Ball Group Players "Group Queueing" into SOLO Queue Battlegrounds

Markytous · April 7

This is only doable because the queueing pool of players is too small now. 4v4 and 8v8 hasn't been good for match variance, and since there are now only 2 teams and a lower player count overall for BGs ballgroup proccers are gonna be placed on the same team at a higher %chance than before with 3 teams 4v4v4 system. This further proves that the Battlegrounds overhaul has kneecapped PVP and put mini-Cyrodiil ballgroup/zerg simulations as the BG experience. I knew this would happen.

NxJoeyD · August 11

This is still a thing, U46 didn’t address this at all.

Everyone knows the Solo-queue issue; you get a bunch of people to synchronize their queue and they not only end up in the same match but on the same team.

I see this DAILY, it’s the same groups running together in Cyrodill / IC or hanging out in towns like VG or Riften; you can tell the people who are doing this.

And here’s the thing, the only reason they do that is to increase their chances of getting into combat with a less coordinated group of Solos, while they’re unofficially grouped; giving them a serious advantage.

In terms of hard evidence, we don’t have any. Players will just lie and say it’s coincidence but we’ve all seen it or tried it. It’s just another aspect of a poorly designed game mode

Udrath · August 11

As the population gets smaller expect this to get worse. Same thing happens in new world, wow, and a lot of other mmo’s. I wouldn’t be surprised if future mmo’s don’t have pvp because of these type of communities that ruin the randomness of random battleground.

fufu_from_ps4 · August 11

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

I'm no fan of comp groups bullying randoms, but I see zero hard evidence of this. Sometimes they just randomly end up on the same team. If anything, I've been pleasantly surprised to see so many Cyro ball groupers solo in 8v8.

dog you're in a guild that all joins at the same time to get into a lobby. your statement is disingenuous. while it may be true they are not playing like those in the op, they're queuing in togethor for solo lobbies.

zero hard evidence give me a break.

fufu_from_ps4 · August 11

Grega wrote: »

This has been occurring on Xbox NA. Coordinated PVP groups will systematically queue into solo queue, then coordinate their “match pop up” which will indicate they are in the same match (and on an off chance they are in the same match, but in opposing team, they will do what OP describes, intentionally loose).

This systematic coordinate match acceptance pop up abuse is possible due to several reasons, but most importantly due to:

A MMR system that does not work properly & lack of interest in the game mode (BG) resulting in such low population it reduces the actual pool of candidates to amount of a small village (like 25 people etc).

they do it because they have fragile ego's and cant hold an L.

the mmr system in bgs IS atrocious but with such a low player pop its never going to change. we would need to attract new players in, to make a better mmr system. the current mmr system is going to kill bgs tho.

Thumbless_Bot · August 12

Markytous wrote: »

This is only doable because the queueing pool of players is too small now. 4v4 and 8v8 hasn't been good for match variance, and since there are now only 2 teams and a lower player count overall for BGs ballgroup proccers are gonna be placed on the same team at a higher %chance than before with 3 teams 4v4v4 system. This further proves that the Battlegrounds overhaul has kneecapped PVP and put mini-Cyrodiil ballgroup/zerg simulations as the BG experience. I knew this would happen.

This was their intention. If you read between the lines their idea of pvp is being able to just show up, maybe proc roa with the click of one button, disrupt an entire 16 person battle with that one click, and then casually and calmly stroll back to base with a relic or a chaos ball. It's comical.

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/66847

"When looking at two-sided matches, we saw it opened the door for larger teams and bigger maps, plus created an experience that was less intense for some players. Feedback suggested that many 4v4v4 matches ended up turning into two-sided ones, anyway, with teams turning on each other or ganging up on either the winner or loser"

The more you read the article the more you realize the bgs fail on most intentions they had outlined in the article except to kneecap pvp, which, again, Was their intention. In black and white above they basically say they want pvp to be less pvp-ish. It's mind-boggling. Pvp is intense. That's what makes it fun. So, adding it up, they've literally sucked the fun out of bgs.

