[PODCAST] Dracast - Episode 6: The Bashening - How to adapt to change.

Vilestride

Derra wrote: »

Yeah i´m missing the change for grpsize and heals in that because as it reads it´s only about destrotrains continuing their circlesnip party with the new system making it even less attractive to join cyrodiil for players like me.

Cut grpsize to 6. No more aoe heals outside of grp. No more buffs outside of grp.

Get rid of stick to crown training wheels.

Sorry to hear you didn't like any of the ideas. I thought we were actually quite mindful to all size groups and their relevance within map play. The entire sections about changing the scoring values and adding more meaning to smaller objectives was all about separating Large groups (zergs) from smaller ones. Creating meaningful map game play for small groups in the hope that it resulted in the opposition for those groups being of a relative size.

It's our thinking that objectives like towns and resources are intended objectives for small co-ordinates teams and that ideally those objectives are where small groups could fight each other. It should be punishing to send a 24 man stack to take a farm in the regard that a 24 man could be more productive taking an objective like a keep.

jimijac0me

Derra wrote: »

Yeah i´m missing the change for grpsize and heals in that because as it reads it´s only about destrotrains continuing their circlesnip party with the new system making it even less attractive to join cyrodiil for players like me.

Cut grpsize to 6. No more aoe heals outside of grp. No more buffs outside of grp.

Get rid of stick to crown training wheels.

Lol, get rid of anything but what you do? Cutting heals to only group will just make bigger groups but you know, you got this. Cutting group size to 6 will counter this in theory but trust me, raids will just have multiple crowns instead Like cutting purge and rapids to only group helped? People need heals outside of group more than they think, just like purge and rapids

Etaniel

jimijac0me wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Yeah i´m missing the change for grpsize and heals in that because as it reads it´s only about destrotrains continuing their circlesnip party with the new system making it even less attractive to join cyrodiil for players like me.

Cut grpsize to 6. No more aoe heals outside of grp. No more buffs outside of grp.

Get rid of stick to crown training wheels.

Lol, get rid of anything but what you do? Cutting heals to only group will just make bigger groups but you know, you got this. Cutting group size to 6 will counter this in theory but trust me, raids will just have multiple crowns instead Like cutting purge and rapids to only group helped? People need heals outside of group more than they think, just like purge and rapids

Whether cutting group size is a good idea or not, I think too many people overestimate the ability of most large groups to adapt to a multiple crown scenario. I think it would be way too tedious and most would make independent smaller groups instead of groups following each other. And I think that is precisely the objective in mind when people ask for smaller group sizes.

oh and @Vilestride and @Ishammael

Derra

Vilestride wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Yeah i´m missing the change for grpsize and heals in that because as it reads it´s only about destrotrains continuing their circlesnip party with the new system making it even less attractive to join cyrodiil for players like me.

Cut grpsize to 6. No more aoe heals outside of grp. No more buffs outside of grp.

Get rid of stick to crown training wheels.

Sorry to hear you didn't like any of the ideas. I thought we were actually quite mindful to all size groups and their relevance within map play. The entire sections about changing the scoring values and adding more meaning to smaller objectives was all about separating Large groups (zergs) from smaller ones. Creating meaningful map game play for small groups in the hope that it resulted in the opposition for those groups being of a relative size.

It's our thinking that objectives like towns and resources are intended objectives for small co-ordinates teams and that ideally those objectives are where small groups could fight each other. It should be punishing to send a 24 man stack to take a farm in the regard that a 24 man could be more productive taking an objective like a keep.

I liked some of the ideas - but without a change to grpsize and the resulting fights dynamics it just reads as a largegrp want to dominate everything even more than they already do pamphlet.

I´ve stated a few times that some people that never played it seem to misinterpret me disliking large groups as a dislike for largescale pvp.
It´s not. Largescale pvp is what i enjoy tremendously.
I just believe that large groups are directly harmful to enjoyable largescale pvp for anyone but those large groups.

TL:DR
IMO
largescale with smallgrp = good
largescale with largegrp = bad

Ishammael

Vilestride wrote: »

Ishammael wrote: »

I am seeing this thread 6 months after. Note that I no longer play ESO (although I know most everyone that has commented in this thread), so take it for what its worth.

