Ball groups are killing Cyrodiil PvP

SkaraMinoc · January 25

The other day I watched a DC ball group walk into AD territory, steal a scroll, and proceed to steamroll everyone in their path up into EP territory where they took Arrius by themselves. It wasn't until they were overwhelmed by 50 EP on the top floor of Arrius that they eventually wiped after 10+ minutes of farming. ESO should never allow this much exponential power gain.

Crispen_Longbow · January 25

RetPing wrote: »

Crispen_Longbow wrote: »

That's not true at all. It only takes 1 warden to get rid of a ball group farming a keep. Here is 1 warden that pulls a ball group out of the inner then does the same thing on the outer. 1 player removing a ball group in 1 minute.

In other words, use a glitch to fight people crutching on broken mechanics.
Such great PvP. I wonder why Cyro is almost empty where there is this great PvP.

That's not a glitch, you just pull them where the keep running right off the edge.

Tommy_The_Gun · January 26

Crispen_Longbow wrote: »

RetPing wrote: »

Crispen_Longbow wrote: »

That's not true at all. It only takes 1 warden to get rid of a ball group farming a keep. Here is 1 warden that pulls a ball group out of the inner then does the same thing on the outer. 1 player removing a ball group in 1 minute.

In other words, use a glitch to fight people crutching on broken mechanics.
Such great PvP. I wonder why Cyro is almost empty where there is this great PvP.

That's not a glitch, you just pull them where the keep running right off the edge.

So that means that in theory vs this group in the video, Magnum Shot should also be able to knock down ball group one by one. On the other hand I am surprised that this Warden CC worked in a 1st place as 90% of Ball Groups run Snow Treaders - which makes them immune to CCs. Some one got lucky to find a ball group that actually CAN be CC-ed.

TechMaybeHic · January 26

Tommy_The_Gun wrote: »

Crispen_Longbow wrote: »

RetPing wrote: »

Crispen_Longbow wrote: »

That's not true at all. It only takes 1 warden to get rid of a ball group farming a keep. Here is 1 warden that pulls a ball group out of the inner then does the same thing on the outer. 1 player removing a ball group in 1 minute.

In other words, use a glitch to fight people crutching on broken mechanics.
Such great PvP. I wonder why Cyro is almost empty where there is this great PvP.

That's not a glitch, you just pull them where the keep running right off the edge.

So that means that in theory vs this group in the video, Magnum Shot should also be able to knock down ball group one by one. On the other hand I am surprised that this Warden CC worked in a 1st place as 90% of Ball Groups run Snow Treaders - which makes them immune to CCs. Some one got lucky to find a ball group that actually CAN be CC-ed.

Snow treaders doesn't make you immune to CC. Only roots and snares

Four_Fingers · January 26

Not to mention who the heck uses Snow Treaders anymore.

Freilauftomate · January 26

Templars can knock them off a wall/tower/bridge etc. with Javelin too. And everyone can do it with weapon skills like Flame Clench (Inferno Staff) and Magnum Shot (Bow). It can be tricky, because of lags etc. but it works. Sometimes the lag even helps.

Ball groups, tower runners, tanks, heals, gankers, nightblades, siege weapons, set boni and all the other stuff people love to complain about, are not real problems. At least not in my opinion. They make Cyrodiil more interesting. You can't win all the fights all the time. But when you bring the right tools, you can make a huge difference.

CrazyKitty · January 26

Freilauftomate wrote: »

Templars can knock them off a wall/tower/bridge etc. with Javelin too. And everyone can do it with weapon skills like Flame Clench (Inferno Staff) and Magnum Shot (Bow). It can be tricky, because of lags etc. but it works. Sometimes the lag even helps.

Ball groups, tower runners, tanks, heals, gankers, nightblades, siege weapons, set boni and all the other stuff people love to complain about, are not real problems. At least not in my opinion. They make Cyrodiil more interesting. You can't win all the fights all the time. But when you bring the right tools, you can make a huge difference.

I don't agree with most of what you posted. I feel very strongly ZOS needs to address the massively OP cross healing. A player should only be able to have one instance of any HoT on them at any time IMO. That would also mean much fewer calculations for the server to process.

But dang, the diagram you posted is absolutely hilarious! Thanks.

Freilauftomate · January 26

Biggest problem for me is the shrinking population in Cyrodiil. A direct consequence of performance issues, bugs and no real hope for improvement.

