ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

[*] Doing away with Home and Guest campaign options, so Campaign Reward tiers roll with a character instead of being tied to a campaign so you can play in any campaign you want.
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Could we also make PvE buffs based on total alliance success and ownership across campaigns? I don't mean the total score but the total amount of keeps, OPs, Resources, and scrolls.

The root cause of over pop in a campaign comes from trying to own a campaign for buffs. Up until now AD owned Haderus, DC Chillrend, EP Azuras. All 3 servers were defended by players with no interest in PvP and a notion that they were entitled to a buff server. We even receive QQ tells and insults from PvErs when we take their buff server scrolls. Each campaign remains dead until challenged at which point populations surge into the pop lock. Example

So we have this hidden population of players that are MIA until their buffs are threatened. If we made the buffs based on total alliance success then this hidden population would have to spread themselves evenly across all 4 campaigns because each campaign will be necessary for success. Once the population spreads out there will be regular conflict on each campaign rather than being dead most of the time.

My hope is that the following would result from those changes.

• With populations necessarily spread out it will reduce lag and queue times on campaigns like thornblade where it is poplocked every night.
• It will ensure each alliance has some buffs at all times closing the trial gap between alliances who have buffs and those who have none.
• Populations will necessarily balance themselves across each campaign to ensure maximum benefit to PvE.
• PvP population will increase due to this hidden PvP population now being required to sustain their activity due to continual conflict.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Oh I'm aware of what it's being used as... just noting the blue bar for that campaign was high is all

They've actually gotten a lot more active since the pop caps were dropped. Dunno if that was the cause, but that's when it seemed to happened. Ported in to Chillrend last night as AD (even though its my home campaign for DC) and had a blast PvPing there. There was an epic 40+ minute 3 sided fight inside Roe that was among the best I've had in PVP.

I don't think it helps that the PvP community for unknown reasons decided to make the 30 day campaign the "main" one. There's 2 weeks left and really 0 reason for DC or AD to try to win now.

I have so many issues with the direction PVP seems to be going but I don't feel that there would be much turning back from what's seems to be ZOS plan.

The population issues can be solved as I have said so many times in the past by having less campaigns. Then players won't all run to their always winning/buff campaign and might fight as one faction. However unless ZOS can ever actually track down the issues for lag and fix them this isn't plausible because the campaigns can't hold the populations.

I really don't want to see Cyrodiil getting any smaller, from release we have gone from massive battles, to big battles, to two full raids at most fighting. Cyrodiil now looks more like a skirmish than a war. I understand fully that these population cap reductions were made to try and help the gaming experience of many but that didn't happen, no we just face longer queues before being able to play with our friends.

As for removing the lock on people playing different alliances... Not sure how I feel about it. I see why it would help and as it can apparently be avoided any way nothing changes.
However it would encourage getting 100k AP with three characters (one in each faction) in one campaign then gaining the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place prize every campaign end no matter who won.

Part of the joy in the game for me is having chosen and side and standing by my faction, the idea people will filter easily between who's winning each month on the current campaign is... meh.

Lastly I hope that none of these changes will come to pass until after we have seen Tamriel Unlimited and what happens with the campaigns populations. Hopefully many of the new players joining the game will head to other campaigns and flesh out the sides everywhere.

Also it might be worth making all campaigns one length, I know this will upset those who play on the campaigns changed but it would remove the difference and thus make each campaign seem more equal. As other have said right now the player base has chosen 30days to be the premier campaign, so everyone wants to play in those two.
The reason Thornblade is the "main" campaign is because most players wanted longer campaigns and originally despite a lot of predicted player feedback the only 30 campaign.

Any way it's nice to see updates almost every day in the dev tracker regarding this post. I'm happy to see @ZOS_BrianWheeler diving in here and starting the kind of communication I've wanted since beta.

As a player who's been with the game since the start, been vocal on the forums, given ZOS all the information on issues and feedback I can it's still sad to know that when ZOS wants feedback they go to specific guilds, streamers or "friends" of the company. Maybe that's not the entire case but that's the impression most of the EU players I know feel.

Erock25 wrote: »

Wow. ZOS gotta give some incentive to roll DC or playing on the losing side or that graph is just gonna keep getting worse.

Some are rolling and re-rolling DC anyway. Maybe not enough yet, but it is happening. DC managed to match AD and EP pop on Blackwater Blade last night and even exceeded EP for a good while. It was only one night, but it was still an improvement and DC managed to retake all home forts, cap a few enemy strongholds, help depose an Emp, and retake a stolen scroll.

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

@roechacca‌ I want it removed, but no estimates on when that will happen just yet. And remember there are some things I can comment on, others I can't so I'll post responses when able.

Thanks so much for considering removing these, though I imagine there might be a cooldown before you can log in with a character of a different faction on the same campaign. However you are planning on doing it, your participation on these forums in various threads over the last few weeks is greatly appreciated.

tinythinker wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

@roechacca‌ I want it removed, but no estimates on when that will happen just yet. And remember there are some things I can comment on, others I can't so I'll post responses when able.

Thanks so much for considering removing these, though I imagine there might be a cooldown before you can log in with a character of a different faction on the same campaign. However you are planning on doing it, your participation on these forums in various threads over the last few weeks is greatly appreciated.

