The Stack of Death or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the blob

jrkhan · April 2015

Taking note of one of the major changes between Civ IV and Civ V, they completely did away with unit stacking. The strategy had been, place a bunch of units on the same tile, the mechanics always had the strongest unit take damage, and there were huge synergies affecting all units in the stack. Not only would a smaller stack be unable to win, they couldn't even deal meaningful damage.
By disallowing unit stacking, the optimal startegy still involved large numbers working together, but also involved losses to individual units, if the smaller force played adequately.

I think the reason why this change was satisfying, applies to ESO blobs. (A guild that stacks on a single person is a blob)

I am perfectly okay with a large coordinated force ultimately winning against a smaller force, I am not happy if the outcome is predetermined, and with limited ability to inflict damage that is instantly healed due to everyone standing in the same place.

In team sports, standing on top of your teammates is rarely the optimal strategy. I want to see a guild group show me how awesome they are. The current meta is like watching 5 year olds play soccer - everyone chases the ball. (The leader)

We need mechanics that encourage spreading out. Just like other games with pleasing aesthetics encourage spreading out.

There are a lot of things that we could do here, pick one or more of these and spreading out will happen.

Suggestion:
All single target spells and effects automatically hit players within 5 meters of the original target. This should effect players and players' pets only, but not npcs.
All aoes should deal 2x MORE damage to players after the first 6 targets, not half as much.
AOEs should have friendly fire (pvp only) (obvious trolling potential)
Conservation of ninjitsu, your effectiveness (damage output/healing) should be inversely proportional to how many ninjas (players) are standing within 5 m
Give players damage buffs for flanking.
Situational collision detection between players. (After x seconds of standing on top of another player moving at similar velocity, both players are set off balance)

When I see a tightly stacked blob, I want to see free AP
When I see a guild of 24+ people working together effectively, I do not want to see 5 year olds playing soccer.

I find it highly surprising that ZOS would try to encourage players spreading out by half measures. I'm glad there are more reasons to go to dolmens/delves but it doesn't address the core of the issue. The game rewards stacking more than it penalizes it. That should change.

jrkhan · April 2015

General Jack D. Ripper wrote:

Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to blobbing in Thomblade, why, there are guilds underway to blob in Chillrend, Hadreus, Azura's Star, ice cream, er.., Blackwater Blade? Blackwater Blade, Mandrake, non-veterans's pvp.

iseko · April 2015

jrkhan wrote: »

Suggestion:
All single target spells and effects automatically hit players within 5 meters of the original target. This should effect players and players' pets only, but not npcs.
All aoes should deal 2x MORE damage to players after the first 6 targets, not half as much.
AOEs should have friendly fire (pvp only) (obvious trolling potential)
Conservation of ninjitsu, your effectiveness (damage output/healing) should be inversely proportional to how many ninjas (players) are standing within 5 m
Give players damage buffs for flanking.
Situational collision detection between players. (After x seconds of standing on top of another player moving at similar velocity, both players are set off balance)

Suggestion1: add MORE aoe to the game? The bomb squads are using proxy det like mad. The very skill that was supposed to BREAK trains.
Suggestion2: see suggestion 1 comment...
Suggestion3: dmg based on number of friendlies around you? We will all be ganking our way through cyrodiil then. Reduce group size to 12 seems more efficient.
Suggestion4: impossible me thinks. The client has enough trouble pintpointing enemy players let alone which direction they are facing. Was the same problem with directional blocking. Not a bad idea but not possible due to real life limitations.
Suggestion5: see suggestion 4

deepseamk20b14_ESO · April 2015

Friendly fire? Lol, no. Sorry I don't agree with any of your suggestions.