With the right amount of players online at the same time, every alliance would have plenty of tools to win against every playstyle. But we don't.

I am not against adjusting the game in an effort to find a good balance, i just don't think heals are too strong. And i don't think changing them would have the effect on performance some people are hoping for. They even tested what would happen if you were only allowed to heal groupmembers, and they changed it back.

Iriidius · February 2

Of course a 12 man organized group will naturally always have an advantage over 12 PuGs or randoms, but synergys, healstacking, groupbuffstacking artificially make this advantage incredible much bigger than it already is and propbably the difference between a ballgroup needing 18-24 or 30-60 players to defeat and ballgroup players still pretend that these artificial advantages doesn't even exists/matters and they are only winning by skill/advantage.
A solo player with the healstacks, groupbuffs and synergys would probably be almost emperor strength and able to 1vX players better than himself and players would call him op and a cheater. For some reason any nerf to ballgroups has to be the magickal solution to make ballgroups weak as randoms or nonexistent and otherwise considered useless or counterproductive althought this goal is unrealistic and not wanted even by most ballgroup critics and few problems consisting of multiple skill(line)s and sets can get fixed by a single nerf. Ballgroups overperform in multiple ways thanks to multiple mechanics(groupbuffsets, groupbuffskills, healstacking, synergys), so multiple nerfs will be needed to make them balanced. But every nerf to ballgroups would be a good start and improvement. Most OP classes also needed multiple nerfs to get balanced( or another class got multiple buffs and dethroned it), but at the end they were not OP anymore after multiple nerfs.

IZZEFlameLash wrote: »

Nerf healstacking? Now you have a ballgroup running with self-heals and AoE burst heals while being able to sustain themselves far better than smaller group of people can and deal amazing damage.

Nerf damage? Ballgroup still wins. Nerf resistances? Ballgroup still wins. Unable to group? Ballgroup still wins. 12 1vx builds are still better than 1 1vx build. And keep in mind, people playing in groups are not static NPCs. They will adapt because they are human beings with almost equally knowledgeable people theorycrafting together.

Also, performance issue, this is something that needs to be fixed from ground up. You don't have to be in Cyrodiil to experience the general performance degradation. Solo, 4-men instances in PvE can have same performance degradation as well. Especially more noticeable when there had not been a maintenance. Doubt nerfing ballgroups will save the performance at all, because solo instances and 4 men instances are not ballgroup environment and can still have issues.

Having said that, imho, the most realistic solution is to push for better performance solution from the studio's end. After all, it was them that advertised the game based off of massive pvp combat as noted by the back of physical case.

Don’t know who really expected and requested to be able to 1v12 a ballgroup, normally best 1vXer cant even 1v12 the 12 worst players in Cyrodiil, 1v12ing a ballgroup is too far from reality to even think about it, when often even the whole faction is unable to kill a ballgroup. Maybe solo players asked to be able to do dmg that is not irrelevant and immediately outhealed to a ballgroup that is already fighting a faction stack. If a bomber does a bomb that would have killed 12 vXer on a ballgroup that is already fighting a faction stack, thanks to crossshielding, defensive group buffs(rallyng cry, transmutation, ozezan, meritorious service etc.) and high hp(35k+) their health wont go below 50% and when his allies followup their burst to finish them off and hit them 1 second later the ballgroup usually has already healed up and shielded again.
A ballgroup is so much stronger than 12 1vXer, they can win against 24 1vXer of equal/higher skill.
Self healing HoTs is much weaker than healstacking and AOE burstheals maybe need to be reworked next, skills giving same effect for same cost as a solo skill to multiple players are OP.
I could also say nerfing NB is useless because 12 NBs will still win against a Necro.

Four_Fingers · February 2

Amazing that GH queues were 60+ last night on PS NA.
Yeah, they killed it - not.

RetPing · February 2

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Amazing that GH queues were 60+ last night on PS NA.
Yeah, they killed it - not.

Since they reduced even more cap on max players that really means nothing.
Want to show big queue? -> reduce max cap. Easy.

Four_Fingers · February 2

That is still 60 plus players already in Cyrodill, twist it how you like.
And that was a DC queue. lol

GooGa592 · February 22

Elendir2am wrote: »

[snip]

The ultra low pop caps of literally 10% of what the original cap was is what's killing Cyrodiil, and it's way worse now with a PvP event in progress.