Couple of comments:
1. The issues/suggestions raised in the first post are good. Unfortunately, various forms of the same ideas have been proposed over the years. They have not been implemented.
2. Near the end of my time playing, I knew a huge range of players across all PvP factions. I played on all sides. It was good and bad. Certainly it helped reinforce how small the ESO PvP community really was.
3. As was predicted when the Crown Store launched... ESO is the Crown Store now. Because it is their sole source of revenue, they must focus on it. Obviously this is detrimental to the game (as has been demonstrated across many many games over the last two decades).
4. I still linger and look for stuff like this (and some form of response) because ESO is a phenomenal PvP game. My hope always was that they would expand and continue adding new features. New PvP stuff only goes in once or so per year.

Anyway, always enjoy your videos. Best of luck.




(Now I'm off to go watch @Etaniel famous "Lords of Cyrodiil" and "Genocide" videos and relive the glory days)

Don't forget baguette news.

haha I had forgotten

Venom4You

Awesome podcast guys! Very thoughtful and fair discussion involving every kind of player in Cyrodiil. More people should watch this and participate in the discussion. Cyrodiils redesign is long overdue and ZOS hopefully will pay more attention to such dedicated feedback. Keep them coming - great work!

I especially like the suggested changes for campaign scoring and reward system. Thats something ZOS really needs to look into because the current system has been complete trash since launch (or at least since they banned master weapons as only meaningful reward).

I have always been against an account wide alliance lock, but the way you suggested the implementation convinced me and I could live with it.

Your approach on buffing keep NPCs could be helpful to reduce the effectiveness of night capping and ap farming by capping a map which is lacking enemy players. I suggest the following: A system should be implemented which comes into place when a certain alliance is rapidly taking several keeps (happens in off-hours only anyway). In every remaining inner keep of the dominated faction, a behemoth NPC should spawn, with health and dmg potential similiar to a vTrial boss (here: onehits possible when not blocking/dodging certain abilities). The keep can only be flipped AFTER the NPC is dead. People who like to pvdoor in off hours thereby would have to deal with some serious resistance and show that they manage to bring up enough coordination when planning on flipping the entire map.

frozywozy

Derra wrote: »

Yeah i´m missing the change for grpsize and heals in that because as it reads it´s only about destrotrains continuing their circlesnip party with the new system making it even less attractive to join cyrodiil for players like me.

Cut grpsize to 6. No more aoe heals outside of grp. No more buffs outside of grp.

Get rid of stick to crown training wheels.

Or, go play battlegrounds if you don't like Openworld Large Scale PvP (Cyrodiil). You are saying that you enjoy large scale PvP but not large groups. Sorry to disappoint you but your scenario of every player doing a 1v1 next to each other is not going to happen. This is not a movie, this is a video game.

Nihility42

@ZOS_GinaBruno

Hire this guy. Or buy him a coffee for his ideas since that seems to be the extent of your PVP budget.

Vilestride

Derra wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Yeah i´m missing the change for grpsize and heals in that because as it reads it´s only about destrotrains continuing their circlesnip party with the new system making it even less attractive to join cyrodiil for players like me.

Cut grpsize to 6. No more aoe heals outside of grp. No more buffs outside of grp.

Get rid of stick to crown training wheels.

Sorry to hear you didn't like any of the ideas. I thought we were actually quite mindful to all size groups and their relevance within map play. The entire sections about changing the scoring values and adding more meaning to smaller objectives was all about separating Large groups (zergs) from smaller ones. Creating meaningful map game play for small groups in the hope that it resulted in the opposition for those groups being of a relative size.

It's our thinking that objectives like towns and resources are intended objectives for small co-ordinates teams and that ideally those objectives are where small groups could fight each other. It should be punishing to send a 24 man stack to take a farm in the regard that a 24 man could be more productive taking an objective like a keep.

I liked some of the ideas - but without a change to grpsize and the resulting fights dynamics it just reads as a largegrp want to dominate everything even more than they already do pamphlet.

I´ve stated a few times that some people that never played it seem to misinterpret me disliking large groups as a dislike for largescale pvp.
It´s not. Largescale pvp is what i enjoy tremendously.
I just believe that large groups are directly harmful to enjoyable largescale pvp for anyone but those large groups.

TL:DR
IMO
largescale with smallgrp = good
largescale with largegrp = bad

You are obviously entitled to not enjoy large group play. I just don't think it's fair to opt for its removal completely considering there are many people for whom it is their favorite mode of play. Myself included. I don't play this game anymore because I enjoy the way it plays. I exclusively play this game to play with the large group of people I get to play with. I have participated in all styles of gameplay throughout my time and for me at least nothing is as satisfying as large group. There is no in game experience I have had that can trump the feeling of 12 people all working in perfect coordination, communicating. Sacrificing their personal ego to be part of the collective and employing teamwork to achieve success in seemingly impossible situations. For me there is no aspect of the game that provides those feelings as well as large group gameplay does and I trust ZoS is aware this is true for many people and they will not likely ever compromise that.

