Joy_Division wrote: »

Urzigurumash wrote: »

All great points JoyDivision. The only one there I disagree with is latency, performance in Main Camp has never been better for us than these past few years. We also had a new console and an update of the game for that new console that might make things different for us in that regard.

A major complication here, when we tie everything you said together, and which might justify some hesitancy to disable RoA in PvP: are VD and RoA somewhat designed to improve server performance? Do they work well to that end? If so, is it just from demotivating stacking, or from helping to keep the pop low due to frustrating players?

Since you genuinely want to have a conversation about this set, I will do my best to answer your questions.

VD was definitely designed to punish stacking, ZOS told us that upfront and players stacking was a much complained topic back in 2015-2016, so much so that ZOS literally asked us on these forums to spread out. You are 100% correct in this.

We can only speculate as to the reason for RoA. The complaints of PvP changed quite a bit since 2015, to say nothing of the very reduced pop caps, which did much to make performance better and make it such that there weren't many people to stack in the first place. If I had to guess, it is a combination of two factors, The first would be the general powercreep we get with every Chapter because ZOS incentives us to buy ESO additions with powerful gear sets. Second would be the unceasing complaints directed at ZOS because of "ball groups." ZOS probably felt an AoE pull would give people a counter against organized group play by designing a set that would forcibly move them to a single spot where they could be nuked down.

That's not wrong in theory. "Ball groups" use this set on each other (as well as when 12v1ing solo players), as it's usually quite effective in pulling in 3 or 4 people who fail to block and secure potential kills.

ZOS gave us Two AoE pulls sets for the Waking Flame DLC in Summer 2021: Rush of Agony and Dark Convergence.

Super, super significant: Rush of Agony was a PvE dropped set. According to ZOS's own admission, where a set drops is its intended audience. As much as I hate RoA, there is a hint of logic to double CCing PvE mobs. I still remember how frustrated our Dragonstar Arena tank was when after pulling in archers and using talons, they would just walk away.

Dark Convergence was released during the same update and was specifically a PvP set, so it was intended to be the PvP pull set. Dark Convergence respected CC immunity. At least in August 2021, ZOS did seem to recognize that certain mechanics should work differently in PvE and PvP.

As was argued by numerous people during that PTS, Dark Convergence was a busted set (it was stronger than RoA). ZOS didn;t really listen, the set went live, and the forums were flooded with complaints about this set because everyone was using it, people were getting pulled through walls and dying en masse. This just goes to show just how strong AoE pulls are even when they respect CC immunity. So ZOS nerfed the set a couple times to its current state where it is merely really good.

Every organized group in the game wanted something better, and RoA, which escaped any nerf because all the fuss was about Dark Convergence, was there waiting for them. So all of them adopted it and haven't looked back since because it's doing everything that the old broken Dark Convergence set did: pull people through walls and killing them en masse.

As to why ZOS remains committed to RoA, we can only speculate. Maybe they just don't want to admit it made it mistake. Maybe they have no clue what's going on night after night in Cyrodiil. Maybe some of them are biased in favor of ball groups because they run in them. Maybe it's because they are so out of touch with PvP, they think RoA is really helping us out against those pesky "ball groups," similarly to how they thought putting a burst heal on a magicka stacking sorcerer shield was a good thing or that running around with a dozen HOTs is a good thing.

I don't think its about server performance because as you point out the latency in the main campaign is much better now than it was say in 2016 (mostly because pop caps are so small). If they really were concerned about latency, then they would reign in the server exploding calculations caused by ball groups spamming HoTs, rapids, AoE shields, etc., rather than empowering these very same ball groups by letting them destroy what few pugs are left, who don;t put nearly as much strain on the servers. Such thinking would be counter-productive.

The Battleground Livestream hosted by ZOS (since taken down) was a real eye opener to me just how unaware ZOS's devs are about what we'll say is the PvP meta or even how PvP is played in 2024-2025. I dont think they realize these organized groups have gotten so powerful they regularly get 70:1 kill ratios or just how reliant "ball groups" are on RoA to get those 70:1 ratios.