NoRefunds · April 2015

simply reduce max group size to 12 players and it will be harder for those guys to do their zergball of death which makes pvp unplayable for normal players

xylena · April 2015

(1) lower the target cap and raise the cost of barrier and purge

(2) there needs to be siege or ability aoe that amplifies based on number of targets hit... hit 2 enemies and its 2k dmg each, but hit a full raid of 24 enemies, they take 24k dmg each... stacking will still have its benefits, but with amped aoe it will also carry severe risk... as it stands now, zergblob tactics have the lowest risk and highest reward of anything in pvp

Kas · April 2015

simply lower the AP gain for groups.
if 24 players killing 24 players get no more than a player winnign a 1v1, that's when blobs will disappear

right now, it is actually beneficial to my AP/h if 10 bad players are added to a group of, say, 3 great players (and me, whatever quality that may be).

exiledtyrant · April 2015

I'd like to see siege damage back. It forced smart play.

Kas · April 2015

exiledtyrant wrote: »

I'd like to see siege damage back. It forced smart play.

it didn't. it encouraged putting up a fire treb behind your entire faction's army

iseko · April 2015

Kas wrote: »

simply lower the AP gain for groups.
if 24 players killing 24 players get no more than a player winnign a 1v1, that's when blobs will disappear

right now, it is actually beneficial to my AP/h if 10 bad players are added to a group of, say, 3 great players (and me, whatever quality that may be).

A lot of people dont care about AP

jrkhan · April 2015

iseko wrote: »

Suggestion4: impossible me thinks. The client has enough trouble pintpointing enemy players let alone which direction they are facing. Was the same problem with directional blocking. Not a bad idea but not possible due to real life limitations.
Suggestion5: see suggestion 4

Not to be rude, but.. well, I've been to one world fair, a picnic, and a rodeo, and that's the stupidest thing I ever heard come over a set of earphones. You sure you can even code?
You are aware that sneak attacks only auto crit when attacking from sides/behind, right? I'm fairly certain that the fact that directional blocking has not been implemented has little to do with technical limitations.
Also, you may wish to use tab targeting, the client itself has no troule targeting enemy players. If you're having frame rate issues, you can blame the client. If you have trouble aiming, that's a combination of lag and user error.
So..I'll take your opinion on 4 - 5 with a grain of fluoride.

If you don't understand how an ability that deals more damage per player the more people it hits, would impact players who tightly stack.. then I'm not sure it's worth having this conversation.
Look, you have a choice, you can either be the aoe that dealt 10 thousand damage, or the aoe that scaled up to 150k when it hits 30 people. One of those will wipe a blob, the other will be healed instantly by a blob.

Such a doomsday device would be an adequate deterrent to blobing for reasons that should now be clear.

---
Are you aware of how small 5 meters is in game?
If you are standing in a glob of friendlies (within 5 meters), and you are moderately debuffed, then how exactly does this promote ganking?
Reducing group size to 12 would have 0 impact on blobs of 40 people.

To elaborate on friendly AOE, the idea is clearly just insane. Now, if you instead made it a targeted ability.. then you have some interesting opportunities:
Instant cast ability, costs 4k stamina: For the next 5 seconds, the targets in the effected area also take damage from friendly aoe abilities.

I think one or more of these changes (or something similar) are necessary for the sanctity of our bodily fluids.

Baconlad · May 2015

Yeah! Lets encourage more small group play! While were at it, just break cyrodil into ten mini instanced battlegrounds and only allow ten players at a time in! Just what I want to see! J/K....lets not. This is a massive battleground with magical effects and aoe damage where you don't die from one arrow and can just heal yourself. So...this is what a "real life battleground would probably look like. Stacks on people rushing in and doing the most damage possible to smaller groups...effectively wiping said smaller groups. It takes coordination, and they should not take that away. There are two things you can do, either get a good pvp guild and blob yourself, or go solo roaming and accomplish nothing for the greater good.
oh and you're really comparing soccer to eso pvp?! Tell that to four man blobs teams in urban warfare tactics. Their more organized than in eso...and can't do the aoe damage...but that sir is a real life blob that works VERY well. Four dudes nut to butt going into a room in about a seconds time before the enemy can even decide to raise his weapon, he's dead...

