ZOS plans concerning BALL GROUPS?

Four_Fingers

Yes, let's remove organized groups the game was designed for so solo players can prevail. /s
You all need to X up!

kojou

Its a play style... why should they shut it down? I don't particularly like it when they show up either, but I also don't resent those players that organize that way.

I do think that item sets that are outliers in terms of what they enable groups to do should be addressed, but there is nothing wrong with playing in an organized group.

AstroST

Since I'm bored at work I will say it once again because seems people forget what this is about:
no one asked to remove the ball group play style but only to tone down some mechanics that can be exploited so that an organized group can be immortal

Is this so hard to understand?

Four_Fingers

AstroST wrote: »

Since I'm bored at work I will say it once again because seems people forget what this is about:
no one asked to remove the ball group play style but only to tone down some mechanics that can be exploited so that an organized group can be immortal

Is this so hard to understand?

OP called it cancer so I guess we took the bait.
Organized groups are no more immortal than an Xer taking on 20 players.
Or 20 zerglings chasing me down.

GooGa592

I wonder if future ball groups are going to be 80% DK's wearing new set and in perma corrosive armor.

Reverb

Yes, what do they plan to do about ball groups?

And what do they plan to do about bombers? It’s unfair to pick on players with no situational awareness

And what do they plan to do about gankers? They need to be stopped from ruining anyone else’s fun.

How about the small groups that take an objective and lie in stealth to Xv1 anyone who comes to take it back? They are a problem

And the speed+evasion builds that farm resource towers all night? Clearly ZOS needs to do something about that

And what about mega zergs? Everyone knows that faction stacking causes performance issues, obviously it needs to be stopped!

Do you see where I’m going with this? These are all valid play styles. They are all counterable, and all avoidable. It’s not right to insist that the devs take any action to stop a type of play just because people don’t like going against it.

If you don’t like fighting ball groups, and I don’t blame you, stop doing it. There’s a whole map to play, you don’t need to take the bait. You might ask “are we just supposed to let them have glade/fare/Alessia then?” Yes. They don’t care about the keep, they want to farm people. Deny them that and they’ll move to pvdoor another keep and you can backcap it. Or they’ll rush you from behind and wipe you and you go somewhere else until they get bored and move on.

Become a faction that routinely declines to be baited into getting farmed by them. Just take your siege and fight elsewhere. Defend against whoever will try to take the map under the assumption that you’ll be tied up with the ball group.

If you want to take them on and put a stop to them, form your own guild and run coordinated groups.

But as long as nobody is exploiting bugs or using cheats, you don’t get to dictate how anyone else plays.

CameraBeardThePirate

Reverb wrote: »

Yes, what do they plan to do about ball groups?

And what do they plan to do about bombers? It’s unfair to pick on players with no situational awareness

And what do they plan to do about gankers? They need to be stopped from ruining anyone else’s fun.

How about the small groups that take an objective and lie in stealth to Xv1 anyone who comes to take it back? They are a problem

And the speed+evasion builds that farm resource towers all night? Clearly ZOS needs to do something about that

And what about mega zergs? Everyone knows that faction stacking causes performance issues, obviously it needs to be stopped!

Do you see where I’m going with this? These are all valid play styles. They are all counterable, and all avoidable. It’s not right to insist that the devs take any action to stop a type of play just because people don’t like going against it.

If you don’t like fighting ball groups, and I don’t blame you, stop doing it. There’s a whole map to play, you don’t need to take the bait. You might ask “are we just supposed to let them have glade/fare/Alessia then?” Yes. They don’t care about the keep, they want to farm people. Deny them that and they’ll move to pvdoor another keep and you can backcap it. Or they’ll rush you from behind and wipe you and you go somewhere else until they get bored and move on.

Become a faction that routinely declines to be baited into getting farmed by them. Just take your siege and fight elsewhere. Defend against whoever will try to take the map under the assumption that you’ll be tied up with the ball group.

If you want to take them on and put a stop to them, form your own guild and run coordinated groups.

But as long as nobody is exploiting bugs or using cheats, you don’t get to dictate how anyone else plays.