For example, They wanted bg players to not gang up on either the winner or loser. Spawn camping has become how 95% of bgs now play out. Casuals get repeatedly melted more than ever.

Credit where credit is due; they tried to make bgs better. They just didn't do it. They made them worse for most players. I hope the small community of players having a better time in two team bgs were worth losing old a new players who are not.

evLRise · August 15

Decimus wrote: »

Hello!

I thought I'd make a forum post about this topic and hopefully get an official response on this sort of behaviour... without naming any names, recently there has been an epidemic of people who are known to be part of the same guild that play together in IC, Cyrodiil etc queueing into solo queue battlegrounds to just harass people they don't like as a group. This includes behaviours such as intentionally losing battlegrounds when certain people are in team, hard focusing a certain person in the battleground (often a random person new to PvP who winds up being stuck in spawn getting 4v1'd) etc.

As a ballgroup lead I can say that we tried solo queueing with the whole group into BGs. The system is broken enough that out of 12-14 people we get spread with 4-6 people into a BG at a time, with the rest getting into future queue pops AND obviously the people that make it in are spread into different teams.

The main purpose was to fight against ourselves in sort of "random" teams, but gave up on the idea as it simply doesnt work consistently in any way. Might get decent results 1/5-6 attempts if you are very lucky.

So we dont even try to play with group setups when we BG unless we party queue since it's not worth.

Conclusion: big doubt on OP's claim.

But there again, there's "people" in this thread who are notorious in the community for being overly toxic and making all sorts of threats towards organized players, with plenty of proof that is shut down with aggressive copyright claims and the like whenever the truth sufraces, so be mindful of who's opinion you back up in such scenarios my fellow gamers.

MincMincMinc · August 15

Thumbless_Bot wrote: »

Markytous wrote: »

This is only doable because the queueing pool of players is too small now. 4v4 and 8v8 hasn't been good for match variance, and since there are now only 2 teams and a lower player count overall for BGs ballgroup proccers are gonna be placed on the same team at a higher %chance than before with 3 teams 4v4v4 system. This further proves that the Battlegrounds overhaul has kneecapped PVP and put mini-Cyrodiil ballgroup/zerg simulations as the BG experience. I knew this would happen.

This was their intention. If you read between the lines their idea of pvp is being able to just show up, maybe proc roa with the click of one button, disrupt an entire 16 person battle with that one click, and then casually and calmly stroll back to base with a relic or a chaos ball. It's comical.

https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/post/66847

"When looking at two-sided matches, we saw it opened the door for larger teams and bigger maps, plus created an experience that was less intense for some players. Feedback suggested that many 4v4v4 matches ended up turning into two-sided ones, anyway, with teams turning on each other or ganging up on either the winner or loser"

The more you read the article the more you realize the bgs fail on most intentions they had outlined in the article except to kneecap pvp, which, again, Was their intention. In black and white above they basically say they want pvp to be less pvp-ish. It's mind-boggling. Pvp is intense. That's what makes it fun. So, adding it up, they've literally sucked the fun out of bgs.

For example, They wanted bg players to not gang up on either the winner or loser. Spawn camping has become how 95% of bgs now play out. Casuals get repeatedly melted more than ever.

Credit where credit is due; they tried to make bgs better. They just didn't do it. They made them worse for most players. I hope the small community of players having a better time in two team bgs were worth losing old a new players who are not.

To your points they are trying to address combat power creep "intensity" caused by effect bloat through literally any other method they can think of. Combat is only "intense" for new players because it is so bloated, nothing is comprehensive to outside viewers. Go grab a friend that doesnt play eso. Show them a clip of old dizzy swing long cast knockup and then show them a clip of RoA into warden charm covered in a billion other effect particles and ask them to describe what happened in either clip. New players are faced at learning 4D blindfolded chess compared to what used to be checkers.

