically all human activity, you can figure out why people act the way that they do by looking at the incentive structures that govern them.

And you wisely point-out that the incentives of Cyro (and BGs...) directly contribute to undesirable player behavior. But it doesn't have to be that way.

JustLovely · July 4

React wrote: »

Vengeance population is already 1/3rd of what it aimed to be. Ironically I think if you faction locked it, you'd actually lose another 50% of the little population in there because many of those people are not interested in PVP in general, but instead enjoy the easy AP from going to whichever faction is most dense and steamrolling the map.

I agree. AP is so much easier to get in vengeance it's comical. The veterancy system has essentially no benefits outside of vengeance. ZOS created this monster, and my biggest fear is that ZOS will still use vengeance as an excuse to not make improvements to Grey Host, which is what they sold vengeance "tests" as being for in the first place.

aetherix8 · July 6

johnjetau wrote: »

We had a really ridiculous situation happen when we we're trying to de-throne the EP emperor the other night.

DC went to BRK and opened the door and started to siege the keep. A few EP were there offering resistance, as they were also down at Alessia fighting the AD who were also attempting to de-throne. We had about 20 DC killing guards and sieging.

Suddenly we noticed DC started to disappear. No one thought anything of it, maybe they crashed.

Then about 4-5 mins later as we were on the flags, a whole zerg of EP including the Emperor ran into the keep. They overwhelmed the DC forces. And then we realized what happened.

The same DC that disappeared, were now on EP characters, fighting the very DC they were helping not 5 mins ago - Different faction, character names, but same @names . We ended up getting wiped and the EP successfully defended the keep.

When you can leave in a middle of a fight to join the other faction and kill the one you just left is absurd. This type of stuff should not be allowed to happen.

ZOS needs to really sort this non-sense out. The fact they could log out and log in onto other characters during fights should not be an option at all.

We had a similar situation yesterday. It was calm in the early afternoon and DC took most of the map. In the late afternoon, as other factions began to log in, for a short while we had some good fights trying to defend while being attacked by the other two factions simultaneously. But then, suddenly, we had fewer than 10 DC, as many players who played blue switched to red, which had a low population bonus. Vengeance is turning into a grotesque farce and a safe haven for AP-boosting exploiters. This is the opposite of fun, competitive, and fair.

Vengeance needs faction lock ASAP.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom

ceruulean · July 7

Either faction lock for 48 hours, or changing the AP reward system to incentivize the underdog groups. Low-pop bonus is cheesed because it's updated every hour so people can swap to get it. Regardless of population, you should get 1 AP for being in a 20 man zerg to chase and kill 1 dude.

johnjetau · July 7

JustLovely wrote: »

React wrote: »

Vengeance population is already 1/3rd of what it aimed to be. Ironically I think if you faction locked it, you'd actually lose another 50% of the little population in there because many of those people are not interested in PVP in general, but instead enjoy the easy AP from going to whichever faction is most dense and steamrolling the map.

I agree. AP is so much easier to get in vengeance it's comical. The veterancy system has essentially no benefits outside of vengeance. ZOS created this monster, and my biggest fear is that ZOS will still use vengeance as an excuse to not make improvements to Grey Host, which is what they sold vengeance "tests" as being for in the first place.

Well then, maybe you have hit the nail on the head. Instead of a faction lock, a AP lock.

You can only earn AP on one faction each campaign. You start out as EP, then switch to AD. You get no AP or rewards while you play AD. Only if you play EP your original campaign start faction.

Waylander07 · July 13

I cant stand GH and wont play there again. I love Vengeance which has great fights and you are not carried by your gear or op classes but it needs faction lock. I sign in only to find that AD only have a small number of players as an opposing zerg paints the map. Later on Its AD that has the zerg and players whom you were fighting are now your team mates as AD paint the map. More often than not i sign out as AP is of no interest to me i just want good fights. I am sure other players leave as its no fun taking keeps without much opposition or getting zerged.

