NeillMcAttack wrote: »It doesn't matter what you 'believe' will improve performance
You 'believe' further reducing the group size will improve performance. You also 'believe' that ZOS was misleading us in their statement about their reasons for implementing the changes they did. Does what you believe matter?
Also, I've noticed you like to throw out "improve performance" as if that's a goal. Most reduction changes will undoubtedly improve performance, but will it have any significant impact on player experience is the more important thing to focus on. We could improve performance by a factor of ten, but if the player experience still becomes noticeably bad during large battles then why are we hacking away at the game we enjoy? Basically, if the changes that are supposed to fix performance do not completely eliminate the server lag during large battles, why make them?
Did the changes you are cheering about here and asking for more of, completely eliminate all server lag during large faction stack battles? Reports from other players say no.
NeillMcAttack wrote: »Joy_Division wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »Joy_Division wrote: »I'm not on board the hate train.
But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?
It doesn't lag, no ball groups, it's the group size you want, in short it's exactly what you are asking for.
But nope, apparently not good enough for you.
Lemme take a wild stab as to why you wont que into system already in the game that has what you are looking for: Battlegrounds is meh and Cyrodill is a lot more fun? Am I right?
Then stop asking ZOS to turn Cyrodiil into Battlegrounds. Group of 4 can take a flag. They can;t take a keep! It's bad enough with ZOS's dumb changes I have to watch my "allies" die under enemy oils because I can't heal them or I have to watch tower humpers heal and buff each other while I can;t do the same, but at least I can log into a selfish class and there is some semblance of AvAvA and occasionally a good keep fight happens. As it is, if these 12-person LFG groups meet any opposition at all they're pretty much useless.
Do you really think that Cyro would be like BG's if groups were capped at 4? Let's try to be serious here.
Cyrodiil is spontaneous, engaging, has great scale, and you see a level of passion and commitment from loyal alliance players similar to what you get watching football fans. There is nothing like Cyrodiil gameplay, in any other game on the market. But, and I'd like you to pay attention to this part... IT DOESN'T FUNCTION.
Are you telling me, that if 4 man max group size made primetime play close to perfect, you would be against that change? Why? Would you be interested in trying it out?
Please point out where in Joy's statement they actually suggest BGs would be like BG's if group size was capped at 4?Joy_Division wrote: »But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?.
Does that not suggest that if I want 4 man groups in Cyro so bad I may as well play BG's. It's kind of a non point anyway. I would absolutely love if we could have any size group, and our faction allies could buff and heal each other. But we can't, and we know why, and we also know what helped, but we are all also unwilling to juts go a step further. You, joy, and many other people don't actually care about Cyro performance it seems. If it plays fine for you at all hours why are you even here? Why did you feel the need to comment?
That does not answer the question I asked.NeillMcAttack wrote: »Joy_Division wrote: »I'm not on board the hate train.
But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?
It doesn't lag, no ball groups, it's the group size you want, in short it's exactly what you are asking for.
But nope, apparently not good enough for you.
Lemme take a wild stab as to why you wont que into system already in the game that has what you are looking for: Battlegrounds is meh and Cyrodill is a lot more fun? Am I right?
Then stop asking ZOS to turn Cyrodiil into Battlegrounds. Group of 4 can take a flag. They can;t take a keep! It's bad enough with ZOS's dumb changes I have to watch my "allies" die under enemy oils because I can't heal them or I have to watch tower humpers heal and buff each other while I can;t do the same, but at least I can log into a selfish class and there is some semblance of AvAvA and occasionally a good keep fight happens. As it is, if these 12-person LFG groups meet any opposition at all they're pretty much useless.
Do you really think that Cyro would be like BG's if groups were capped at 4? Let's try to be serious here.
If we are going to be serious then your question I quoted insinuates Joy said something they did not.
Regardless, we lack actual information that suggests the idea would have a significant impact on the game's performance. Add to that Zos was only interested in testing only a smaller group of 12-man. It would stand to reason that Zos would see 4-man cap for Cyrodiili not make any sense and that would pretty much makes this a non-issue anyway.
The information we know is that removing cross healing to alliance members, and reducing grp sizes to 12 had a significant effect on improving performance. So then it stands to reason that reducing these further would have an even greater effect on performance. Would you be interested in finding out?
Source?
ZOS specifically said the improvements from all their tests looked good in a spreadsheet but did not have a significant improvement in performance.
Your whole basis for limiting groups further seems to be based on flawed conclusions. If you said 4 man groups would change player behaviour, then you might be on to something.
Source!!?
The fact the game is playable when ballgroups log off. The fact that removing cross alliance healing and cutting group size in half improved performance a great deal!
Or are we saying these things didn’t do anything?
We aren't saying it. ZOS is..ZOS_GinaBruno wrote:In reviewing the data for all the different tests, we did see some marked improvements in performance – on average, there was approximately a 25% reduction in the magnitude of server frame spikes and a slight reduction in the frequency of those spikes. While these improvements look good on a spreadsheet, they do not have a significant enough impact on improving the overall player experience. As a result, we will not be making any major changes at this time.
That's even with the cooldowns.
You are seeing what you want to see.
All that statement means is that they need further changes, which is exactly the point of this post. If you take that to mean that they believe the removal of cross alliance healing made no difference to performance, why did they do it? And why did they reduce group size?
Major changes are coming, and it won't be in favor of the status quo!