Before the game got bloated with proc effects on absolutely every action, player output was determined more based on skill use. So for newer players the only "intense" thing was someone being good at weaving or casting, keeping buffs up, sustaining in smart weaves. Basic player aspects that anyone could improve at. Now a days new players don't see these aspects and they just get blown out of the water by 30x invisible effects going off at once on top of all the previous gameplay mechanics. This disconnect creates a non-starter mindset where they see no possible path forward to learn pvp.

You could probably extrapolate this bloat issue to mmo's in general. As they grow and keep stacking on systems after systems with menus ontop of menus, they simply become way too much of a steep slope to learn. More and more people just mentally won't handle the steep slope. As far as proc sets and effects go, the funny part is they are always argued to be the "accessibility" option to make combat easier for people who cant weave. In reality it only added a layer of difference that made it harder while making the game bloated and harder to learn.

Decimus · August 15

evLRise wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

Hello!

I thought I'd make a forum post about this topic and hopefully get an official response on this sort of behaviour... without naming any names, recently there has been an epidemic of people who are known to be part of the same guild that play together in IC, Cyrodiil etc queueing into solo queue battlegrounds to just harass people they don't like as a group. This includes behaviours such as intentionally losing battlegrounds when certain people are in team, hard focusing a certain person in the battleground (often a random person new to PvP who winds up being stuck in spawn getting 4v1'd) etc.

As a ballgroup lead I can say that we tried solo queueing with the whole group into BGs. The system is broken enough that out of 12-14 people we get spread with 4-6 people into a BG at a time, with the rest getting into future queue pops AND obviously the people that make it in are spread into different teams.

The main purpose was to fight against ourselves in sort of "random" teams, but gave up on the idea as it simply doesnt work consistently in any way. Might get decent results 1/5-6 attempts if you are very lucky.

So we dont even try to play with group setups when we BG unless we party queue since it's not worth.

Conclusion: big doubt on OP's claim.

But there again, there's "people" in this thread who are notorious in the community for being overly toxic and making all sorts of threats towards organized players, with plenty of proof that is shut down with aggressive copyright claims and the like whenever the truth sufraces, so be mindful of who's opinion you back up in such scenarios my fellow gamers.

So in other words what you did was break the Terms of Service quoted on the original post:

5.2 In relation to online/competitive games, you will not exploit any bug, or abuse any game system (such as the scoring or award systems) in a ZeniMax game, Service, forum, or other games or services provided by ZeniMax. You will not intentionally use or share any bug found within any ZeniMax Game, real or fictitious, regardless of whether or not it grants an unfair advantage. You will not directly or indirectly communicate the existence of any such bug to any other user of the ZeniMax Service (in game or on a ZeniMax Service). Report bugs and exploits using the in-game portal or via help.elderscrollsonline.com. Unacceptable behaviors will also include any conduct that is considered by ZeniMax to be cheating (e.g. match fixing and collusion) or other unsportsmanlike conduct such as use of secondary accounts, intentionally losing and bribery.

Your intentions might not have been malicious in this situation, but I wonder what would've happened if there was an "enemy" of your ball group in one of the teams... would that person have been maliciously run down by every ball group member in opponent team while whoever got in his team would not heal the person or help in any way?

You can doubt my claims, but there are a lot of toxic people (as you acknowledge in your post) who would (and do, sometimes) certainly do this.

There is a reason why solo and group queues are separate, I would recommend queueing into the latter if you want to play with friends in order to keep the competition fair in PvP and to avoid breaking the game's ToS.

evLRise · August 16

Decimus wrote: »

So in other words what you did was break the Terms of Service quoted on the original post:

What exact ToS did I break? Queueing into BGs with my friends and hoping most of us would end up in the same game? In which world is asking your friends if they want to play BGs and then queueing to end up against each other in random teams is either a bug or abuse?

What's next? Am I breaking ToS when I see a friend randomly in my team and I say hello? It's unfair advantage because we're solo queue'ing but we are used to playing together, right? God forbid I ask them if they wanna hop on voice while we're at it.