This argument kinda falls apart when considering that Ball Groups have a documented and observable negative effect on performance.

Are they exploiting? No, but something needs to be done to tone down their effectiveness so that they don't ruin server performance for everyone else.

Reverb

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Reverb wrote: »

Yes, what do they plan to do about ball groups?

And what do they plan to do about bombers? It’s unfair to pick on players with no situational awareness

And what do they plan to do about gankers? They need to be stopped from ruining anyone else’s fun.

How about the small groups that take an objective and lie in stealth to Xv1 anyone who comes to take it back? They are a problem

And the speed+evasion builds that farm resource towers all night? Clearly ZOS needs to do something about that

And what about mega zergs? Everyone knows that faction stacking causes performance issues, obviously it needs to be stopped!

Do you see where I’m going with this? These are all valid play styles. They are all counterable, and all avoidable. It’s not right to insist that the devs take any action to stop a type of play just because people don’t like going against it.

If you don’t like fighting ball groups, and I don’t blame you, stop doing it. There’s a whole map to play, you don’t need to take the bait. You might ask “are we just supposed to let them have glade/fare/Alessia then?” Yes. They don’t care about the keep, they want to farm people. Deny them that and they’ll move to pvdoor another keep and you can backcap it. Or they’ll rush you from behind and wipe you and you go somewhere else until they get bored and move on.

Become a faction that routinely declines to be baited into getting farmed by them. Just take your siege and fight elsewhere. Defend against whoever will try to take the map under the assumption that you’ll be tied up with the ball group.

If you want to take them on and put a stop to them, form your own guild and run coordinated groups.

But as long as nobody is exploiting bugs or using cheats, you don’t get to dictate how anyone else plays.

This argument kinda falls apart when considering that Ball Groups have a documented and observable negative effect on performance.

Are they exploiting? No, but something needs to be done to tone down their effectiveness so that they don't ruin server performance for everyone else.

No, my argument is strengthened by that. The combination of a ball group and a Zerg of players fighting them erodes performance for people in the immediate area. Fewer people fighting them is less impact on the servers, and if you go fight somewhere else you don’t really feel the performance much, if at all.

CameraBeardThePirate

Reverb wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Reverb wrote: »

Yes, what do they plan to do about ball groups?

And what do they plan to do about bombers? It’s unfair to pick on players with no situational awareness

And what do they plan to do about gankers? They need to be stopped from ruining anyone else’s fun.

How about the small groups that take an objective and lie in stealth to Xv1 anyone who comes to take it back? They are a problem

And the speed+evasion builds that farm resource towers all night? Clearly ZOS needs to do something about that

And what about mega zergs? Everyone knows that faction stacking causes performance issues, obviously it needs to be stopped!

Do you see where I’m going with this? These are all valid play styles. They are all counterable, and all avoidable. It’s not right to insist that the devs take any action to stop a type of play just because people don’t like going against it.

If you don’t like fighting ball groups, and I don’t blame you, stop doing it. There’s a whole map to play, you don’t need to take the bait. You might ask “are we just supposed to let them have glade/fare/Alessia then?” Yes. They don’t care about the keep, they want to farm people. Deny them that and they’ll move to pvdoor another keep and you can backcap it. Or they’ll rush you from behind and wipe you and you go somewhere else until they get bored and move on.

Become a faction that routinely declines to be baited into getting farmed by them. Just take your siege and fight elsewhere. Defend against whoever will try to take the map under the assumption that you’ll be tied up with the ball group.

If you want to take them on and put a stop to them, form your own guild and run coordinated groups.

But as long as nobody is exploiting bugs or using cheats, you don’t get to dictate how anyone else plays.

This argument kinda falls apart when considering that Ball Groups have a documented and observable negative effect on performance.

Are they exploiting? No, but something needs to be done to tone down their effectiveness so that they don't ruin server performance for everyone else.

No, my argument is strengthened by that. The combination of a ball group and a Zerg of players fighting them erodes performance for people in the immediate area. Fewer people fighting them is less impact on the servers, and if you go fight somewhere else you don’t really feel the performance much, if at all.

It isn't strengthened by it at all though.