They should also consider a lock on it being set as home only for one character, as the reasons I mentioned in my larger post if you can have multiple characters on the same campaign as a home, you can get all three levels of rewards with minimal work (100k AP for reward level 3).

roechacca wrote: »

I think allowing characters to go to any campaign is putting a lot of faith in players to roll other faction toons and that it won't be exploited in any way . Right now you can already by pass the system and do it , yet it hasn't addressed the imbalance issue at all . I don't honestly see how this will help address the population issue . The majority of players have already demonstrated they have no desire for fair play .

Hello @roechacca‌, I started playing a little over a week ago with an old level 5 DC character made in early access and am having loads of fun, but I had to choose campaigns other than Azura's Star and Thornblade because I have EP characters set there for home and guest campaigns. Not everyone puts lots of active PvP players on their friends list and even if they do those people aren't always on to travel to.

I am currently enjoying playing on Blackwater Blade/Haderus, trying at the moment not to level too fast (which is hard pre-vet) in order to enjoy the non-vet campaign. It would be fun when I graduate from that campaign to be able to split time between Haderus and Thorn since I am more familiar with the latter and because DC has a chronically low population there. I have no interest in spying, which I think is a lame waste of time, and if I did want to spy or troll and had the connections to do so, as you have implied I could do it without much difficulty anyway. But the change to the cross-faction lockout would make it easier for those who want to re-roll and play on their old campaigns.

Turelus wrote: »

tinythinker wrote: »

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

@roechacca‌ I want it removed, but no estimates on when that will happen just yet. And remember there are some things I can comment on, others I can't so I'll post responses when able.

Thanks so much for considering removing these, though I imagine there might be a cooldown before you can log in with a character of a different faction on the same campaign. However you are planning on doing it, your participation on these forums in various threads over the last few weeks is greatly appreciated.

They should also consider a lock on it being set as home only for one character, as the reasons I mentioned in my larger post if you can have multiple characters on the same campaign as a home, you can get all three levels of rewards with minimal work (100k AP for reward level 3).

Hi @Turelus‌. Not sure I see what you mean. Do you mean only one character per faction having the same home campaign or keeping the cross-faction lockout for the home campaigns? If you mean the former, I have two active characters in the same faction/same campaign and the rewards track separately. If one plays a lot the reward tier goes up when I view the Alliance War tab but if the other doesn't the reward tier stays low when I view the tab with that character. If you instead meant the latter is what I assumed Wheeler is talking about removing.

how about more short term objective bufffs to encourage more action away from keeps (like continuous attack) that stack

IE

IF a group efficiently can complete lots of small objectives, they could accumulate substantial strength for 30/60/90 minutes ?

To say that the majority of the population bars on Chillrend is made up of PvE-ers is just silly. I consider any that is at least rank 10 to be a PvP-er whether you want to call them part time or whatever. I'll tell you guys why populations are so unbalanced, it's because of people who love flocking to where PvP is easy for them, rather than people flocking to where they are needed.

Why is it that once thornblade locks, overflow AD go to Haderus and overflow DC go to Chillrend?

There are groups of EP that because they've realized how badly they outnumber the other factions on Thornblade, choose to PvP in campaigns where they're the ones outnumbered.

Yet still, when Thornblade locks DC PvPers go to "their" buff campaign, and AD goes to what used to be theirs.

vortexman11 wrote: »

To say that the majority of the population bars on Chillrend is made up of PvE-ers is just silly. I consider any that is at least rank 10 to be a PvP-er whether you want to call them part time or whatever. I'll tell you guys why populations are so unbalanced, it's because of people who love flocking to where PvP is easy for them, rather than people flocking to where they are needed.

Why is it that once thornblade locks, overflow AD go to Haderus and overflow DC go to Chillrend?

There are groups of EP that because they've realized how badly they outnumber the other factions on Thornblade, choose to PvP in campaigns where they're the ones outnumbered.

Yet still, when Thornblade locks DC PvPers go to "their" buff campaign, and AD goes to what used to be theirs.

Does Thornblade even lock for DC?

EskimoBrother wrote: »

vortexman11 wrote: »

To say that the majority of the population bars on Chillrend is made up of PvE-ers is just silly. I consider any that is at least rank 10 to be a PvP-er whether you want to call them part time or whatever. I'll tell you guys why populations are so unbalanced, it's because of people who love flocking to where PvP is easy for them, rather than people flocking to where they are needed.

Why is it that once thornblade locks, overflow AD go to Haderus and overflow DC go to Chillrend?

There are groups of EP that because they've realized how badly they outnumber the other factions on Thornblade, choose to PvP in campaigns where they're the ones outnumbered.

Yet still, when Thornblade locks DC PvPers go to "their" buff campaign, and AD goes to what used to be theirs.

Don't know which DC you're referring to, but the main DC guilds(LoM, LB and MBF) are all on thorn or haderus. Not sure exactly how that equates to us "flocking to where PvP is easy for them". That's a load of *** and you're delusional if you truly believe that. The majority of Dc on chillrend are PvErs.

Yes. Because three guilds makes up the entire DC PvP population. And anyone not in said guilds are not PvPers.

Its funny. A few weeks ago DC made a large push on Haderus, at the time I was told by alot of the DC from Chillrend that they'd be switching there permanently. Then for some reason now that AD and EP managed to push back, guess where all those DC are? Chillrend.