There's a not so fine line between constructive and ridiculous.

If anything the only question to be asked about the mentioned scenarios is why we don't have the possibility of group duels or Private BGs with invite codes in the game already.

And to reitterate - the "abuse" you're speaking off does not work. I would ask someone to show proof, but they can't.

In an 8v8, if you queue together based on my experience, there's a bit more than 50% chance you get in the same BG and slightly lower than 50% chance you get in the same team ( since 1/8 spots is already occupied by you ).

Let's take a 4-man scenario.

That's (1/2*1/2)^4 chance. So yea, assuming that everytime you play BGs there's some mischievous party queueing together to end up in the same team and bully you, it will happen actually happen. Once ... every 256 BGs ( actually 512 if we want to be strict since there's also the chance you end up in the same team ).

Decimus · August 16

evLRise wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

So in other words what you did was break the Terms of Service quoted on the original post:

What exact ToS did I break? Queueing into BGs with my friends and hoping most of us would end up in the same game? In which world is asking your friends if they want to play BGs and then queueing to end up against each other in random teams is either a bug or abuse?

The one I linked, and yes - according to TOS that'd fall under "match fixing and collusion" if you coordinate queue into solo queue.

I'm pretty sure other competitive games have similar rules... Of course the chances of winding up in the same lobby in a game like League or Valorant etc would be significantly lower due to higher populations.

evLRise wrote: »

What's next? Am I breaking ToS when I see a friend randomly in my team and I say hello? It's unfair advantage because we're solo queue'ing but we are used to playing together, right? God forbid I ask them if they wanna hop on voice while we're at it.

There's a not so fine line between constructive and ridiculous.

I shouldn't need to point out, but this is a straw man argument.

There's a big difference between organizing solo queue invasion with other people (possibly to harass someone you don't like) and just randomly coming across your friends in BGs.

evLRise wrote: »

If anything the only question to be asked about the mentioned scenarios is why we don't have the possibility of group duels or Private BGs with invite codes in the game already.

While this would be nice to have, in the meanwhile there is a way to have your own lobbies:
1. Form 2-4 groups, 4 players each.
2. Queue into group queue at the same time.
3. Wait until everyone gets a queue pop (leaders of each group can write + for example or just say something in voice chat). If this doesn't happen, don't accept queue and try again.

Not perfect, but it's a workable solution that doesn't mess with anyone else's BG experience

evLRise wrote: »

And to reitterate - the "abuse" you're speaking off does not work. I would ask someone to show proof, but they can't.

In an 8v8, if you queue together based on my experience, there's a bit more than 50% chance you get in the same BG and slightly lower than 50% chance you get in the same team ( since 1/8 spots is already occupied by you ).

Let's take a 4-man scenario.

That's (1/2*1/2)^4 chance. So yea, assuming that everytime you play BGs there's some mischievous party queueing together to end up in the same team and bully you, it will happen actually happen. Once ... every 256 BGs ( actually 512 if we want to be strict since there's also the chance you end up in the same team ).

Sure, except you don't need a whole 4-man group to get in the same solo queue BG, nor do you even need to get in the same team. Even one person swing is enough to dramatically alter how a solo queue BG plays out.

This is where the whole "collusion" aspect of synchronized queueing into BGs comes in, when people in opposing teams ignore each other because they're part of the same friend group and just spend the whole BG running after someone they don't like who solo queued, or do their best to intentionally lose the BG if in their team.

Personally I've had both scenarios happen to me multiple times over the years and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

If people want to play with (i.e. not against) their friends, they should group queue - simple as that... And the game's TOS concurs with this.

Unholy_Holywarrior · August 16

to fix pvp, remove all the aoe spam, proc sets, and if that book blast skill is to remain that powerful, it should be changed to an ultimate ability. make accuracy great again!

evLRise · August 16

Decimus wrote: »

The one I linked, and yes - according to TOS that'd fall under "match fixing and collusion" if you coordinate queue into solo queue.