And what server do you play on? Because I can't imagine someone that plays regularly in Cyro thinking that performance didn't improve with the limitations they implemented.
.ZOS_GinaBruno wrote:That said, there were a few elements from the various tests that we’ve decided to enable for both PC and console for the foreseeable future, as we liked the behavioral changes they brought. Starting on Monday, November 9 for consoles and November 16 for PC, we will be limiting group sizes in Cyrodiil to 12 players, and all ally-targeted abilities will only apply to those in your group.
Joy_Division wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »Joy_Division wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »Joy_Division wrote: »I'm not on board the hate train.
But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?
It doesn't lag, no ball groups, it's the group size you want, in short it's exactly what you are asking for.
But nope, apparently not good enough for you.
Lemme take a wild stab as to why you wont que into system already in the game that has what you are looking for: Battlegrounds is meh and Cyrodill is a lot more fun? Am I right?
Then stop asking ZOS to turn Cyrodiil into Battlegrounds. Group of 4 can take a flag. They can;t take a keep! It's bad enough with ZOS's dumb changes I have to watch my "allies" die under enemy oils because I can't heal them or I have to watch tower humpers heal and buff each other while I can;t do the same, but at least I can log into a selfish class and there is some semblance of AvAvA and occasionally a good keep fight happens. As it is, if these 12-person LFG groups meet any opposition at all they're pretty much useless.
Do you really think that Cyro would be like BG's if groups were capped at 4? Let's try to be serious here.
Cyrodiil is spontaneous, engaging, has great scale, and you see a level of passion and commitment from loyal alliance players similar to what you get watching football fans. There is nothing like Cyrodiil gameplay, in any other game on the market. But, and I'd like you to pay attention to this part... IT DOESN'T FUNCTION.
Are you telling me, that if 4 man max group size made primetime play close to perfect, you would be against that change? Why? Would you be interested in trying it out?
Please point out where in Joy's statement they actually suggest BGs would be like BG's if group size was capped at 4?Joy_Division wrote: »But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?.
Does that not suggest that if I want 4 man groups in Cyro so bad I may as well play BG's. It's kind of a non point anyway. I would absolutely love if we could have any size group, and our faction allies could buff and heal each other. But we can't, and we know why, and we also know what helped, but we are all also unwilling to juts go a step further. You, joy, and many other people don't actually care about Cyro performance it seems. If it plays fine for you at all hours why are you even here? Why did you feel the need to comment?
That does not answer the question I asked.NeillMcAttack wrote: »Joy_Division wrote: »I'm not on board the hate train.
But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?
It doesn't lag, no ball groups, it's the group size you want, in short it's exactly what you are asking for.
But nope, apparently not good enough for you.
Lemme take a wild stab as to why you wont que into system already in the game that has what you are looking for: Battlegrounds is meh and Cyrodill is a lot more fun? Am I right?
Then stop asking ZOS to turn Cyrodiil into Battlegrounds. Group of 4 can take a flag. They can;t take a keep! It's bad enough with ZOS's dumb changes I have to watch my "allies" die under enemy oils because I can't heal them or I have to watch tower humpers heal and buff each other while I can;t do the same, but at least I can log into a selfish class and there is some semblance of AvAvA and occasionally a good keep fight happens. As it is, if these 12-person LFG groups meet any opposition at all they're pretty much useless.
Do you really think that Cyro would be like BG's if groups were capped at 4? Let's try to be serious here.
If we are going to be serious then your question I quoted insinuates Joy said something they did not.
Regardless, we lack actual information that suggests the idea would have a significant impact on the game's performance. Add to that Zos was only interested in testing only a smaller group of 12-man. It would stand to reason that Zos would see 4-man cap for Cyrodiili not make any sense and that would pretty much makes this a non-issue anyway.
The information we know is that removing cross healing to alliance members, and reducing grp sizes to 12 had a significant effect on improving performance. So then it stands to reason that reducing these further would have an even greater effect on performance. Would you be interested in finding out?
Source?
ZOS specifically said the improvements from all their tests looked good in a spreadsheet but did not have a significant improvement in performance.
Your whole basis for limiting groups further seems to be based on flawed conclusions. If you said 4 man groups would change player behaviour, then you might be on to something.
Source!!?
The fact the game is playable when ballgroups log off. The fact that removing cross alliance healing and cutting group size in half improved performance a great deal!
Or are we saying these things didn’t do anything?
We aren't saying it. ZOS is..ZOS_GinaBruno wrote:In reviewing the data for all the different tests, we did see some marked improvements in performance – on average, there was approximately a 25% reduction in the magnitude of server frame spikes and a slight reduction in the frequency of those spikes. While these improvements look good on a spreadsheet, they do not have a significant enough impact on improving the overall player experience. As a result, we will not be making any major changes at this time.
That's even with the cooldowns.
You are seeing what you want to see.
All that statement means is that they need further changes, which is exactly the point of this post. If you take that to mean that they believe the removal of cross alliance healing made no difference to performance, why did they do it? And why did they reduce group size?
Major changes are coming, and it won't be in favor of the status quo!
And what server do you play on? Because I can't imagine someone that plays regularly in Cyro thinking that performance didn't improve with the limitations they implemented.
From the same post:.ZOS_GinaBruno wrote:That said, there were a few elements from the various tests that we’ve decided to enable for both PC and console for the foreseeable future, as we liked the behavioral changes they brought. Starting on Monday, November 9 for consoles and November 16 for PC, we will be limiting group sizes in Cyrodiil to 12 players, and all ally-targeted abilities will only apply to those in your group.