Ball groups have THE largest performance impact. The solution of "just go elsewhere" is not acceptable - that's just a band-aid over the real problem.

Ball groups also don't attract zergs - they pursue zergs.

DrNukenstein

They could make all buffs from skills and sets limited to your group.

They could limit group size to 4, so ball groups have a much harder time giving everyone every buff all the time combined with the above idea

They could persistently mark the location of groups that are "killing it" on the map to both drive up activity and make it easy to track where the ball groups are.

Siege weaponry specifically designed to counter ball groups. Something like a "star venom gas bomb" that can apply snake in the stars in an aoe (this one would be brutal for zergs, but zergs are just disorganized ball groups that may have more people)

A separate campaign for people who want to roll in big organized ball groups, so they can get together and talk about buff sharing while they fight forever without dying


Again, limit hot stacking. Yes, the pugs benefit from it too. They never benefit from it as much.

Four_Fingers

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Reverb wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Reverb wrote: »

Yes, what do they plan to do about ball groups?

And what do they plan to do about bombers? It’s unfair to pick on players with no situational awareness

And what do they plan to do about gankers? They need to be stopped from ruining anyone else’s fun.

How about the small groups that take an objective and lie in stealth to Xv1 anyone who comes to take it back? They are a problem

And the speed+evasion builds that farm resource towers all night? Clearly ZOS needs to do something about that

And what about mega zergs? Everyone knows that faction stacking causes performance issues, obviously it needs to be stopped!

Do you see where I’m going with this? These are all valid play styles. They are all counterable, and all avoidable. It’s not right to insist that the devs take any action to stop a type of play just because people don’t like going against it.

If you don’t like fighting ball groups, and I don’t blame you, stop doing it. There’s a whole map to play, you don’t need to take the bait. You might ask “are we just supposed to let them have glade/fare/Alessia then?” Yes. They don’t care about the keep, they want to farm people. Deny them that and they’ll move to pvdoor another keep and you can backcap it. Or they’ll rush you from behind and wipe you and you go somewhere else until they get bored and move on.

Become a faction that routinely declines to be baited into getting farmed by them. Just take your siege and fight elsewhere. Defend against whoever will try to take the map under the assumption that you’ll be tied up with the ball group.

If you want to take them on and put a stop to them, form your own guild and run coordinated groups.

But as long as nobody is exploiting bugs or using cheats, you don’t get to dictate how anyone else plays.

This argument kinda falls apart when considering that Ball Groups have a documented and observable negative effect on performance.

Are they exploiting? No, but something needs to be done to tone down their effectiveness so that they don't ruin server performance for everyone else.

No, my argument is strengthened by that. The combination of a ball group and a Zerg of players fighting them erodes performance for people in the immediate area. Fewer people fighting them is less impact on the servers, and if you go fight somewhere else you don’t really feel the performance much, if at all.

It isn't strengthened by it at all though.

Ball groups have THE largest performance impact. The solution of "just go elsewhere" is not acceptable - that's just a band-aid over the real problem.

Ball groups also don't attract zergs - they pursue zergs.

This is an urban myth passed by word of mouth.
Facts are any large group of players cause performance problems in Cyro because not enough server blades are allocated to Cyro to handle the load to save money.
Also, many players PC/Consoles can't handle the overload of many visual effects in a small area, if they reduced those it would be much improved.
None of this is player's fault.

bulbousb16_ESO

Absolutely, "ball" groups need to be nerfed. Not eliminated, a co-ordinated group should always have an advantage. But right now, they are completely over the top.

acastanza_ESO

Heal stacking. Heal stacking. Heal stacking.

The only way to fix this is to limit the number of instances of any given HOT effect to two - two addresses both the two trial healers scenario as well as the healer+self heal scenario.

Alongside that the Barrier+Gibbering stacking needs to be looked at. But mainly fix heal stacking and you take a massive step towards fixing PVP.

BetweenMidgets

Túrin_Vidsmidr wrote: »

Players are forced into two choices: abandon your castle/keep and hope the ballgroup moves on or keep getting spawn killed and farmed.