That's according to you. There's a difference between according to ToS and according the the interpretation of ToS that suits you the best.

Decimus wrote: »

Sure, except you don't need a whole 4-man group to get in the same solo queue BG, nor do you even need to get in the same team. Even one person swing is enough to dramatically alter how a solo queue BG plays out.

This is where the whole "collusion" aspect of synchronized queueing into BGs comes in, when people in opposing teams ignore each other because they're part of the same friend group and just spend the whole BG running after someone they don't like who solo queued, or do their best to intentionally lose the BG if in their team.

For this kind of behavior you have report functions, as it's clearly an individual player issue. It doesn't really matter too much whether they queue together or not, does it? If one individual wants to troll you in particular, that's doable regardless of whether he has team mates to assist with that in the enemy team or if he intentionally loses in your own team.

Decimus wrote: »

While this would be nice to have, in the meanwhile there is a way to have your own lobbies:
1. Form 2-4 groups, 4 players each.
2. Queue into group queue at the same time.
3. Wait until everyone gets a queue pop (leaders of each group can write + for example or just say something in voice chat). If this doesn't happen, don't accept queue and try again.

So based on your early statement, you're suggesting people break ToS, right? As this is "match fixing".

Decimus wrote: »

Sure, except you don't need a whole 4-man group to get in the same solo queue BG, nor do you even need to get in the same team. Even one person swing is enough to dramatically alter how a solo queue BG plays out.

One more time, if I happen to come across someone I know in my team, is that reportable now? Since we obviously have an unfair advantage, right?

Decimus wrote: »

There's a big difference between organizing solo queue invasion with other people (possibly to harass someone you don't like) and just randomly coming across your friends in BGs.

I fail to see the difference, really. If anything I would be even more inclined to pay more attention to the people I already know, as I definitely see them as a bigger threat.

But at the end of the day, your biggest issue is being harassed. Which I guess is understandable, as it sucks. But there again, this is not possible due to "match fixing". It's something individual related.

Now, if we concluded that harassment is the real topic, I have some random and obviously purely hypothetical scenarios, which in my opinion are way more urgent to address.

Of course, I can't give a particular name for this, but if someone were to, let's say:

- DM people on discord with IRL threats;
- DM people in-game with aggressive trask talk;
- Trashtalk certain people live in front of a twitch audience;
- Ask twitch chat players from your alliance to help you zerg a particular group;
- Have youtube take down a video from such a group because it shows you breaking multiple ToS on live;
- Encourage the community to discriminate against certain people;
- Swear, insult, and otherwise make false assumptions in front of an audience in regards to a certain group due to your bias in regards to the way they choose to play;
- Attack such individuals both personally and from a game perspective;

I think this is the kind of person I'd deal with harshly way before I concern myself with people that queue together with friends.

NxJoeyD · August 16

This is really easy. …

Some people seek to have matches whereby they’re coordinated versus a non coordinated group; giving them an advantage.

Now, BGs are supposed to be group oriented so even if you’re on a squad with randos there’s an underlying assumption that you’re all supposed to have some sort of work together coordination. More often it’s just people going rouge, solo, to go cop kills and treat every match like it’s a “death match” rather than playing the objective and they leave their team out to dry. Thats going to lose all day long and it should.

Now, as for the rest of it; the answer is just to balance builds. So that coordination versus non coordination will still always have an advantage in play but what people won’t be able to do is consolidate metas.

There is a way to accomplish this but we all know the devs would never do it. I don’t know why; but if they would it would solve a lot of issues.

Decimus · August 16

evLRise wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

The one I linked, and yes - according to TOS that'd fall under "match fixing and collusion" if you coordinate queue into solo queue.

That's according to you. There's a difference between according to ToS and according the the interpretation of ToS that suits you the best.