It's a different question entirely as to how they ascertained these "behavioral changes" without actually having a dialogue with the PvP community or why they ignored the much larger factor determining our changes - skill cooldowns which made certain classes unplayable - but that's why they did what they did.
You seem to be implying that your anecdotal experiences - already the least reliable source possible - that happen to coincide with what you want to believe (and thus reeking of confirmation bias) are more factual than ZOS's own admission, from which they actually have access to the data and have every motivation to report things rosier than they are.
But to answer your question, the baseline for performance increase is so low that "improvement" would still constitute poor, which is precisely what ZOS has admitted.
TequilaFire wrote: »Reduced to 4, oh no we are still getting beat and there is still lag.
Zos needs to reduce groups to 2!
The cool thing about propaganda is it doesn't have to be based in reality.
NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »Joy_Division wrote: »I'm not on board the hate train.
But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?
It doesn't lag, no ball groups, it's the group size you want, in short it's exactly what you are asking for.
But nope, apparently not good enough for you.
Lemme take a wild stab as to why you wont que into system already in the game that has what you are looking for: Battlegrounds is meh and Cyrodill is a lot more fun? Am I right?
Then stop asking ZOS to turn Cyrodiil into Battlegrounds. Group of 4 can take a flag. They can;t take a keep! It's bad enough with ZOS's dumb changes I have to watch my "allies" die under enemy oils because I can't heal them or I have to watch tower humpers heal and buff each other while I can;t do the same, but at least I can log into a selfish class and there is some semblance of AvAvA and occasionally a good keep fight happens. As it is, if these 12-person LFG groups meet any opposition at all they're pretty much useless.
Do you really think that Cyro would be like BG's if groups were capped at 4? Let's try to be serious here.
Cyrodiil is spontaneous, engaging, has great scale, and you see a level of passion and commitment from loyal alliance players similar to what you get watching football fans. There is nothing like Cyrodiil gameplay, in any other game on the market. But, and I'd like you to pay attention to this part... IT DOESN'T FUNCTION.
Are you telling me, that if 4 man max group size made primetime play close to perfect, you would be against that change? Why? Would you be interested in trying it out?
Please point out where in Joy's statement they actually suggest BGs would be like BG's if group size was capped at 4?Joy_Division wrote: »But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?.
Does that not suggest that if I want 4 man groups in Cyro so bad I may as well play BG's. It's kind of a non point anyway. I would absolutely love if we could have any size group, and our faction allies could buff and heal each other. But we can't, and we know why, and we also know what helped, but we are all also unwilling to juts go a step further. You, joy, and many other people don't actually care about Cyro performance it seems. If it plays fine for you at all hours why are you even here? Why did you feel the need to comment?
That does not answer the question I asked.NeillMcAttack wrote: »Joy_Division wrote: »I'm not on board the hate train.
But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?
It doesn't lag, no ball groups, it's the group size you want, in short it's exactly what you are asking for.
But nope, apparently not good enough for you.
Lemme take a wild stab as to why you wont que into system already in the game that has what you are looking for: Battlegrounds is meh and Cyrodill is a lot more fun? Am I right?
Then stop asking ZOS to turn Cyrodiil into Battlegrounds. Group of 4 can take a flag. They can;t take a keep! It's bad enough with ZOS's dumb changes I have to watch my "allies" die under enemy oils because I can't heal them or I have to watch tower humpers heal and buff each other while I can;t do the same, but at least I can log into a selfish class and there is some semblance of AvAvA and occasionally a good keep fight happens. As it is, if these 12-person LFG groups meet any opposition at all they're pretty much useless.
Do you really think that Cyro would be like BG's if groups were capped at 4? Let's try to be serious here.
If we are going to be serious then your question I quoted insinuates Joy said something they did not.
Regardless, we lack actual information that suggests the idea would have a significant impact on the game's performance. Add to that Zos was only interested in testing only a smaller group of 12-man. It would stand to reason that Zos would see 4-man cap for Cyrodiili not make any sense and that would pretty much makes this a non-issue anyway.
The information we know is that removing cross healing to alliance members, and reducing grp sizes to 12 had a significant effect on improving performance. So then it stands to reason that reducing these further would have an even greater effect on performance. Would you be interested in finding out?
TequilaFire wrote: »Reduced to 4, oh no we are still getting beat and there is still lag.
Zos needs to reduce groups to 2!
The cool thing about propaganda is it doesn't have to be based in reality.
NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »Joy_Division wrote: »I'm not on board the hate train.
But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?
It doesn't lag, no ball groups, it's the group size you want, in short it's exactly what you are asking for.
But nope, apparently not good enough for you.
Lemme take a wild stab as to why you wont que into system already in the game that has what you are looking for: Battlegrounds is meh and Cyrodill is a lot more fun? Am I right?
Then stop asking ZOS to turn Cyrodiil into Battlegrounds. Group of 4 can take a flag. They can;t take a keep! It's bad enough with ZOS's dumb changes I have to watch my "allies" die under enemy oils because I can't heal them or I have to watch tower humpers heal and buff each other while I can;t do the same, but at least I can log into a selfish class and there is some semblance of AvAvA and occasionally a good keep fight happens. As it is, if these 12-person LFG groups meet any opposition at all they're pretty much useless.