[edited to remove quote]

Elendir2am · February 22

GooGa592 wrote: »

The ultra low pop caps of literally 10% of what the original cap was is what's killing Cyrodiil, and it's way worse now with a PvP event in progress.

Low pop caps and ball group power creep are interconnected problems.

Tsuriel · February 22

It's getting slightly ridiculous how ballgroups are ruining this PvP event now as we speak, with no means whatsoever on how to counter them

Duke_Falcon · February 22

Cyrodil is a large group siege warfare pvp zone, its the kind of thing thats designed for groups, naturally players are just going to improve their group composition to make it as strong as they can. I usually roll solo, and hate how tough ball groups are, but can't really fault them for what they are doing.

Darethran · February 24

The ballgroups have always been around. It's only an issue because they make up like half of the people playing, since the pop cap is so low. When it was raised, everyone was loving it, and it's really bad that Zenimax didn't bring back the raised cap for the event.

If there were lots of groups going about, a few alpha groups don't matter, as there's so much more going on the map. Rather than the entire faction being stuck in maybe two keep battles tops.

xylena_lazarow · February 24

These threads exist because being a random trying to fight the ball is simply "unfun" for most players.

The main reason it's "unfun" is lack of counterplay. Azureblight exists but is a very narrow specialized build (and it's a miserable farm for the average PvPer). There's only a few siege engines that can make a difference, most are useless. Siege and AoE tools like Negate still require the ball to make a bad mistake at the exact time the randoms get lucky with their placement. Beyond that... yea you're just Zergling #3547 spamming and praying.

That said, don't nerf the ball. Buff counterplay. Start with all the useless siege engines. Oil Catapults could once really mess up the ball because the snare effect could not be trivially dealt with like it is now. Lancers do minimal damage unless you hit something point-blank. Trebs fire extremely slowly, are hard to aim, and get completely bricked by siege bubbles. Ice Trebs in particular have been a meme for a decade. It's well past time underpowered counterplay gets buffed.

Etaniel · February 24

Lmao, checking the forums after years of being gone and guess what ? Ball groups still annoy everyone that isn't in one.

Tsuriel · February 26

Etaniel wrote: »

Lmao, checking the forums after years of being gone and guess what ? Ball groups still annoy everyone that isn't in one.

A typical comment from individuals who cannot see beyond one's own narrow minded spectrum to the point of realising that ballgroups literally ruin PvP for the majority of players, and for years now.

Kordai · February 27

ZOS wants ball groups to be as powerful as they possibly can be. Why do you think they've buffed them constantly and nerfed every single counter. At this point it's basically an open secret.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · February 27

Kordai wrote: »

ZOS wants ball groups to be as powerful as they possibly can be. Why do you think they've buffed them constantly and nerfed every single counter. At this point it's basically an open secret.

^ this

pmn100b16_ESO · February 27

The only thing killing Cyrodil is ZoS and they've been at it for years.

tinythinker · February 28

OBJnoob wrote: »

TechMaybeHic wrote: »

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Maybe ballgroups aren't responsible for the poor performance, diversity, or population. Maybe they are just another symptom. Maybe new/casual/lighthearted players are still coming, and the hardcore vets are still here, but what we're missing is the middle. The middle who used to group more loosely, have fun, but still care about things like taking objectives and campaign score.

Don't know if that's the answer or a meaningful part of an answer, but the bolded part is how I played when I was regularly in Cyrodiil. I liked to run siege and heal defenders and find the ways in which I could engage meaningfully in direct combat. Loooong sieges/siege defenses, and quick hits for strategic purposes were common. Was fun and engaging. Didn't have to worry about constantly farming new gear and keeping up with new builds to avoid getting one-shot constantly. And when a pain train (the forerunner of the ball group) came along, just have allies dump the ground oils you baited them into and watch the AP flow..

tinythinker · February 28

Freilauftomate wrote: »

Cyrodiil was designed for big battles, hundreds of players and countless different playstyles. Unfortunately they keep downsizing everything, and keep taking things out of the game, to make up for performance issues. "Ballgroups" wouldn't be so controversial if they still had massive zergs to fight.

Maybe one day someone will finally fix performance and all the bugs. Then increase max pop and convince players to come back.

Otherwise we might end up alone in our underwear, throwing torchbugs at empty keeps, because everything else would cost too many server resources.

They got rid of the torchbugs in Cyrodiil ages ago