ToRelax · May 2015

Baconlad wrote: »

Yeah! Lets encourage more small group play! While were at it, just break cyrodil into ten mini instanced battlegrounds and only allow ten players at a time in! Just what I want to see! J/K....lets not. This is a massive battleground with magical effects and aoe damage where you don't die from one arrow and can just heal yourself. So...this is what a "real life battleground would probably look like. Stacks on people rushing in and doing the most damage possible to smaller groups...effectively wiping said smaller groups. It takes coordination, and they should not take that away. There are two things you can do, either get a good pvp guild and blob yourself, or go solo roaming and accomplish nothing for the greater good.
oh and you're really comparing soccer to eso pvp?! Tell that to four man blobs teams in urban warfare tactics. Their more organized than in eso...and can't do the aoe damage...but that sir is a real life blob that works VERY well. Four dudes nut to butt going into a room in about a seconds time before the enemy can even decide to raise his weapon, he's dead...

Yes, we should all stack on each other because it's skillful play and needs awesome organization, those small groups don't help us win our campaign anyway, always running away when it starts lagging a bit...

k2blader · May 2015

jrkhan wrote: »

When I see a tightly stacked blob, I want to see free AP
When I see a guild of 24+ people working together effectively, I do not want to see 5 year olds playing soccer.

Cute analogy. To be honest I don't see blobs much anymore, just zergs. If there are still guilds (?) blobbing there's no reason another good defending guild couldn't manage breaking them.

iseko · May 2015

People will play how they want. Some people will make small 4 man ganking groups. Some people just zerg. Some people join guilds and group up. Some will spam aoe and some will not.

If you don't like it then I suggest a nice offline game is more your style. Less interaction with real players. More interaction with predictable AI you can go farm.

One thing I will say: they should introduce arena style pvp. 1v1, 2v2, etc. So small scale pvpers get something they like. But they should not force people to play in cyrodiil the way YOU like it. That is just selfish.

jrkhan · May 2015

@Iseko @Baconlad You seem to be mistaking dislike of a specific tactic for dislike of large scale pvp. No one was suggesting that large groups Of N size shouldn't be able to be effectively play together.

I enjoy RvR, and have since DAoC. Also played WAR, but I think tri-realm works better.
Both games rewarded large groups working together.

Neither game supported this kind of stacking. DAoC had instant cast aoe cc that was only breakable at high realm ranks, and WAR had collision detection.

This game needs a way (or more readily accessible ways) to prevent this particular tactic from being as effective.

If I wanted battlegrounds or arenas, I'd play one of the numerous games that had those features. That isn't the solution to this problem.

@k2blader
I reguarly (though perhaps not as often?) still see the tactic of everyone (24+ players) stacking tightly and moving together.
I'm sure this can be effectively countered by other coordinated guilds. But the tactic is simplistic, and given the detrimental effects on server performance, I still think more effective counters to stacking might be appropriate.

Cherryblossom · May 2015

jrkhan wrote: »

Are you aware of how small 5 meters is in game?
If you are standing in a glob of friendlies (within 5 meters), and you are moderately debuffed, then how exactly does this promote ganking?

Whilst I don't disagree greatly with your aims here!
I think you are missing the fact there are a lot of melee fighters, so if one guy is being attacked by 5 people in close combat, under your plan he will be doing much more damage to them.
We cannot avoid the fact their are players in the game who's skill and set up allows them to solo X amount of players, your suggestion for more damage done based on numbers around them, will turn them into virtual gods!

I think all of these idea's to remove Zergs are wrong, they distracting from the actual issue that ZOS cannot make the game function when their are large groups and great many skills being used. This is the actual problem that has to be addressed.

jrkhan · May 2015

@Cherryblossom Your point is one I had considered. I should probably elaborate so intent is clear. First point (mostly made for the sake of discussion) You could easily have 4 melee players in 5m range of a single target, while all teammates are 7+ meters apart from one another.

Of course, requiring such positioning for melee is probably not practical. So, second point:
This is the sort of debuff that should scale based on number of nearby friendlies, not necessarily linearly.
E.g. standing on top of 3 friendlies? You are 0% less effective (debuff hasn't even kicked in yet). Standing on top of 25 of your closest friends? 30% debuff.

Even if the game ran flawlessly with blob vs blob combat, I'd still like to see these sorts of mechanics go in. Stacking needs to have some drawback that scales with the number of players in the stack.