TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

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.

AFAIK, you and others you quote are playing Gray Host exclusively, and here we are talking about Vengeance exclusively. Why people would swap factions on Gray Host is completely irrelevant to this thread.

If you were playing on the PC EU Vengeance server every day, you would know why we want it to be faction-locked, and what makes people swap factions multiple times per day, every day—the worst being on Sundays.

There are in fact different kinds of swappers in Vengeance:

a) people who want the Tier 3 reward - I know of one player only, and they stop joining the campaign as soon as they hit 100K AP on all three factions. This is not much of an issue and does not warrant a faction lock.

b) people who want to revitalize the map and/or are looking for fights - less than a handful of players and their reason is legit enough (PvP related) as to not warrant a faction lock.

c) people who want to earn as much AP as possible to claim Veterancy rewards. There is quite a large group of players focused exclusively on that, and they only care about boosting their AP gain. Veterancy rewards aren't just titles and perks. The real good stuff comes once you hit level 101, because you keep earning Veterancy Crafting Pouches, and you get plenty of legendary crafting mats which can be traded for gold. Aetherial Dust is literally raining on me from those pouches, and so is Perfect Roe, Chromium Platings, and Dreugh Wax. I got one Aetheric Cipher as well. These mats are very valuable whether you want to sell them or hoard them for your personal use.

It's the last category of swappers that is the main reason behind Vengeance players demanding a faction lock. These players don't care at all about PvP or the Three Banners War. Their AP greed leads them to betray factions over and over; first, they help you capture objectives, and when there is not much left to take, they relog to enemy factions to recapture everything, with no regard to the players they were just fighting alongside. This causes a situation where either you don't have enemies, just a large zerg on your own side, or you don't have a faction, just a large zerg on the enemy side. This is unfun, unfair, and kills all competitiveness, and so it needs to be addressed ASAP.

ceruulean wrote: »

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.

There are no random guilds whatsoever logging into Vengeance PC EU while waiting for their GH queue to pop up. These people log into BR instead, I imagine.

So far, I have 19 people added to my Ignore List precisely because of AP greed faction swapping, and I'm sure this number will grow, as I only started blocking AP-craving swappers very recently. I'm a PuG leader, and AP-boosting swappers are LFG all the time. I refuse to lead these traitors anymore, or to help them satisfy their AP greed while they show total disrespect to all faction players. They never learn to PvP and just want to be carried for their selfish gain.

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 ?

The same ~10 sets have been meta for literally years. What do you even mean by "continually changing"?

Order's Wrath, Wretched Vitality, Rallying Cry, Mechanical Acuity, Serpent's Disdain, Dark Convergence, Rush of Agony, Balorgh, and Maarselok have all been top choices ever since they were introduced. Most of those sets are even crafted or tradeable with no grind required. Sure new Mythics are generally meta, but make no mistake, old stat dense mythics like Death Dealer's and Dov Rha are still incredible as well.

Yah you get the oddball set introduced that shoots to the top like Oak Father's or Threads of War, but at the end of the day, all the sets I listed above have been around for years and are still very competitive.

ceruulean wrote: »

aetherix8 wrote: »

TheAwesomeChimpanzee wrote: »

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.

AFAIK, you and others you quote are playing Gray Host exclusively, and here we are talking about Vengeance exclusively. Why people would swap factions on Gray Host is completely irrelevant to this thread.

If you were playing on the PC EU Vengeance server every day, you would know why we want it to be faction-locked, and what makes people swap factions multiple times per day, every day—the worst being on Sundays.

There are in fact different kinds of swappers in Vengeance:

a) people who want the Tier 3 reward - I know of one player only, and they stop joining the campaign as soon as they hit 100K AP on all three factions. This is not much of an issue and does not warrant a faction lock.

b) people who want to revitalize the map and/or are looking for fights - less than a handful of players and their reason is legit enough (PvP related) as to not warrant a faction lock.

c) people who want to earn as much AP as possible to claim Veterancy rewards. There is quite a large group of players focused exclusively on that, and they only care about boosting their AP gain. Veterancy rewards aren't just titles and perks. The real good stuff comes once you hit level 101, because you keep earning Veterancy Crafting Pouches, and you get plenty of legendary crafting mats which can be traded for gold. Aetherial Dust is literally raining on me from those pouches, and so is Perfect Roe, Chromium Platings, and Dreugh Wax. I got one Aetheric Cipher as well. These mats are very valuable whether you want to sell them or hoard them for your personal use.

It's the last category of swappers that is the main reason behind Vengeance players demanding a faction lock. These players don't care at all about PvP or the Three Banners War. Their AP greed leads them to betray factions over and over; first, they help you capture objectives, and when there is not much left to take, they relog to enemy factions to recapture everything, with no regard to the players they were just fighting alongside. This causes a situation where either you don't have enemies, just a large zerg on your own side, or you don't have a faction, just a large zerg on the enemy side. This is unfun, unfair, and kills all competitiveness, and so it needs to be addressed ASAP.

ceruulean wrote: »

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.

There are no random guilds whatsoever logging into Vengeance PC EU while waiting for their GH queue to pop up. These people log into BR instead, I imagine.

So far, I have 19 people added to my Ignore List precisely because of AP greed faction swapping, and I'm sure this number will grow, as I only started blocking AP-craving swappers very recently. I'm a PuG leader, and AP-boosting swappers are LFG all the time. I refuse to lead these traitors anymore, or to help them satisfy their AP greed while they show total disrespect to all faction players. They never learn to PvP and just want to be carried for their selfish gain.

I don't know the situation in EU. If the 2-3 factions are not filling evenly, would faction lock really help with it, or would a controlled queue be better? I'd be fine with a faction lock but it seems like the competitive players who can fight out numbered are not present to combat the large zergs.

PC NA Vengeance is chugging along and about half as popular as Gray Host. Lower overall population than EU, so even if a zerg takes the whole map, they don't bother relogging onto another faction because steamrolling 2 people gets super boring. We see situations where a mega zerg appears in 1 faction, takes all emperor keeps, and disappears suddenly. Something weird is going on, maybe buying and selling emp or people waiting for GH are the most plausible explanations. I'm pretty sure zerg PvDooring is less AP gain than fighting and getting defense ticks at a keep.

Different servers, different realities; that's why I routinely specify my platform.

PC EU Vengeance appears to have developed "turns". EP specializes in nightcapping, then in the early morning it used to be AD retaking the entire map, followed by DC. Now it is rather DC retaking the map early in the day, and AD is more efficient at capping during primetime.

So, following these perceived turns, some players will start the day as DC, take the map, then relog to either AD or EP later in the day to cap it again. It is most blatant on Sundays when there are more players on all factions all day long. And it's more than 19 players doing that, as quite a few don't ever look for a group. I'm not generally a fan of faction locks, but I would like to see a 24h lock for sure.

We don't get huge zergs appearing out of nowhere, taking all emperor keeps and disappearing. It may be as you say, people trading emp, or just calling their guildies for temporary reinforcement from other servers.

And yes, zerg PvDooring is less profitable than defending, but most newer players don't realize it at all, since you get little AP for zerg-defending a keep with lost resources against a smaller group of players.