Or the clearly unpopular opinion of grouping up in an MMO, learning more about game and class mechanics, and making an optimized group yourself.

I know, it is drastic to think that in a giant map like Cyrodiil with Alliance v Alliance v Alliance that you should group up in an organized fashion with likeminded individuals.

BetweenMidgets

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Ball groups have THE largest performance impact. The solution of "just go elsewhere" is not acceptable - that's just a band-aid over the real problem.

I always find it interesting that people think the server distinguishes between a 12 man group pushing skills and a 30-40 man zerg pushing skills. Do you think that the people in a zerg are not pushing skills that require calculations at a rapid frequency? Both groups have access to 10 skills and 2 ultimates (with obvious exclusions to 1 bar builds). Why is it the ball groups fault for pushing their skills, instead of a giant zerg pushing their skills while having more people pushing them?

If anything, you could make an argument that maybe ball groups are using LESS skills across their classes than a zerg, since there are some skills a ballgroup will generally run, like proxy det, or radiating regen.

Why do you think it is BALL GROUPS and not a zerg that is causing the lag? Genuinely curious on how you know the server differentiates.

CameraBeardThePirate

BetweenMidgets wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Ball groups have THE largest performance impact. The solution of "just go elsewhere" is not acceptable - that's just a band-aid over the real problem.

I always find it interesting that people think the server distinguishes between a 12 man group pushing skills and a 30-40 man zerg pushing skills. Do you think that the people in a zerg are not pushing skills that require calculations at a rapid frequency? Both groups have access to 10 skills and 2 ultimates (with obvious exclusions to 1 bar builds). Why is it the ball groups fault for pushing their skills, instead of a giant zerg pushing their skills while having more people pushing them?

If anything, you could make an argument that maybe ball groups are using LESS skills across their classes than a zerg, since there are some skills a ballgroup will generally run, like proxy det, or radiating regen.

Why do you think it is BALL GROUPS and not a zerg that is causing the lag? Genuinely curious on how you know the server differentiates.

There's a big difference between 40 randos pushing skills and a coordinated ball group pushing skills.

The latter will have far more calculations being sent to the server. Far more HoTs ticking, far more group buffs, far more sets doing checks for groupmates constantly. Equating the 2 is silly.

Four_Fingers

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

BetweenMidgets wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Ball groups have THE largest performance impact. The solution of "just go elsewhere" is not acceptable - that's just a band-aid over the real problem.

I always find it interesting that people think the server distinguishes between a 12 man group pushing skills and a 30-40 man zerg pushing skills. Do you think that the people in a zerg are not pushing skills that require calculations at a rapid frequency? Both groups have access to 10 skills and 2 ultimates (with obvious exclusions to 1 bar builds). Why is it the ball groups fault for pushing their skills, instead of a giant zerg pushing their skills while having more people pushing them?

If anything, you could make an argument that maybe ball groups are using LESS skills across their classes than a zerg, since there are some skills a ballgroup will generally run, like proxy det, or radiating regen.

Why do you think it is BALL GROUPS and not a zerg that is causing the lag? Genuinely curious on how you know the server differentiates.

There's a big difference between 40 randos pushing skills and a coordinated ball group pushing skills.

The latter will have far more calculations being sent to the server. Far more HoTs ticking, far more group buffs, far more sets doing checks for groupmates constantly. Equating the 2 is silly.

Could you provide a link of facts so we may be enlightened as to how 12 players cause more server calculations than 40?
I mean how do you know what 40 players are spamming and how their sets are affecting nearby allies?

CameraBeardThePirate

Four_Fingers wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

BetweenMidgets wrote: »

CameraBeardThePirate wrote: »

Ball groups have THE largest performance impact. The solution of "just go elsewhere" is not acceptable - that's just a band-aid over the real problem.

I always find it interesting that people think the server distinguishes between a 12 man group pushing skills and a 30-40 man zerg pushing skills. Do you think that the people in a zerg are not pushing skills that require calculations at a rapid frequency? Both groups have access to 10 skills and 2 ultimates (with obvious exclusions to 1 bar builds). Why is it the ball groups fault for pushing their skills, instead of a giant zerg pushing their skills while having more people pushing them?