Not according to me, it's literally what reads on the Terms of Service - if you have a problem with that I'd ask ZOS to change the Terms of Service... though I'd say in this case most people wouldn't see anything wrong with that line.

evLRise wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

Sure, except you don't need a whole 4-man group to get in the same solo queue BG, nor do you even need to get in the same team. Even one person swing is enough to dramatically alter how a solo queue BG plays out.

This is where the whole "collusion" aspect of synchronized queueing into BGs comes in, when people in opposing teams ignore each other because they're part of the same friend group and just spend the whole BG running after someone they don't like who solo queued, or do their best to intentionally lose the BG if in their team.

For this kind of behavior you have report functions, as it's clearly an individual player issue. It doesn't really matter too much whether they queue together or not, does it? If one individual wants to troll you in particular, that's doable regardless of whether he has team mates to assist with that in the enemy team or if he intentionally loses in your own team.

Wrong, there is a big difference between one person wanting to "troll" a person and multiple people wanting to do that and abusing the queue system to get into what is supposed to be a solo lobby.

Based on my experience, ball group players don't tend to be very strong players individually and the only time they can meaningfully impact your lobbies is if they're in your team and sitting in the base afk or doing something else that's counter-productive to winning the battleground.

evLRise wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

While this would be nice to have, in the meanwhile there is a way to have your own lobbies:
1. Form 2-4 groups, 4 players each.
2. Queue into group queue at the same time.
3. Wait until everyone gets a queue pop (leaders of each group can write + for example or just say something in voice chat). If this doesn't happen, don't accept queue and try again.

So based on your early statement, you're suggesting people break ToS, right? As this is "match fixing".

Sure, technically it'd also be against the same line in ToS... but the intent matters. If there's no malicious intent then the threshold to enforce the ToS should be a lot lower.

evLRise wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

Sure, except you don't need a whole 4-man group to get in the same solo queue BG, nor do you even need to get in the same team. Even one person swing is enough to dramatically alter how a solo queue BG plays out.

One more time, if I happen to come across someone I know in my team, is that reportable now? Since we obviously have an unfair advantage, right?

I already answered that. If you happen to come across someone, no. If you queue at the same time while coordinating it, yes.

If you're never seen in a solo queue battleground unless you're seen with your whole ball group, it's pretty obvious to anyone what's going on and it should be obvious to the Customer Support as well.

evLRise wrote: »

Decimus wrote: »

There's a big difference between organizing solo queue invasion with other people (possibly to harass someone you don't like) and just randomly coming across your friends in BGs.

I fail to see the difference, really. If anything I would be even more inclined to pay more attention to the people I already know, as I definitely see them as a bigger threat.

But at the end of the day, your biggest issue is being harassed. Which I guess is understandable, as it sucks. But there again, this is not possible due to "match fixing". It's something individual related.

"Being harassed" isn't against the Terms of Service as that is up to interpretation and you need to prove such a thing happening. Just running after someone in PvP with a group isn't reportable as far as I'm aware, nor would I report something ridiculous like that.

"Match fixing and collusion" however is clearly stated in the Terms of Service, just like many other specific actions that have been actioned in the past.

What that behaviour creates is fundamentally change the power dynamics of the solo queue battleground, giving a group of people an unfair advantage over others who didn't coordinate queueing in with their friends.

It's not unlike using an exploit to gain an unfair advantage over people who don't want to break the ToS by using the same exploit.

evLRise wrote: »

Now, if we concluded that harassment is the real topic, I have some random and obviously purely hypothetical scenarios, which in my opinion are way more urgent to address.

Of course, I can't give a particular name for this, but if someone were to, let's say:

- DM people on discord with IRL threats;
- DM people in-game with aggressive trask talk;
- Trashtalk certain people live in front of a twitch audience;
- Ask twitch chat players from your alliance to help you zerg a particular group;
- Have youtube take down a video from such a group because it shows you breaking multiple ToS on live;
- Encourage the community to discriminate against certain people;
- Swear, insult, and otherwise make false assumptions in front of an audience in regards to a certain group due to your bias in regards to the way they choose to play;
- Attack such individuals both personally and from a game perspective;

I think this is the kind of person I'd deal with harshly way before I concern myself with people that queue together with friends.