Do you really think that Cyro would be like BG's if groups were capped at 4? Let's try to be serious here.
Cyrodiil is spontaneous, engaging, has great scale, and you see a level of passion and commitment from loyal alliance players similar to what you get watching football fans. There is nothing like Cyrodiil gameplay, in any other game on the market. But, and I'd like you to pay attention to this part... IT DOESN'T FUNCTION.
Are you telling me, that if 4 man max group size made primetime play close to perfect, you would be against that change? Why? Would you be interested in trying it out?
Please point out where in Joy's statement they actually suggest BGs would be like BG's if group size was capped at 4?Joy_Division wrote: »But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?.
Does that not suggest that if I want 4 man groups in Cyro so bad I may as well play BG's. It's kind of a non point anyway. I would absolutely love if we could have any size group, and our faction allies could buff and heal each other. But we can't, and we know why, and we also know what helped, but we are all also unwilling to juts go a step further. You, joy, and many other people don't actually care about Cyro performance it seems. If it plays fine for you at all hours why are you even here? Why did you feel the need to comment?
That does not answer the question I asked.NeillMcAttack wrote: »Joy_Division wrote: »I'm not on board the hate train.
But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?
It doesn't lag, no ball groups, it's the group size you want, in short it's exactly what you are asking for.
But nope, apparently not good enough for you.
Lemme take a wild stab as to why you wont que into system already in the game that has what you are looking for: Battlegrounds is meh and Cyrodill is a lot more fun? Am I right?
Then stop asking ZOS to turn Cyrodiil into Battlegrounds. Group of 4 can take a flag. They can;t take a keep! It's bad enough with ZOS's dumb changes I have to watch my "allies" die under enemy oils because I can't heal them or I have to watch tower humpers heal and buff each other while I can;t do the same, but at least I can log into a selfish class and there is some semblance of AvAvA and occasionally a good keep fight happens. As it is, if these 12-person LFG groups meet any opposition at all they're pretty much useless.
Do you really think that Cyro would be like BG's if groups were capped at 4? Let's try to be serious here.
If we are going to be serious then your question I quoted insinuates Joy said something they did not.
Regardless, we lack actual information that suggests the idea would have a significant impact on the game's performance. Add to that Zos was only interested in testing only a smaller group of 12-man. It would stand to reason that Zos would see 4-man cap for Cyrodiili not make any sense and that would pretty much makes this a non-issue anyway.
The information we know is that removing cross healing to alliance members, and reducing grp sizes to 12 had a significant effect on improving performance. So then it stands to reason that reducing these further would have an even greater effect on performance. Would you be interested in finding out?
You are still not answering the question.
Also, Zos's comments on the change to group size specifically state the change to group size was made for behavioral changes, not server performance. Further, Zos also specifically state they were not making any changes at this time for server performance because of all the changes they tested none provided "{a significant enough impact on improving the overall player experience." They do not even suggest that the best numbers they saw during testing were related to group size by any means.
Further, during testing different players noted improvements and degradation during the same tests which show individual experience and observation is woefully lacking and incomplete.
So it does seem the suggestion is based on an assumption.
The way ZOS set up their test give no proof that smaller groups reduced the lag. To do that they would have had to run sytematic tests like one test with group size reduced to 12 and one with heal only in the group. Now they messed things up and made 2 changes at the same time.
TequilaFire wrote: »We would still beat you with training swords.
Do your worst.
NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »[quote="idk;c-7037836"
What question? Why don’t I just play BG’s? Why don’t the majority of players in Cyro just play BG’s? I guess it would seem players like the spontaneity of different fights of different scales, it seems people like the feeling of being a part of something greater than 1 person. Having the same over all goals as the 80 or so other players in your alliance. Like I said, it feels much greater.
Now I’d like you to answer one for me, as I’m losing my train of thought and am not sure where exactly you stand on your opinions on the limitations. I know you don’t like them. But what I need to know is, do
you feel the limitations made little to no difference to performance?
And do you feel the ballstacks playstyle is largely taxing on the server/network?
Yes, I do believe it had no impact on server performance. NA Grey Host here. I was so fed up with lags even prior this update that I was constantly monitoring and benchmarking to trace culprit, thinking it is on my side. Contacted the support three times using tickets (obviously, to no effect. They can only suggest opening ports and resetting a router even if you don't have one). My findings: I had approximately 220 ping from Tokyo to NA megaserver before the patch, spiking to 450-500 in teamfights with average 150-250 KB/s of network traffic as indicated by default Win10 monitoring and NetBalancer. What do we have after the patch? Same, actually. As I had lagged and got 2-3 DCs in 10 minutes prior to patch, so I did thereafter. Funnily, I started monitoring this after Stonethorne as my average ping rose from 190 to 220 - another proof of ZOS great networking updates. Not even mentioning the old Akamai bottlenecking they can't solve since 2018. They can't even get a dedicated server for Cyro, not even speaking about some network code.
The only "behavioural" change that ZOS achieved with this is that they reduced the headcount of the players. In primetime NA Greymane (Main alliance locked CP campaign on NA) you can see two bars on EP and AD, and 1 on DC while before the patch the first two were locked and DC was either 3 bars or locked. ZOS with their cool changes simply drove a bulk of players away. On the one hand, it improves performance, on the other - it ruins the PvP with massive fights as we know it: I witnessed a 12-people EP group taking night the whole map with little resistance because nobody simply cared. And if I decide to play a non-prime for the US time more befitting Japan from where I am playing from, LFG is a pain, and my semi-support char can't truly play his role while ungrouped. Not even saying I simply don't like playing with groups and despite ZOS forcing me to opt for certain playstyle instead of freely choosing one.