Vilestride

I am curious, exactly which of our suggestions do you feel will be buffs to large groups? Or is it simple the lack of suggesting group size reduction you were unhappy with?

idk

Lol. This thread takes the account locked campaigns future in that it locks the entire account regardless of campaign to a single faction. Lol.

Good thing Zos already corrected the original error on having us locked to a single faction per campaign long ago and isn’t going to revert and even make it worse. Good try.

Etaniel

frozywozy wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Yeah i´m missing the change for grpsize and heals in that because as it reads it´s only about destrotrains continuing their circlesnip party with the new system making it even less attractive to join cyrodiil for players like me.

Cut grpsize to 6. No more aoe heals outside of grp. No more buffs outside of grp.

Get rid of stick to crown training wheels.

Or, go play battlegrounds if you don't like Openworld Large Scale PvP (Cyrodiil). You are saying that you enjoy large scale PvP but not large groups. Sorry to disappoint you but your scenario of every player doing a 1v1 next to each other is not going to happen. This is not a movie, this is a video game.

No, he's saying, and I agree 100% with him, that he'd rather have fights spread around the entire map with groups of 5-12 fighting it out instead of 200 people in a keep, with a bomb squad rolling in and farming for 30, while subsequently making the entire server lag because the guild group isn't dying, and the pugs are rezzing.

Taonnor

Is @ZOS_BrianWheeler still alive and working on PvP?

Agrippa_Invisus

Taonnor wrote: »

Is @ZOS_BrianWheeler still alive and working on PvP?

We, as a community, only ask this out of concern for his safety and well being. The PVP family just want our senior relative home safely, hence the senior alert we feel needs to be sent out.

Vilestride

idk wrote: »

Lol. This thread takes the account locked campaigns future in that it locks the entire account regardless of campaign to a single faction. Lol.

Good thing Zos already corrected the original error on having us locked to a single faction per campaign long ago and isn’t going to revert and even make it worse. Good try.

We're not suggesting it be reverted and we are not suggesting a faction lock. We are suggesting a compromise where the player only receives campaign related rewards for playing on the faction and campaign they pledged to for that cycle. It in no way inhibits you from playing cross alliance. You are just more incentivized to not do so.

usmcjdking

I actually like the ideas but not in the context that was given. The patch notes, the post and the discussion did not lend to me understanding why more people will go into Cyrodiil to fight.

I'm with Derra on this one. From the outside looking in and not having spent much more than 10 minutes pontificating (so take it for what it's worth) the suggested changes are aimed more towards having the winner win harder and the losers lose more(r?). You are incentivizing people to win the campaign - you are not incentivizing people to fight. Nothing in that discussion makes me want to go fight other players any more or less than I currently do.

The changes you are looking for need to incentivize fighting players.

Vilestride

usmcjdking wrote: »

I actually like the ideas but not in the context that was given. The patch notes, the post and the discussion did not lend to me understanding why more people will go into Cyrodiil to fight.

I'm with Derra on this one. From the outside looking in and not having spent much more than 10 minutes pontificating (so take it for what it's worth) the suggested changes are aimed more towards having the winner win harder and the losers lose more(r?). You are incentivizing people to win the campaign - you are not incentivizing people to fight. Nothing in that discussion makes me want to go fight other players any more or less than I currently do.

The changes you are looking for need to incentivize fighting players.

While it is true that these proposals are oriented around map gameplay changes, I would ask what better way is there to improve the 'fighting ' in cyrodil? Given that the majority of fighting is done over objectives I'd say it's a great place to start.

Granted one counter proposal so far is that group size would better affect combat. even though I disagree with that it is not to say its wrong. That being said the proposal of changing the existing objectives so that they are better intended for fighting between small groups hardly seems proposterous nor do I think it would fail in improving the general fighting.

If a keep and a resource are worth the same its no wonder 4 man groups who strategically attempt to take them get zerged down by full raids. It is in changing this hierarchy of priority that I think we can begin to improve general combat.

Note that we also are not talking about actual combat balances. That is a whole other beast. We want to start with discussion of the core gameplay. Which is un arguably objective based. And rightfully so.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

usmcjdking wrote: »

I actually like the ideas but not in the context that was given. The patch notes, the post and the discussion did not lend to me understanding why more people will go into Cyrodiil to fight.