Mr_Arce88 · July 13

There should be no Vengeance Campaign at all... This is not ESO, this is completely different game, why does it even exist?

Waylander07 · July 13

Mr_Arce88
It exists because not everyone wants to play GH where there is no balance and your gear is more important than your skill level. Add ball groups, unkillable players along with lag its not fun. Without the right gear GH is especially demanding and not everyone wants to spend repetitive hours/days grinding gear just to compete only for that to be nerfed which leads to more grinding for gear.
If you want a campaign where you are not carried by your build/class, that has no ball groups and fights are decided on skill then its Vengeance which is the reason it exists. You don't have to play it but a lot of people do prefer it to GH and we should have that choice.

Divine1976 · July 13

Mr_Arce88 wrote: »

There should be no Vengeance Campaign at all... This is not ESO, this is completely different game, why does it even exist?

Yes it is ESO

As long as it doesn't replace Gray Host I don't see the problem? Should no one be able to play it because you don't like it?

JohnRingo · July 14

Waylander07 wrote: »

Mr_Arce88
It exists because not everyone wants to play GH where there is no balance and your gear is more important than your skill level. Add ball groups, unkillable players along with lag its not fun. Without the right gear GH is especially demanding and not everyone wants to spend repetitive hours/days grinding gear just to compete only for that to be nerfed which leads to more grinding for gear.
If you want a campaign where you are not carried by your build/class, that has no ball groups and fights are decided on skill then its Vengeance which is the reason it exists. You don't have to play it but a lot of people do prefer it to GH and we should have that choice.

Have to admit being amused by this post. Why would any rational player go to end game PvP content in a well established MMO game "without the right gear". All gear is accessible to all players and countless guides exist. Your gear is your choice.

That said, I think Vengeance should survive. It clearly has appeal to some players.

Waylander07 · July 14

JohnRingo wrote: »

Waylander07 wrote: »

Mr_Arce88
It exists because not everyone wants to play GH where there is no balance and your gear is more important than your skill level. Add ball groups, unkillable players along with lag its not fun. Without the right gear GH is especially demanding and not everyone wants to spend repetitive hours/days grinding gear just to compete only for that to be nerfed which leads to more grinding for gear.
If you want a campaign where you are not carried by your build/class, that has no ball groups and fights are decided on skill then its Vengeance which is the reason it exists. You don't have to play it but a lot of people do prefer it to GH and we should have that choice.

Have to admit being amused by this post. Why would any rational player go to end game PvP content in a well established MMO game "without the right gear". All gear is accessible to all players and countless guides exist. Your gear is your choice.

That said, I think Vengeance should survive. It clearly has appeal to some players.

You mean the right pvp gear which is continually changing meaning endless grind. Why would any end game rational player want to play in an unbalanced lag fest with unkillable players and ball groups ?

Usureki · July 14

Waylander07 wrote: »

JohnRingo wrote: »

Waylander07 wrote: »

Mr_Arce88
It exists because not everyone wants to play GH where there is no balance and your gear is more important than your skill level. Add ball groups, unkillable players along with lag its not fun. Without the right gear GH is especially demanding and not everyone wants to spend repetitive hours/days grinding gear just to compete only for that to be nerfed which leads to more grinding for gear.
If you want a campaign where you are not carried by your build/class, that has no ball groups and fights are decided on skill then its Vengeance which is the reason it exists. You don't have to play it but a lot of people do prefer it to GH and we should have that choice.

Have to admit being amused by this post. Why would any rational player go to end game PvP content in a well established MMO game "without the right gear". All gear is accessible to all players and countless guides exist. Your gear is your choice.

That said, I think Vengeance should survive. It clearly has appeal to some players.

You mean the right pvp gear which is continually changing meaning endless grind. Why would any end game rational player want to play in an unbalanced lag fest with unkillable players and ball groups ?

