ZOS plans concerning BALL GROUPS?

Tsuriel · February 20

wazzz56 wrote: »

Man, if they did away with ball groups how

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Same old mis information passed till it snowballs and everybody believes it.

yup...and here is the best advice I can give as a solo/2-3 man group type of guy and how I deal with ball groups......if you do not want to fight the, just don't. I watch my own faction get farmed in towers, watch the same names in the kill feed, watch them run right back, do the same thing they did when they died 10 seconds ago and repeat over and over....if you do not change or improve your tactics you will keep getting farmed....so if you do not want to deal with them, if you do not want to adapt..just don't...just go elsewhere....

Your argument doesn't hold, since It unfortunately doesn't apply to ballgroups attacking/glitching themselves into keeps, forcing players to interact with them or risk losing said keep/scroll. I've even seen it multiple times how ballgroups from opposing factions also avoid eachother while farming solo players in areas beyond towers.

Four_Fingers · February 21

Unfounded accusations about glitching into keeps without proof.
We always use siege to get into keeps.
Care to explain how we glitch in?
Also, we go out of our way to fight our rival ball groups, you should see the hate mail. lol
And solo players only get farmed if they keep throwing themselves at us, how else could they be farmed?
Stop spreading misinformation.

wazzz56 · February 21

@Tsuriel I gave you how I as a solo deal with them..and It works for me.....also oddly enough I have watched ball groups fight each other pretty often, is what it is....we all have different perspectives ......

doabhi · February 28

Ballgroups are peak PVP, it's called teamwork and seeing as Cyrodil is a map that lends itself to teamwork, it's not at all surprising that . . . teams of people 🤔 are the most effective method of play here.

What in reality I think nobody absolutely wants to see are singular builds that allow a solo player to be the mary sue of the map single-handedly wiping out large groups of people with some god-tier damage and resistances.. that'd be imbalanced as hell.

VoidCommander · February 28

They could make it so that you can only receiving outside healing from 1 external source in a 4 second window. For example, you are given Regeneration and Echoing Vigor from a teammate. Every time those heals tick, it prevents you from being healed by anyone else for 4 seconds. This allows small scale healers to continue their efficacy relatively unhindered, while trouncing non-dedicated healers (amassing in a ball group) from being able to stack a dozen sources of Regen or Echoing vigor.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · February 28

VoidCommander wrote: »

They could make it so that you can only receiving outside healing from 1 external source in a 4 second window. For example, you are given Regeneration and Echoing Vigor from a teammate. Every time those heals tick, it prevents you from being healed by anyone else for 4 seconds. This allows small scale healers to continue their efficacy relatively unhindered, while trouncing non-dedicated healers (amassing in a ball group) from being able to stack a dozen sources of Regen or Echoing vigor.

This wouldn't work. Zerg players would complain a lot about it.

TechMaybeHic · February 28

Let people heal each other all they want, but make something to where overhealing at a certain value in a specified amount of time, causes overdose and health drops to 5%

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · February 29

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Let people heal each other all they want, but make something to where overhealing at a certain value in a specified amount of time, causes overdose and health drops to 5%

yes lets let all friendly faction healers be able to troll their friendly faction players just like with the original plaguebreak implementation

TechMaybeHic · February 29

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Let people heal each other all they want, but make something to where overhealing at a certain value in a specified amount of time, causes overdose and health drops to 5%

yes lets let all friendly faction healers be able to troll their friendly faction players just like with the original plaguebreak implementation

I think if done right, it would be pretty hard for some randoms to mimic the overhealing of a ball group.

Tommy_The_Gun · February 29

doabhi wrote: »

Ballgroups are peak PVP, it's called teamwork and seeing as Cyrodil is a map that lends itself to teamwork, it's not at all surprising that . . . teams of people 🤔 are the most effective method of play here.

What in reality I think nobody absolutely wants to see are singular builds that allow a solo player to be the mary sue of the map single-handedly wiping out large groups of people with some god-tier damage and resistances.. that'd be imbalanced as hell.