I'm with Derra on this one. From the outside looking in and not having spent much more than 10 minutes pontificating (so take it for what it's worth) the suggested changes are aimed more towards having the winner win harder and the losers lose more(r?). You are incentivizing people to win the campaign - you are not incentivizing people to fight. Nothing in that discussion makes me want to go fight other players any more or less than I currently do.

The changes you are looking for need to incentivize fighting players.

The changes actually give an incentive to spreading fights around the map as resources have a real impact and take time to regain their points value. Additionally if players focus on one keep too much they will lose others leading to further loss of points. Campaign play has always been the way to spread fights out more. The only reason people turtle into keeps is to get the tick / because they don't know any better. If you look at the topics we covered the general aims are 1) focusing on giving a reason to care about the campaign score because that promotes a lot of good gameplay. 2) giving less impact to numbers and nightcapping and 3) more depth of mechanics. By definition incentivising winning the campaign promotes fighting especially with a shorter timer (5m during primetime) players would have to fight and hold keeps and resources to make score.

With the group size argument, i'd say that comes more under combat balancing which we haven't covered. I can agree with some points that group size could potentially be due a change however the only really strong argument for this in my eyes is because of the server population being lower now then it was at launch. 24 man is a larger % of the overall population thus in order to spread fights out smaller groups may be beneficial. I would argue that lower than 12 would be fairly detrimental imo. I disagree completely with limiting healing and support to within groups personally because I feel like that would put the majority of players at an overall disadvantage.

frozywozy

Etaniel wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Yeah i´m missing the change for grpsize and heals in that because as it reads it´s only about destrotrains continuing their circlesnip party with the new system making it even less attractive to join cyrodiil for players like me.

Cut grpsize to 6. No more aoe heals outside of grp. No more buffs outside of grp.

Get rid of stick to crown training wheels.

Or, go play battlegrounds if you don't like Openworld Large Scale PvP (Cyrodiil). You are saying that you enjoy large scale PvP but not large groups. Sorry to disappoint you but your scenario of every player doing a 1v1 next to each other is not going to happen. This is not a movie, this is a video game.

No, he's saying, and I agree 100% with him, that he'd rather have fights spread around the entire map with groups of 5-12 fighting it out instead of 200 people in a keep, with a bomb squad rolling in and farming for 30, while subsequently making the entire server lag because the guild group isn't dying, and the pugs are rezzing.

What you described is exactly what is discussed in the video. Spreading out the fight.

frozywozy

usmcjdking wrote: »

I actually like the ideas but not in the context that was given. The patch notes, the post and the discussion did not lend to me understanding why more people will go into Cyrodiil to fight.

I'm with Derra on this one. From the outside looking in and not having spent much more than 10 minutes pontificating (so take it for what it's worth) the suggested changes are aimed more towards having the winner win harder and the losers lose more(r?). You are incentivizing people to win the campaign - you are not incentivizing people to fight. Nothing in that discussion makes me want to go fight other players any more or less than I currently do.

The changes you are looking for need to incentivize fighting players.

A vast majority of the points discussed in this video are there to encourage people to keep playing for their faction even though they are in the last place on the scoreboard. For example, daily rewards (pvp money maker) for the faction who have gathered the most points for the day.

I am really speechless in regards to the opinion of most people in this thread who disagree on some very major and important concepts discussed in the video. It just feels like they haven't watched the whole thing and then come here to comment anyway.

Derra

frozywozy wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Yeah i´m missing the change for grpsize and heals in that because as it reads it´s only about destrotrains continuing their circlesnip party with the new system making it even less attractive to join cyrodiil for players like me.

Cut grpsize to 6. No more aoe heals outside of grp. No more buffs outside of grp.

Get rid of stick to crown training wheels.

Or, go play battlegrounds if you don't like Openworld Large Scale PvP (Cyrodiil). You are saying that you enjoy large scale PvP but not large groups. Sorry to disappoint you but your scenario of every player doing a 1v1 next to each other is not going to happen. This is not a movie, this is a video game.

Care to explain to me where i said i want every player to 1v1 besides each other?

I could bring up examples to reinforce my point - but then you´d either be unable to understand them or you intentionally misinterpret and overexaggerate what i´m saying to make it sound rediculous because you currently play in a large group and have something to lose.

usmcjdking

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

I actually like the ideas but not in the context that was given. The patch notes, the post and the discussion did not lend to me understanding why more people will go into Cyrodiil to fight.