Because many players still have hope that ZOS will get their stuff together and be capable of delivering adequate and competent balance patches. Yes, the balance is terrible and PvP experience is miserable if you are not a Sorc, DK or WW. But! The answer to your question is already on the many threads of this forums: people don't want the rest of the game (gears, monster sets, mythics, skills, morphs, potions, poisons, enchantments, mundus, etc.) just disappear when entering the PvP zone. Cyrodiil is part of Tamriel, it makes zero sense to treat the main plot point of the second era to be a "mini-game" inside/independent of the main game. The hundrends and thousands of hours invested in your character just doesn't count in Vengance. You can be a random Stormtrooper in the Clone Wars. I know it can be fun, but I agree, that is not ESO, it is something else.

Iriidius · July 14

JustLovely wrote: »

React wrote: »

Vengeance population is already 1/3rd of what it aimed to be. Ironically I think if you faction locked it, you'd actually lose another 50% of the little population in there because many of those people are not interested in PVP in general, but instead enjoy the easy AP from going to whichever faction is most dense and steamrolling the map.

I agree. AP is so much easier to get in vengeance it's comical. The veterancy system has essentially no benefits outside of vengeance. ZOS created this monster, and my biggest fear is that ZOS will still use vengeance as an excuse to not make improvements to Grey Host, which is what they sold vengeance "tests" as being for in the first place.

Vengeance doesn’t have double AP anymore so why is it so much easier to get AP? Because now players can fight on even ground without spending years optimizing build? For players preferring GreyHost where as a group of players in group builds they always have the high ground it is definitely not easier to get AP, so veterancy doesnt bribe them to play vengeance for ap gain.
The only vengeance exclusive rewards are perks unuseable outside vengeance you previously didn’t have to temporary unlock to use so locking them behind veterancy is not a favor or bribe to (be a) vengeance players but the opposite.
And lets not pretend that GreyHost stays trash only because ZOS created Vengeance „as an excuse to not make improvements to Grey Host”, because before vengeance creation they were not making improvements to GreyHost either.

olsborg · July 14

It should definately have faction lock, 80% of randoms are switching factions and taking the map, rince repeat.

TheAwesomeChimpanzee · July 14

It should be removed

TheAwesomeChimpanzee · July 14

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Luneca wrote: »

johnjetau wrote: »

We had a really ridiculous situation happen when we we're trying to de-throne the EP emperor the other night.

DC went to BRK and opened the door and started to siege the keep. A few EP were there offering resistance, as they were also down at Alessia fighting the AD who were also attempting to de-throne. We had about 20 DC killing guards and sieging.

Suddenly we noticed DC started to disappear. No one thought anything of it, maybe they crashed.

Then about 4-5 mins later as we were on the flags, a whole zerg of EP including the Emperor ran into the keep. They overwhelmed the DC forces. And then we realized what happened.

The same DC that disappeared, were now on EP characters, fighting the very DC they were helping not 5 mins ago - Different faction, character names, but same @names . We ended up getting wiped and the EP successfully defended the keep.

When you can leave in a middle of a fight to join the other faction and kill the one you just left is absurd. This type of stuff should not be allowed to happen.

ZOS needs to really sort this non-sense out. The fact they could log out and log in onto other characters during fights should not be an option at all.

People made the same argument for locking Gray Host. The reality? The people just move to the faction they expect to win and log of when it doesn't. Locking won't change anything. The problem is the game.

If you lose in this game, literally anywhere in ESO, your time is ultimately wasted. What that means is that you need to win. And you need to win, win, win, no matter what. Because if you don't, not only do you have the salty taste of losing in your mouth -- you've gained absolutely nothing for the time you put in.

This system that the devs put in with ticks, rewards, etc. -- all of it feeds into the toxicity that you see on the surface in PvP and PvE.

If it weren't the case that rewards were so heavily tied to winning instead of actually having fun in both PvE and PvP, then what would happen if somoene asked: what's wrong with losing?