No one wants solo players to be this powerful. The issue is that Ball Groups are not super hard to play vs the amount of power the playstyle provides. All you have to do is follow crown (leader) and spam one or 2 skills & occasionally ulti dump. That is it. There aren't any skill combo you need to do, some dodging & reacting if you are being attacked. Nothing like this happens, because Ball Group can pretty much ignore everything, every other player, every siege fired at them cuz they use overhealing with stacking of same types of aoe healing & use of synergies. They (from the lack of better term) abuse the hell out of it. It has gotten to the point where even the whole alliance (mostly consisting of at least average players) may not be enough to stop a well played ball group. After recent yet another population cap ninja nerf it is kinda ridiculous. Even a Ball Group may not be able to counter other Ball Group. That is why you don't see Ball Groups fighting eachother other. Cuz both of them know they will just waste each other's time.

The idea that I often see how to reduce Ball Group effectiveness without nerfing everything else is to simply put a cap in PvP on how many instances of same healing effect a player can have. Right now there are no restrictions and Ball Groups regularly have like 10 Vigor & 10 Radiating Regen all ticking always. Who else uses this kind of stuff ? Aside from Ball Group probably no one. Not even medium sized groups. So if there was a cap of like 2 or 3 max (so max 3 Vigors for example) then Ball Groups would be way, way less tanky and actually mortal.

xDeusEJRx · February 29

The real reason ball groups are strong is because of three major points, in my opinion

1. Power creep in the game: players have way more power and it's easier to get stats than ever compared to any other time in the game.
2. Cross healing: cross healing was always a thing, but the power creeping in this game has made cross healing worse because everyone has a lot more healing power and potential because stats and buff sets are much more frequent/better than ever.
3. Broken proc sets: procs have always been an issue in the game and people have find a way to create some powerful proc meta, but procs are 10x stronger in current eso than ever in the game's history. Let's not forget launch dark convergence could do 20k+ damage to a single player, there's never been any procs that powerful except VD. Not only that, procs are stronger than they were in cp 1.0, because they scale off your max stats which is furthered by the power creep in this game. People say stat scaling for procs was a good idea but I can't ever remember any proc damage in CP 1.0 doing as much as dark convergence's 50k+ damage on launch, not a single one.

IMO, those are the reasons the game has fell as much as it has but not enough people talk about the elephant in the room (except regarding cross heals, but cross heals alone is not enough)

Four_Fingers · February 29

You left out the most important fact, we work together.
That is why the other things you list work.

xDeusEJRx · February 29

Four_Fingers wrote: »

You left out the most important fact, we work together.
That is why the other things you list work.

Don't think that's important to mention, seeing as ball groups have always existed in the game but players hate them now more than ever and I was addressing why the ball group PvP now feels so bad compared to years back, but yes coordination helps.

Four_Fingers · February 29

Players hate anything that isn't an easy free kill.

Stridig · February 29

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Players hate anything that isn't an easy free kill.

Nope. Thats not the conversation. The conversation centers around power creep and lack of adequate counters. It centers around in game bugs like stuck in combat that has increased at the same rate as power creep. It's about clear back in the early days folks utilizing combinations of imbalance and ZOS calling it "clever use of game mechanics". It's about the overall degradation of performance and participation in Cyrodiil due to a certain playstyle. The only people who want "an easy free kill" seem to be people who run in ballgroups. That's why they defend it so much. The counter to a ballgroup, as mentioned in so many other threads, is another ballgroup. And ballgroups fighting each other is bad for their stream, so they avoid each other like the plague. Defend your playstyle. You should. You're free to play as you wish. But the snarky one sentence responses don't offer any engaging conversation whatsoever.

RetPing · February 29

doabhi wrote: »

Ballgroups are peak PVP

So you don't have any problem if ZOS would put a limit on healking stacking in pvp, right?
You guys soo good, for sure you don't need to crutch on a broken mechanic.

Four_Fingers · February 29

You don't get to decide the conversation either.
There are many counters as we have pointed out.
Not grouping up to counter a group is a losing proposition.
The same power creep is available to everyone.
Stuck in combat bug affects everyone especially those that apply a lot of HOTs.
Stop trying to force solo and small man in a group area, that's why they created BGs.