If anything, you could make an argument that maybe ball groups are using LESS skills across their classes than a zerg, since there are some skills a ballgroup will generally run, like proxy det, or radiating regen.

Why do you think it is BALL GROUPS and not a zerg that is causing the lag? Genuinely curious on how you know the server differentiates.

There's a big difference between 40 randos pushing skills and a coordinated ball group pushing skills.

The latter will have far more calculations being sent to the server. Far more HoTs ticking, far more group buffs, far more sets doing checks for groupmates constantly. Equating the 2 is silly.

Could you provide a link of facts so we may be enlightened as to how 12 players cause more server calculations than 40?
I mean how do you know what 40 players are spamming and how their sets are affecting nearby allies?

All you have to do is look at the buff tracker of a player in a ball group vs the buff tracker of a player running around in a zerg.

Four_Fingers

No you have to look at the buffs of 40 players combined not by themselves.
Also a buff tracker doesn't report server load at a given time.
And a lot of players confuse graphical fps drop caused by their client with lag.
ZOS added a mode for smaller groups and single players where there are no "Ball" groups it is BGs.

derkaiserliche

yea it bothered me so much that i switched to another less crowded campaign. Its way more fun there trust me. Mostly max 25 vs 25 fights but often just like 12 vs 12.

Four_Fingers

derkaiserliche wrote: »

yea it bothered me so much that i switched to another less crowded campaign. Its way more fun there trust me. Mostly max 25 vs 25 fights but often just like 12 vs 12.

You just nailed the real problem, everybody wants to pile on the same campaign - Gray Host.

virtus753

Four_Fingers wrote: »

I mean how do you know what 40 players are spamming and how their sets are affecting nearby allies?

Back with Stonethorn ZOS changed proc sets that worked on allies to work only on group members in order to prevent that scenario where 40 people's sets are affecting any of their allies.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/542612/pc-mac-patch-notes-v6-1-5-stonethorn-update-27

It is mentioned specifically in the developer comment under item sets: "Additionally, we have adjusted all item sets that have radius checks for friendly targets to no longer target all allies, but instead target group members only. This will reduce the amount of parsing and messaging dealt by the server and reduce the staggering power many of these sets can enable in non-grouped content."

Those 40 players can't all be in group with each other, so their sets cannot all be affecting each other at once. You are not likely on average to encounter among those 40 from a single alliance more than one or two groups, and pug groups are not nearly as coordinated as high-end ball groups.

High-end ball groups spec for AoE damage, utility, and mitigation. They use those sets that apply to group members only, and they try to maximize CPM to take advantage of all possible damage, healing, and procs. They review logs and make a note of casts, uptimes, damage, etc. Like any dedicated group that wants to get better, they practice and focus on improving. Many ball group members are not just aware of but extremely practiced in weaving light attacks and taking synergies without interrupting their casts.

Is it possible a group of 40 uncoordinated players spamming abilities could cause the same amount of stress on the server as an optimized 12-person group? I won't say it's absolutely impossible. But it's certainly not guaranteed, and I would think it extremely unlikely given not only the fact that friendly sets with a radius can only target group members but also how some non-ball group players favor single-target skills and sets and need to be more balanced for solo or small group play.

Four_Fingers

You know what I truly miss is a developer that would chime in and give us some facts like Rockstar used to do in the old RDR multiplayer days. Not RDR2. lol
It was also fun playing with them in game.
Those days are long gone.

doesurmindglow

virtus753 wrote: »

High-end ball groups spec for AoE damage, utility, and mitigation. They use those sets that apply to group members only, and they try to maximize CPM to take advantage of all possible damage, healing, and procs. They review logs and make a note of casts, uptimes, damage, etc. Like any dedicated group that wants to get better, they practice and focus on improving. Many ball group members are not just aware of but extremely practiced in weaving light attacks and taking synergies without interrupting their casts..