See, what game devs think is that when someone asks that, there would be no motivation to win and thus grind and "engage" the game in a "meaningful" way. But they are wrong about that in ESo, because the grind is meaningless and the engagement and chaos comes from the fact that people are willing to lose in the first place. You've just highlighted where that chaos got disrupted and the result was shifted to the obvious one rather than one with any possibility otherwise.

^ That's the problem. The game is poorly designed in PvP and PvE when it comes to rewards, esp. considering the fact that "losing" is part of what the game needs to increase engagement and generate chaos in an otherwise ordered system in the first place.

Isn't it great whoever is in charge at ZOS does not understand that or seem to care? Yay!

Locking the campaign won't do anything to increase engagement among players that don't want their time wasted. What will happen is that they just won't play. The game's overarching system that prioritizes winning or no reward makes it a waste of time to bother playing if you can't win, which is why many people log off after getting killed (or failing in PvE) after certain numbers of attempts -- it's a literal waste of time with no progression towards any goal or reward.

Now someone is going to bring up "ah you just want a participation trophy" -- but it's kinda stupid and a dumb argument to make when we're literally talking about time being wasted after you've put in work. It's not a participation trophy to expect something for work put in, which you actually have to put more in if you're on the losing side or in a failing group in PvE.

You know what? Let me stop. No one will read this comment or care anyway. That's the nature of these forums. And that's also why I just fire siege.

I read your post and think it is really thoughtful and well-observed.

Like basically all human activity, you can figure out why people act the way that they do by looking at the incentive structures that govern them.

And you wisely point-out that the incentives of Cyro (and BGs...) directly contribute to undesirable player behavior. But it doesn't have to be that way.

I kind of disagree with Luneca’s post, though. What exactly do you get for winning a campaign other than bragging rights for a month?

I’m completely against alliance lock, but for almost the opposite reason: you get virtually nothing for winning the campaign, and nothing meaningful for remaining loyal to one alliance. The end of campaign rewards are basically pocket change.

In my experience, most people who swap factions nowadays are not doing it because they want to win the campaign. They usually swap because:

a) they want to experience the combat and gameplay from another alliance’s perspective, or
b) the queues for their current alliance are absurd, and they would rather not spend two hours waiting to play after a long day at work.

Maybe I’m biased by the people I interact with, but I cannot picture many players swapping factions purely for 100 Transmute Crystals and a couple of nearly worthless gold jewelry pieces. The players who care primarily about those rewards usually stop PvPing as soon as they earn their Tier 1 or Tier 3 reward, because there is no reason for them to continue. The people who genuinely want to PvP generally do not care much about the campaign rewards at all.

I do fully agree that incentives play the most important role. As I’ve said in several other forum posts, Cyrodiil needs better incentives, not only to get more people into PvP, but to give existing PvPers an actual reason to care about winning the campaign. At the moment, in my opinion, that reason simply does not exist.

Of course, this may just reflect my own experience and the particular part of the PvP community I interact with. Perhaps most players really do care about the campaign rewards and my sample is a small niche, or perhaps the same could be true of the sample you are basing your perspective on.

ceruulean · July 14

I think the accusations of faction swapping are overstated. Most people stay on the same character because they want to grind AP rank or because they're roleplaying some kind of faction loyalty. More likely what's happening is random guilds queue in Vengeance as a waiting room for GH and steamroll. Other players misjudge the campaign as dead and log out after taking 1 or 2 keeps just as a guild logs on. The campaign would be much better if population was balanced, but faction locks aren't going to achieve that. The playerbase has been conditioned to grind for gear for as advantage, so they're not going to play Vengeance where gear is not an advantage anymore.

People will stay on and follow if there's a "commander figure" or a small group going. It's definitely more of a social factor. Especially if Vengeance is supposed to be more casual and new player friendly, they are the ones that need leadership and guidance the most.

Also it's easier to get AP in Vengeance because fights progress and people actually die. There are less stalemates. You get AP for taking and defending and killing people in the process.