All in all, I simply barely log nowadays, disliking the whole way this game is developing. I tolerated the focus on PvE for "whales" that are bringing them money through lootboxes. I tolerated poor performance in PvP (and PvE since recently). But I won't tolerate them forcing me to certain gameplay I don't like. A simple rule of the tree: you are not a tree and have two legs to walk away. Apparently, many did.
tl;dr did they improve the performance? Nope. Have they ever improved the performance in the past? Nope. Based on that, should I have hopes for new changes that will turn Cyro into a non-paid public test for a few weeks to bring about performance improvements? The question is purely rhetorical. Sapienti sat.
Joy_Division wrote: »I'm not on board the hate train.
But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?
It doesn't lag, no ball groups, it's the group size you want, in short it's exactly what you are asking for.
But nope, apparently not good enough for you.
Lemme take a wild stab as to why you wont que into system already in the game that has what you are looking for: Battlegrounds is meh and Cyrodill is a lot more fun? Am I right?
Then stop asking ZOS to turn Cyrodiil into Battlegrounds. Group of 4 can take a flag. They can;t take a keep! It's bad enough with ZOS's dumb changes I have to watch my "allies" die under enemy oils because I can't heal them or I have to watch tower humpers heal and buff each other while I can;t do the same, but at least I can log into a selfish class and there is some semblance of AvAvA and occasionally a good keep fight happens. As it is, if these 12-person LFG groups meet any opposition at all they're pretty much useless.
NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »[quote="idk;c-7037836"
What question? Why don’t I just play BG’s? Why don’t the majority of players in Cyro just play BG’s? I guess it would seem players like the spontaneity of different fights of different scales, it seems people like the feeling of being a part of something greater than 1 person. Having the same over all goals as the 80 or so other players in your alliance. Like I said, it feels much greater.
Now I’d like you to answer one for me, as I’m losing my train of thought and am not sure where exactly you stand on your opinions on the limitations. I know you don’t like them. But what I need to know is, do
you feel the limitations made little to no difference to performance?
And do you feel the ballstacks playstyle is largely taxing on the server/network?
Yes, I do believe it had no impact on server performance. NA Grey Host here. I was so fed up with lags even prior this update that I was constantly monitoring and benchmarking to trace culprit, thinking it is on my side. Contacted the support three times using tickets (obviously, to no effect. They can only suggest opening ports and resetting a router even if you don't have one). My findings: I had approximately 220 ping from Tokyo to NA megaserver before the patch, spiking to 450-500 in teamfights with average 150-250 KB/s of network traffic as indicated by default Win10 monitoring and NetBalancer. What do we have after the patch? Same, actually. As I had lagged and got 2-3 DCs in 10 minutes prior to patch, so I did thereafter. Funnily, I started monitoring this after Stonethorne as my average ping rose from 190 to 220 - another proof of ZOS great networking updates. Not even mentioning the old Akamai bottlenecking they can't solve since 2018. They can't even get a dedicated server for Cyro, not even speaking about some network code.
The only "behavioural" change that ZOS achieved with this is that they reduced the headcount of the players. In primetime NA Greymane (Main alliance locked CP campaign on NA) you can see two bars on EP and AD, and 1 on DC while before the patch the first two were locked and DC was either 3 bars or locked. ZOS with their cool changes simply drove a bulk of players away. On the one hand, it improves performance, on the other - it ruins the PvP with massive fights as we know it: I witnessed a 12-people EP group taking night the whole map with little resistance because nobody simply cared. And if I decide to play a non-prime for the US time more befitting Japan from where I am playing from, LFG is a pain, and my semi-support char can't truly play his role while ungrouped. Not even saying I simply don't like playing with groups and despite ZOS forcing me to opt for certain playstyle instead of freely choosing one.
All in all, I simply barely log nowadays, disliking the whole way this game is developing. I tolerated the focus on PvE for "whales" that are bringing them money through lootboxes. I tolerated poor performance in PvP (and PvE since recently). But I won't tolerate them forcing me to certain gameplay I don't like. A simple rule of the tree: you are not a tree and have two legs to walk away. Apparently, many did.
tl;dr did they improve the performance? Nope. Have they ever improved the performance in the past? Nope. Based on that, should I have hopes for new changes that will turn Cyro into a non-paid public test for a few weeks to bring about performance improvements? The question is purely rhetorical. Sapienti sat.
I appreciate your situation, the network has never been optimal. Especially for someone that plays regularly with near 200ping. 200 ping in any semi competitive game is borderline unplayable. (I recall the difficulty I used to have playing Dota on NA servers, I’m EU, with just 110ping, and many pear to pear hosted shooter games on console).
I guess if you have seen little difference in the networking after the changes, it would stand to reason that it’s a processing problem. But to say that performance before the limitations on groups size and cross alliance healing made no difference to the gameplay and delays you feel in game, is something I simply can’t agree with.
I’m saying this as someone who plays regularly on Ravenwatch EU, the most popular PvP server in ESO. The difference was night and day after those changes.
NeillMcAttack wrote: »The way ZOS set up their test give no proof that smaller groups reduced the lag. To do that they would have had to run sytematic tests like one test with group size reduced to 12 and one with heal only in the group. Now they messed things up and made 2 changes at the same time.