I don't know what any of that has to do with the thread, I'd recommend contacting Twitch/YouTube/Kick/etc if you have a problem with one of their streamers, or report them in game if they did something you believe is against the Terms of Service.

In the meanwhile, I'd recommend sticking to either group queue or Cyrodiil/IC if you want to run after solo players with your ball group as those are the environments for it.

xylena_lazarow · August 16

Yet another reason we need FFA Deathmatch PvP format!

Moonspawn · August 16

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Yet another reason we need FFA Deathmatch PvP format!

Oh xylena, if only you understood how close to a FFA DM a slightly altered three-teams crazy king and domination could be.

Decimus · August 16

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Yet another reason we need FFA Deathmatch PvP format!

Like a battle royale format? That'd be cool, I think BDO did something similar to that (never played it though).

I just worry there might not be enough player base at the moment... but maybe after cross-platform.

Another problem though is that these formats are notorious for "teaming", they'd have to actually enforce their Terms of Service more rigorously if teaming can be proven.

xylena_lazarow · August 16

Moonspawn wrote: »

Oh xylena, if only you understood how close to a FFA DM a slightly altered three-teams crazy king and domination could be.

Yeah I do it's the thing I said, not 12 guys roleplaying their own rules. I mean like the first Unreal Tournament. You might like it. Chaotic and unpredictable, but still a coherent a balanced game.

Moonspawn · August 16

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

Oh xylena, if only you understood how close to a FFA DM a slightly altered three-teams crazy king and domination could be.

Yeah I do it's the thing I said, not 12 guys roleplaying their own rules. I mean like the first Unreal Tournament. You might like it. Chaotic and unpredictable, but still a coherent a balanced game.

How could you know if I never told you the alterations? How could healers, which are beloved by ZOS, ever participate in your FFA? They'd be able to in mine.

xylena_lazarow · August 16

Moonspawn wrote: »

How could you know if I never told you the alterations? How could healers, which are beloved by ZOS, ever participate in your FFA?

That's the neat part. They don't.

randconfig · August 16

LordSkruff wrote: »

Legit just remove usernames from PvP.

People complain about Tbagging,
It’s personal.

People complain about harassment,
It’s personal.

People complain about verbal abuse,
It’s personal.

Remove the personal aspect from PvP, Suddenly people are treated equally.

There are numerous addons that let you see the other player's username as text in custom UI or the chat box, and addons specifically designed for PVP that let you target other players that are the strongest/need taken down first, so unless ZOS is literally going to overhaul the addon API, then this would not work to stop the alleged behavior. Actually, you'd always have to send the username information to the client for basic game functions to work, unless you maybe encrypt the username on the client... But then how do you tell the server you want to whisper some player, invite them to a party, report, etc... Just sounds like an impossible task.

Better solution would be to modify the queues to try to separate players that share connections (same guild, friends with each other, etc) into separate teams, also to track player performance metrics, so you can detect when they're actively sabotaging a ranked 4v4 match, and then punish them with queue timeout penalties, like other competitive games do.

Jierdanit · August 17

Moonspawn wrote: »

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Moonspawn wrote: »

Oh xylena, if only you understood how close to a FFA DM a slightly altered three-teams crazy king and domination could be.

Yeah I do it's the thing I said, not 12 guys roleplaying their own rules. I mean like the first Unreal Tournament. You might like it. Chaotic and unpredictable, but still a coherent a balanced game.

How could you know if I never told you the alterations? How could healers, which are beloved by ZOS, ever participate in your FFA? They'd be able to in mine.

Healers are the by far most complained about thing in BGs atm from what ive seen, so them not being able to participate is definitely a positive thing.