Tsuriel · February 29

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Players hate anything that isn't an easy free kill.

You don't seem to bring much to the table except baseless comments and troll-scented opinions. It's been repeated numerous times that power creep, overhealing and next to no means to properly counter them are some of the numerous reasons why Ballgroups are an issue, and worse than ever today.

Four_Fingers · February 29

Like I have said before I would love it to see them limit heal stacking, just to prove that cooperative play will still win out.

Stridig · February 29

Four_Fingers wrote: »

You don't get to decide the conversation either.
There are many counters as we have pointed out.
Not grouping up to counter a group is a losing proposition.
The same power creep is available to everyone.
Stuck in combat bug affects everyone especially those that apply a lot of HOTs.
Stop trying to force solo and small man in a group area, that's why they created BGs.

I'm not trying to force solo and small man groups. If you actually read what I posted, and I quote, "Defend your playstyle. You should. You're free to play as you wish". You would see that i never actually said anybody should or should not play a certain way. So yes, you tend to make baseless comments.

Tiphis · February 29

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Like I have said before I would love it to see them limit heal stacking, just to prove that cooperative play will still win out.

They already did that to a certain extent, the ball groups refused to play during it.

Four_Fingers wrote: »

You don't get to decide the conversation either.
There are many counters as we have pointed out.
Not grouping up to counter a group is a losing proposition.
The same power creep is available to everyone.
Stuck in combat bug affects everyone especially those that apply a lot of HOTs.
Stop trying to force solo and small man in a group area, that's why they created BGs.

There are far less of you then everybody else. Zos has let the minority dictate for so long to their own detriment. Most players hate pvp in this game for more than in any other game. There's a reason we haven't gotten pvp content in so long, who cares when nobody plays it.

xFocused · March 1

I'm still waiting to see how a 12 man organized group is the problem and not the 30-40 man zergs that plow into a keep, lol. Cross heals, ulti dumps, etc...these things aren't limited to ball groups, you know?

RetPing · March 1

xFocused wrote: »

I'm still waiting to see how a 12 man organized group is the problem and not the 30-40 man zergs that plow into a keep, lol. Cross heals, ulti dumps, etc...these things aren't limited to ball groups, you know?

a 30-40 man zerg doesn't run around keep walls for hours to farm over and over the same n00bs.
a 30-40 man zerg doesn't get a scroll and then use it to lure and kill same n00bs over and over.
a 30-40 man zerg conquer a keep and then move on.
a 30-40 man zerg get scroll and then try to bring it home.
fighting a 30-40 man zerg is not boring as hell.

Necrotech_Master · March 1

xDeusEJRx wrote: »

Four_Fingers wrote: »

You left out the most important fact, we work together.
That is why the other things you list work.

Don't think that's important to mention, seeing as ball groups have always existed in the game but players hate them now more than ever and I was addressing why the ball group PvP now feels so bad compared to years back, but yes coordination helps.

i think the reason why ball groups are more focused now is because of the lower pop caps

back in the early days of the game when cyro had higher pop caps, and the more recent high pop stress test, the ball groups were way less of an issue, like significantly less of an issue

you had to have 2-3 ball groups in a keep in order to even notice them with higher pop caps

best we can do as players is advocating higher pop caps lol

Tommy_The_Gun · March 1

xFocused wrote: »

I'm still waiting to see how a 12 man organized group is the problem and not the 30-40 man zergs that plow into a keep, lol. Cross heals, ulti dumps, etc...these things aren't limited to ball groups, you know?

12 man organised group in itself is not a problem. Every playstyle has its place in Cyro eco-system. But the issue is more or less... this:

This screenshot has been floating around here on ESO forums and basically it shows what the problem is. Previously, only some Ball Groups were using this, but now it seems that more & more people are using this "tricK", even "bad ones" when it comes to skill level.

What this effectively does is it makes a 12 man group close to immortal (even if players are quite new to PvP group play), or if played well - literally immortal. I mean take a look yourself at this screenshot. Every group memeber has more or less like 20 - 30K effective Health recovery. That is why people complain about Balll Groups. Because 12 man group is the only environment where realistically you can take advantage of the lack of cap on max healing per second in PvP or lack of cap for the amount of "same" heals.