Their tests proved that performance increased a great deal, at an average of about 25% across all tests. And they then removed all alliance cross healing, and reduced group size. Rich’s reasoning to carry out the tests in the first place was that players had become too proficient at stacking and spamming AOE’s with near infinite sustain, and that this was too taxing on the servers. If we can admit that removing cross healing and reducing group size helped performance, then it seems to me they need to continue in that direction until Cyro functions well during prime time. Then they can look at changing how skills work, and build from there.
But IMO, performance should come first, and until we can play a functioning Cyrodil during prime time everything else doesn’t matter. They are clearly coming for the ballstacks gameplay style regardless, they will change smart healing, maybe even reduce group size further. Right now, we are sacrificing too much just for the sake of the minority of players in Cyro, who will likely adapt to whatever changes are made anyway.
Sure, that makes sense. No army in history has ever had more than four soldiers in it, so that's gonna work like a charm to replicate military battles.
NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »Joy_Division wrote: »I'm not on board the hate train.
But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?
It doesn't lag, no ball groups, it's the group size you want, in short it's exactly what you are asking for.
But nope, apparently not good enough for you.
Lemme take a wild stab as to why you wont que into system already in the game that has what you are looking for: Battlegrounds is meh and Cyrodill is a lot more fun? Am I right?
Then stop asking ZOS to turn Cyrodiil into Battlegrounds. Group of 4 can take a flag. They can;t take a keep! It's bad enough with ZOS's dumb changes I have to watch my "allies" die under enemy oils because I can't heal them or I have to watch tower humpers heal and buff each other while I can;t do the same, but at least I can log into a selfish class and there is some semblance of AvAvA and occasionally a good keep fight happens. As it is, if these 12-person LFG groups meet any opposition at all they're pretty much useless.
Do you really think that Cyro would be like BG's if groups were capped at 4? Let's try to be serious here.
Cyrodiil is spontaneous, engaging, has great scale, and you see a level of passion and commitment from loyal alliance players similar to what you get watching football fans. There is nothing like Cyrodiil gameplay, in any other game on the market. But, and I'd like you to pay attention to this part... IT DOESN'T FUNCTION.
Are you telling me, that if 4 man max group size made primetime play close to perfect, you would be against that change? Why? Would you be interested in trying it out?
Please point out where in Joy's statement they actually suggest BGs would be like BG's if group size was capped at 4?Joy_Division wrote: »But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?.
Does that not suggest that if I want 4 man groups in Cyro so bad I may as well play BG's. It's kind of a non point anyway. I would absolutely love if we could have any size group, and our faction allies could buff and heal each other. But we can't, and we know why, and we also know what helped, but we are all also unwilling to juts go a step further. You, joy, and many other people don't actually care about Cyro performance it seems. If it plays fine for you at all hours why are you even here? Why did you feel the need to comment?
That does not answer the question I asked.NeillMcAttack wrote: »Joy_Division wrote: »I'm not on board the hate train.
But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?
It doesn't lag, no ball groups, it's the group size you want, in short it's exactly what you are asking for.
But nope, apparently not good enough for you.
Lemme take a wild stab as to why you wont que into system already in the game that has what you are looking for: Battlegrounds is meh and Cyrodill is a lot more fun? Am I right?
Then stop asking ZOS to turn Cyrodiil into Battlegrounds. Group of 4 can take a flag. They can;t take a keep! It's bad enough with ZOS's dumb changes I have to watch my "allies" die under enemy oils because I can't heal them or I have to watch tower humpers heal and buff each other while I can;t do the same, but at least I can log into a selfish class and there is some semblance of AvAvA and occasionally a good keep fight happens. As it is, if these 12-person LFG groups meet any opposition at all they're pretty much useless.
Do you really think that Cyro would be like BG's if groups were capped at 4? Let's try to be serious here.
If we are going to be serious then your question I quoted insinuates Joy said something they did not.
Regardless, we lack actual information that suggests the idea would have a significant impact on the game's performance. Add to that Zos was only interested in testing only a smaller group of 12-man. It would stand to reason that Zos would see 4-man cap for Cyrodiili not make any sense and that would pretty much makes this a non-issue anyway.
The information we know is that removing cross healing to alliance members, and reducing grp sizes to 12 had a significant effect on improving performance. So then it stands to reason that reducing these further would have an even greater effect on performance. Would you be interested in finding out?
You are still not answering the question.
Also, Zos's comments on the change to group size specifically state the change to group size was made for behavioral changes, not server performance. Further, Zos also specifically state they were not making any changes at this time for server performance because of all the changes they tested none provided "{a significant enough impact on improving the overall player experience." They do not even suggest that the best numbers they saw during testing were related to group size by any means.
Further, during testing different players noted improvements and degradation during the same tests which show individual experience and observation is woefully lacking and incomplete.
So it does seem the suggestion is based on an assumption.
What question? Why don’t I just play BG’s? Why don’t the majority of players in Cyro just play BG’s? I guess it would seem players like the spontaneity of different fights of different scales, it seems people like the feeling of being a part of something greater than 1 person. Having the same over all goals as the 80 or so other players in your alliance. Like I said, it feels much greater.
Now I’d like you to answer one for me, as I’m losing my train of thought and am not sure where exactly you stand on your opinions on the limitations. I know you don’t like them. But what I need to know is, do
you feel the limitations made little to no difference to performance?