Yeah this is part of the problem that few people understand: there have been many attempts to nerf ball groups that have ultimately led to their current dominance because of an utter failure to understand the way they adapt and optimize. Even the much-maligned HOT stacking that everyone seems to believe is the sole reason for they're survivability (it isn't -- especially now that damage shields are so easy to get) emerged because of a prior attempt to reduce their reliance on purge, which everyone also insisted was the sole reason for their survivability.

The sole reason for their survivability is adaptation and coordination. It doesn't really matter what you nerf because that will always remain. Worse still, these highly specific nerfs tend to create new and often counterintuitive metas that an optimized group can more easily exploit: they don't need and don't run purge, for example, but fully weaponize the fact it explodes anyone who does.

virtus753 wrote: »

Is it possible a group of 40 uncoordinated players spamming abilities could cause the same amount of stress on the server as an optimized 12-person group? I won't say it's absolutely impossible. But it's certainly not guaranteed, and I would think it extremely unlikely given not only the fact that friendly sets with a radius can only target group members but also how some non-ball group players favor single-target skills and sets and need to be more balanced for solo or small group play.

Ball groups often fight each other in open field and it rarely has any performance impact. It's only when you get 60+ players stacked on them that you see lag, to be honest. I do agree they shouldn't be able to survive so many players that you actually end up with a performance impact, but as I've pointed out already, there is another huge buff for them coming in the next patch: class ability healing ultis that currently only tick on 6 group members are being expanded to tick on 12. They are, with this change, increasing the number and potency of HOT stacks.

The developers and (some of) the people on this thread couldn't be more apart on this issue. Whether fully intended or not, ZOS has balanced in a way that makes it very hard for alternatives to coordinated group play to be viable. Many changes would have to be made, not just to HOT stacking but also to ultimate generation, damage shields, evasion, bomber damage, and probably siege for any of this to change, and every indication is that they are pursuing the opposite.

Dr_Con

inb4 this gets moved and dies.

they really need to address hot stacking. groups spamming rush of agony can be tolerable if the monkeys charging into you didn't regain 30k hp in the next second, and the second after that, and the second after that. People are saying that limiting it to 4 sticky HOTs of the same name should be enough of a nerf, I think 2 would be even better, and for those groups to shift to direct heals instead.

I'm also surprised that none of the shills for ball groups have stepped forward with "l0l get your own group and you can kill many people too, that's the point you have bigger force you are harder to kill. git gud l0l" sprinkled in with more ad-hominem attacks.

Four_Fingers wrote: »

derkaiserliche wrote: »

yea it bothered me so much that i switched to another less crowded campaign. Its way more fun there trust me. Mostly max 25 vs 25 fights but often just like 12 vs 12.

You just nailed the real problem, everybody wants to pile on the same campaign - Gray Host.

Gray Host is preferred to many players because of it being faction-locked. This prevents groups from rolling keeps, then swapping their gear to other characters to roll the keep back over and farm AP. If groups never engaged in this we wouldn't have faction-locked. It also prevents certain unnamed jesters from swapping their characters over to trash talk in zone.

Four_Fingers

Which would be OK if ZOS increased resources of the server to match the load, else add another faction locked campaign.
But I fear it is more about epeen of playing on Gray Host.
Making it a free for all with no groups is not the answer unless adding another campaign with those rules.

ZOS_Hadeostry

Greetings,

After further review we have decided to move this thread to a category we think is more appropriate for this topic, as it deals with PvP groups.

Thank you for your understanding

AstroST

I'm dreaming of the day when I will see a ball group fight another ball group, instead of them keeping in two distinct zone of a castle farming randoms.
This is how ball groupers really are.

Four_Fingers

Our ball group on PS goes out of our way to fight our rival alliance ball groups, don't know where the myth about ball groups not fighting ball groups comes from. I mean how would you even know you are not there obviously if you don't see it.
There is no deal between different alliance groups and of course same alliance groups can't fight each other. smh
Of course it may be a platform thing, I play both PC and PS and find PvP much more intense on PS.

AstroST

Four_Fingers wrote: »

, don't know where the myth about ball groups not fighting ball groups comes from. I mean how would you even know you are not there obviously if you don't see it.

I obviously don't know how things work on PS but just come PC EU if you wanna see your myth.