Now, is there any way, like literally any way, where you can dish out 40 - 50K damage in one blow to a very tanky target ? Nothing I can think off. Even sieges would need to hit in a precise same millisecond and you would need like 4 of them hitting at once so that the target can not have a chance to passively recover to full. But even if it would work - then there is siege shield.

ZOS allowed for healing to be insanely high in a group environment, but there is no way to realistically deal as much damage. That is aslo the reason why you don't see (for the most part) ball groups fighting each other. Because they ALSO lack the power to counter other Ball Group. The most powerful way of playing in PvP is unable to counter itself.

And I know what you are thinking. Just increase max damage. But what about every ones else ? Non-grouped players would die before the even see who is attacking them. Not to mention ganks. The only way to make it fair it to put a cap on max number of healing effects coming from same effects/skills.

Like I have said before - every play style has its place in ESO. Every play-style has it strong points & weak points and risk vs reward. Bu the issue is, 12 man group in PvP simply has too many strong points with no real reasonable drawbacks, literally, only because the game allows to stack HOTs infinity. Hard to imagine how it would look like if ZOS would not reduce max group size from 24 to 12 when they were reducing Cyro population limit.

Snipe ganking used to be like this. Insane damage, and like 40 meters distance. Low risk, low skill cap, but huge reward. And ZOS wrecked this play-style (rightfully so if you ask me).

Tsuriel · March 2

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

xFocused wrote: »

I'm still waiting to see how a 12 man organized group is the problem and not the 30-40 man zergs that plow into a keep, lol. Cross heals, ulti dumps, etc...these things aren't limited to ball groups, you know?

12 man organised group in itself is not a problem. Every playstyle has its place in Cyro eco-system. But the issue is more or less... this:

This screenshot has been floating around here on ESO forums and basically it shows what the problem is. Previously, only some Ball Groups were using this, but now it seems that more & more people are using this "tricK", even "bad ones" when it comes to skill level.

That screenshot has indeed been circulating for a minute but certain groups of individuals seem to be blind to the solid proof being presented, and it's as you say: Currently it's more or less impossible to counter the level of healing and these ballgroups know and exploit that continuously, once again - ruining the experience for the majority of players partaking in PvP, where the same individuals in these ballgroups are sometimes even 1-2 shot when peeled away from said group and the level of buffs shown there.

Desiato · March 2

This topic is baffling to me because this thread is full of reasonable solutions.

Furthermore, ZOS has demonstrated a desire over the years to punish stacking starting with the introduction of proxy det and vd. Though the will is there, the approach is obviously flawed as every ability to punish stacking is used by ball groups themselves and they are largely immune against the disorganized mobs they usually fight. Yet they continue to take the same approach with the same result.

With that said, my post, like the rest of the topics involving AvA is a dead horse that has been expressed countless times. I know the individuals at ZOS involved in AvA are well-meaning, but ultimately this is a low priority gameplay mode that doesn't get the resources it deserves. I think this is a process that feeds itself because AvA is fundamentally awesome and would attract PVP focused players who don't currently play ESO if it played well. If you build it (properly), they will come.

My completely unrealistic dream since 2016 or so has been for them to spin AvA off as its own game without the burden of PVE grinding. It should be noted that if you read ZOS interviews from 2014, the game was originally designed so PVP players could level entirely in Cyrodiil and without PVE gear disadvantages.

Durham · March 4

Ball group map (Maybe)
I think a separate campaign that is designed for organized grouping. To enter you must enter as a group. This new campaign would also contain leaderboards listed by Guilds. The map would be half the size of the current campaign.

1. Reduce speed in Cyrodil this would help with the ball group advantage. You could also reduce movement speed based on your group size.
2. Change the mythic that snow treaders to it does not work in a group.
3. Put a health cap in groups of 8 or more. 35k You can overstack for healing purposes, but you will remain at 35k
4. NPCs that players can drop that follow groups only. If they do not spread they will die. (Bomber)
5. Eliminate stackable healing of the same spells in PVP.