And do you feel the ballstacks playstyle is largely taxing on the server/network?
NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »NeillMcAttack wrote: »Joy_Division wrote: »I'm not on board the hate train.
But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?
It doesn't lag, no ball groups, it's the group size you want, in short it's exactly what you are asking for.
But nope, apparently not good enough for you.
Lemme take a wild stab as to why you wont que into system already in the game that has what you are looking for: Battlegrounds is meh and Cyrodill is a lot more fun? Am I right?
Then stop asking ZOS to turn Cyrodiil into Battlegrounds. Group of 4 can take a flag. They can;t take a keep! It's bad enough with ZOS's dumb changes I have to watch my "allies" die under enemy oils because I can't heal them or I have to watch tower humpers heal and buff each other while I can;t do the same, but at least I can log into a selfish class and there is some semblance of AvAvA and occasionally a good keep fight happens. As it is, if these 12-person LFG groups meet any opposition at all they're pretty much useless.
Do you really think that Cyro would be like BG's if groups were capped at 4? Let's try to be serious here.
Cyrodiil is spontaneous, engaging, has great scale, and you see a level of passion and commitment from loyal alliance players similar to what you get watching football fans. There is nothing like Cyrodiil gameplay, in any other game on the market. But, and I'd like you to pay attention to this part... IT DOESN'T FUNCTION.
Are you telling me, that if 4 man max group size made primetime play close to perfect, you would be against that change? Why? Would you be interested in trying it out?
Please point out where in Joy's statement they actually suggest BGs would be like BG's if group size was capped at 4?Joy_Division wrote: »But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?.
Does that not suggest that if I want 4 man groups in Cyro so bad I may as well play BG's. It's kind of a non point anyway. I would absolutely love if we could have any size group, and our faction allies could buff and heal each other. But we can't, and we know why, and we also know what helped, but we are all also unwilling to juts go a step further. You, joy, and many other people don't actually care about Cyro performance it seems. If it plays fine for you at all hours why are you even here? Why did you feel the need to comment?
That does not answer the question I asked.NeillMcAttack wrote: »Joy_Division wrote: »I'm not on board the hate train.
But what I don;t understand from people like you who hate ball groups, lag, and advocate limiting groups to 4 is why don;t you just play battlegrounds?
It doesn't lag, no ball groups, it's the group size you want, in short it's exactly what you are asking for.
But nope, apparently not good enough for you.
Lemme take a wild stab as to why you wont que into system already in the game that has what you are looking for: Battlegrounds is meh and Cyrodill is a lot more fun? Am I right?
Then stop asking ZOS to turn Cyrodiil into Battlegrounds. Group of 4 can take a flag. They can;t take a keep! It's bad enough with ZOS's dumb changes I have to watch my "allies" die under enemy oils because I can't heal them or I have to watch tower humpers heal and buff each other while I can;t do the same, but at least I can log into a selfish class and there is some semblance of AvAvA and occasionally a good keep fight happens. As it is, if these 12-person LFG groups meet any opposition at all they're pretty much useless.
Do you really think that Cyro would be like BG's if groups were capped at 4? Let's try to be serious here.
If we are going to be serious then your question I quoted insinuates Joy said something they did not.
Regardless, we lack actual information that suggests the idea would have a significant impact on the game's performance. Add to that Zos was only interested in testing only a smaller group of 12-man. It would stand to reason that Zos would see 4-man cap for Cyrodiili not make any sense and that would pretty much makes this a non-issue anyway.
The information we know is that removing cross healing to alliance members, and reducing grp sizes to 12 had a significant effect on improving performance. So then it stands to reason that reducing these further would have an even greater effect on performance. Would you be interested in finding out?
You are still not answering the question.
Also, Zos's comments on the change to group size specifically state the change to group size was made for behavioral changes, not server performance. Further, Zos also specifically state they were not making any changes at this time for server performance because of all the changes they tested none provided "{a significant enough impact on improving the overall player experience." They do not even suggest that the best numbers they saw during testing were related to group size by any means.
Further, during testing different players noted improvements and degradation during the same tests which show individual experience and observation is woefully lacking and incomplete.
So it does seem the suggestion is based on an assumption.
What question? Why don’t I just play BG’s? Why don’t the majority of players in Cyro just play BG’s? I guess it would seem players like the spontaneity of different fights of different scales, it seems people like the feeling of being a part of something greater than 1 person. Having the same over all goals as the 80 or so other players in your alliance. Like I said, it feels much greater.
Now I’d like you to answer one for me, as I’m losing my train of thought and am not sure where exactly you stand on your opinions on the limitations. I know you don’t like them. But what I need to know is, do
you feel the limitations made little to no difference to performance?
And do you feel the ballstacks playstyle is largely taxing on the server/network?
I did not ask why you don't just go play BG's, but I understand the diversion.
We know the changes made little difference in performance. We knew this before they were implemented as Gina said of all the testing the best test did not have "a significant enough impact on improving the overall player experience. a significant enough impact on improving the overall player experience."
Further, Gina did not even try to suggest that the smaller groups and changes to targeting of heals brought about one of the better results for improved performance. As such it is grasping at straws to suggest otherwise and would be putting words into Gina's mouth if her comments were used to support the suggestion that these changes did have had a significant impact on improving performance.
That pretty much answers all your questions with actual feedback from Zos to support it. It does seem your idea of gameplay is very one-dimensional as you seem very focused on eliminating grouping by basing it on false information as you have attempted to claim Gina's comments somehow support your interestswhen they do the opposite.
My first time in cyro last night in a while. It never stopped lagging in noncp. Game needs server side help in conjunction with any balance/gameplay meta changes as well.
vamp_emily wrote: »There are more issues than just performance in PvP. Nothing makes me want to pull my hair out more than having a poplock and nobody shows up to defend a keep.
You know what needs to be done....
i hate to say it but I really think they should have a paid version of pvp to weed out the tools. Have a free campaign for players that just want to stand around and do nothing and have a paid campaign for competitive play. It might even be less laggy because all the tools wouldn't pay to play pvp.
NeillMcAttack wrote: »@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler
You wanted last year to be the year you fixed performance in Cyro, but you put everything on the server instead and made a broad stroke in addressing the fallout from that(removing cross-healing), which largely worked btw. I'm not here to tell you to move everything back to the client. Because I actually understand the value in having a competitive game on a dedicated server, not just to be able to weed out cheaters, but also to allow compensation to lag and make sure there is fair calculation being made to allow everyone's input to go through at the time the server knows it was cast.
Just want to say that we know you can still make Cyro playable in prime time, and achieve that goal, and all you have to do is limit group size further. 3-4 players for a start I think, and without cross healing obv. Performance first, right, and while we are at it, why not just have a few different sets, like we have now!!??
Just one campaign that prioritizes performance first.
Don't worry, "the coordinated" will get good and adapt. That is apparently what they do best. And Brian, did you know that synergies can still be used by any allies when cross healing is off, whether intended or not, it's actually an interesting mechanic that can keep strength in numbers and I believe could be built upon without having as negative an effect on performance as these "smart" heals do. We could even start marking some skills as outliers that can be cast across groups, like single target abilities such as healing ward still going to people below 25% health and what not, but obviously, performance first.
In fact, until the scale of combat matches the complexity of it, we can't really have balance. And all your work in making Cyro and PvP as a whole more accessible to average and newer players, with the vets, will be for nothing. Ballstacks in Cyro are way over-powered without cross healing, and the only counter is to make more stacks, and then we end up back to powerpoint PvP. Cyro, and the majority of it's players, deserve better.
We should be able to jump in and have fun regardless of the time of day.
NeillMcAttack wrote: »@ZOS_RichLambert @ZOS_Gilliam @ZOS_BrianWheeler
You wanted last year to be the year you fixed performance in Cyro, but you put everything on the server instead and made a broad stroke in addressing the fallout from that(removing cross-healing), which largely worked btw. I'm not here to tell you to move everything back to the client. Because I actually understand the value in having a competitive game on a dedicated server, not just to be able to weed out cheaters, but also to allow compensation to lag and make sure there is fair calculation being made to allow everyone's input to go through at the time the server knows it was cast.
Just want to say that we know you can still make Cyro playable in prime time, and achieve that goal, and all you have to do is limit group size further. 3-4 players for a start I think, and without cross healing obv. Performance first, right, and while we are at it, why not just have a few different sets, like we have now!!??
Just one campaign that prioritizes performance first.
Don't worry, "the coordinated" will get good and adapt. That is apparently what they do best. And Brian, did you know that synergies can still be used by any allies when cross healing is off, whether intended or not, it's actually an interesting mechanic that can keep strength in numbers and I believe could be built upon without having as negative an effect on performance as these "smart" heals do. We could even start marking some skills as outliers that can be cast across groups, like single target abilities such as healing ward still going to people below 25% health and what not, but obviously, performance first.
In fact, until the scale of combat matches the complexity of it, we can't really have balance. And all your work in making Cyro, and PvP as a whole, more accessible to average and newer players, with the vets, will be for nothing. Ballstacks in Cyro are way over-powered without cross healing, and the only counter is to make more stacks, and then we end up back to powerpoint PvP. Cyro, and the majority of it's players, deserve better.
We should be able to jump in and have fun regardless of the time of day.
That is a well presented suggestion, but not a very good suggestion.
What is wrong with expecting ZOS to make things work like they used to? So far they haven't tried any tests that involve a server upgrade of some kind or anything other than restricting user abilities in some way. What's wrong with expecting ZOS to deliver the product we pay for?
GrimTheReaper45 wrote: »vamp_emily wrote: »There are more issues than just performance in PvP. Nothing makes me want to pull my hair out more than having a poplock and nobody shows up to defend a keep.
You know what needs to be done....
i hate to say it but I really think they should have a paid version of pvp to weed out the tools. Have a free campaign for players that just want to stand around and do nothing and have a paid campaign for competitive play. It might even be less laggy because all the tools wouldn't pay to play pvp.
I dont think thats a good solution. Even if there is a free version it just divides the population of players interested in pvp more.
The way I see it there are 3 main issues In pvp.
1) Performance, there are working on this but they are not going about it the right way. Them trying to squeeze performance out by making all of these changes is not good for pvp. They need to either commit to working out the issues or leave it alone. No cutting corners
2) Balance, it is by far the biggest game issue imo. Compared to 3 years ago its just awful. They need to work on bring medium and light up to par with heavy. Heavily reduce proc sets. Add back alot of the class uniqueness they stripped out in standardization.
3) They need to make cyrodil more group focused and give the 1vx crowd a better game mode to play. However they need to make cyro more group focused by objectives rather than literally forcing them into the same group if they want heals.