Iriidius · March 8

24 man groups wouldn‘t change much for ballgroups, because many were already running with 12 man when 24 man groups were still possible and Zergballgroups are just running with multiple groups together. It doesnt matter that much for PvP guilds where coordination and communication happens in discord anyway but is a big problem for PuGs, that are not competitive with only 12 players and there are not enaugh PuG leaders to have 1 per 12 man.

doabhi wrote: »

Ballgroups are peak PVP, it's called teamwork and seeing as Cyrodil is a map that lends itself to teamwork, it's not at all surprising that . . . teams of people 🤔 are the most effective method of play here.

What in reality I think nobody absolutely wants to see are singular builds that allow a solo player to be the mary sue of the map single-handedly wiping out large groups of people with some god-tier damage and resistances.. that'd be imbalanced as hell.

Singular builds that „allow a solo player to be the mary sue of the map single-handedly wiping out large groups of people with some god-tier damage and resistances“ are not restricted to solo players and can also be worn by players in a group. Nothing prevents the group players that get wiped to use the same build as the 1vXer that wiped them and have the same stats/tooltips as him. Nothing prevents players in a ballgroup from using solo builds except a raid leader forbidding it. Solo builds are as strong in a group as they are solo, but ballgroups wear group builds because IN A GROUP GROUP-BUILDS ARE STRONGER than solo builds.

Ballgroup strength comes not alone from teamwork, but also from positive group effekts like crosshealing, groupbuffsets, groupbuffskills and probably the second increases their strengh MORE than the first.
The group-buffs, -heals and -shields you get for beeing in a ballgroup increase strength of your character much more than beeing the best class with best sets and best skills and maybe more than even beeing emperor, but ballgroups talk like these buffs doesn‘t even exist or doesn‘t matter and all their strength comes from skilled players while still defending them and want to keep them at all cost.
A decent player with ballgroup-buffs+heals on him could probably 1vX players better than him and 1v1 the best duellants.
If a player wearing powerful assault, phoenix moth using echoing vigor could stack the sum of buffs/heals he gives to a 12 man group on him self, he would get 12 echoing vigor, 12*powerful assault=3684 weapon damage, 12 phoenix moth=120% crit dmg and 2580 weapon dmg, 12*ozezan=51k resistance or 96%healing and a lot of other things and also could probably 1vX players better than him and 1v1 the best duellants.
Where are all these stats and healing instances you give to your group when you are solo? They are not existent. They are created out of nothing when you have groupmates.
If sharing your 1l water bottle IRL would work like eso group buffs than you could first drink your full bottle until it is empty than give it as full bottle to your first friend of who also drinks it emty and then gives it to 10 other people who also receive it as full bottle and drink it empty, so actually 12 people could drink 1 liter each from a 1l bottle. So it is of course very social and selfless if you share your water bottle and can still drink it yourself especially if the 11 others also share their bottles and you can drink 12 litres insteat of one at the end and the only disadvantage is that you have to use a special bottle.
A smallscale without groupbuilds can also work together, coordinate ultidump and get many kills and be very effektive thanks to teamwork and get rewarded for teamwork enaugh to make it worth it while still beeing not nearly as effektive relative to their size as a ballgroup because they dont have groupbuffs and crosshealing.
Ballgrouplers are not really cooperating with each other, but all just following orders from leader like in military drill and doing their own task like workers in factory on assembly line and it isn‘t more selfless than speculate at stock market. I know many very selfish and arrogant ballgroup players.

Four_Fingers wrote: »

You left out the most important fact, we work together.
That is why the other things you list work.

Tsuriel · March 8

Durham wrote: »

Ball group map (Maybe)
I think a separate campaign that is designed for organized grouping. To enter you must enter as a group. This new campaign would also contain leaderboards listed by Guilds. The map would be half the size of the current campaign.

I can't see a ball group campaign working considering majority of ballgroups rely and survive by steamrolling non-ballgroup players while avoiding other ballgroups, you often see it when the group moves on when no more ap can be farmed from players they've repeatedly killed.