I'm with Derra on this one. From the outside looking in and not having spent much more than 10 minutes pontificating (so take it for what it's worth) the suggested changes are aimed more towards having the winner win harder and the losers lose more(r?). You are incentivizing people to win the campaign - you are not incentivizing people to fight. Nothing in that discussion makes me want to go fight other players any more or less than I currently do.

The changes you are looking for need to incentivize fighting players.

The changes actually give an incentive to spreading fights around the map as resources have a real impact and take time to regain their points value. Additionally if players focus on one keep too much they will lose others leading to further loss of points. Campaign play has always been the way to spread fights out more. The only reason people turtle into keeps is to get the tick / because they don't know any better. If you look at the topics we covered the general aims are 1) focusing on giving a reason to care about the campaign score because that promotes a lot of good gameplay. 2) giving less impact to numbers and nightcapping and 3) more depth of mechanics. By definition incentivising winning the campaign promotes fighting especially with a shorter timer (5m during primetime) players would have to fight and hold keeps and resources to make score.

With the group size argument, i'd say that comes more under combat balancing which we haven't covered. I can agree with some points that group size could potentially be due a change however the only really strong argument for this in my eyes is because of the server population being lower now then it was at launch. 24 man is a larger % of the overall population thus in order to spread fights out smaller groups may be beneficial. I would argue that lower than 12 would be fairly detrimental imo. I disagree completely with limiting healing and support to within groups personally because I feel like that would put the majority of players at an overall disadvantage.

I mean I see what you guys are saying.

I also think you are either discounting or unaware of the impact this will have on your average garden variety farmed pugvegetable. The average cyro pug will not see a spread out map. They will see multiple guild groups running over pugs uncontested because no one can effectively mass enough forces in a single location without paying a huge price.

And because of that, guilds and coordinated groups have a much more lasting and pronounced effect against an enemy faction while the pug's primary effect has been whittled down significantly.

I'm reading this as more available space to destrofarm ungrouped players, not provide more engaging & competetive fights across the map.

Vilestride

usmcjdking wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

usmcjdking wrote: »

I actually like the ideas but not in the context that was given. The patch notes, the post and the discussion did not lend to me understanding why more people will go into Cyrodiil to fight.

I'm with Derra on this one. From the outside looking in and not having spent much more than 10 minutes pontificating (so take it for what it's worth) the suggested changes are aimed more towards having the winner win harder and the losers lose more(r?). You are incentivizing people to win the campaign - you are not incentivizing people to fight. Nothing in that discussion makes me want to go fight other players any more or less than I currently do.

The changes you are looking for need to incentivize fighting players.

The changes actually give an incentive to spreading fights around the map as resources have a real impact and take time to regain their points value. Additionally if players focus on one keep too much they will lose others leading to further loss of points. Campaign play has always been the way to spread fights out more. The only reason people turtle into keeps is to get the tick / because they don't know any better. If you look at the topics we covered the general aims are 1) focusing on giving a reason to care about the campaign score because that promotes a lot of good gameplay. 2) giving less impact to numbers and nightcapping and 3) more depth of mechanics. By definition incentivising winning the campaign promotes fighting especially with a shorter timer (5m during primetime) players would have to fight and hold keeps and resources to make score.

With the group size argument, i'd say that comes more under combat balancing which we haven't covered. I can agree with some points that group size could potentially be due a change however the only really strong argument for this in my eyes is because of the server population being lower now then it was at launch. 24 man is a larger % of the overall population thus in order to spread fights out smaller groups may be beneficial. I would argue that lower than 12 would be fairly detrimental imo. I disagree completely with limiting healing and support to within groups personally because I feel like that would put the majority of players at an overall disadvantage.

I mean I see what you guys are saying.

I also think you are either discounting or unaware of the impact this will have on your average garden variety farmed pugvegetable. The average cyro pug will not see a spread out map. They will see multiple guild groups running over pugs uncontested because no one can effectively mass enough forces in a single location without paying a huge price.

And because of that, guilds and coordinated groups have a much more lasting and pronounced effect against an enemy faction while the pug's primary effect has been whittled down significantly.

I'm reading this as more available space to destrofarm ungrouped players, not provide more engaging & competetive fights across the map.

So, do you not agree that having more meaningful objectives for small scale groups would have a positive affect on smallscale PVP?

or is it that you just don't think objective based gameplay has anything to do ith good smallscale PVP?

Derra

frozywozy wrote: »

Etaniel wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Yeah i´m missing the change for grpsize and heals in that because as it reads it´s only about destrotrains continuing their circlesnip party with the new system making it even less attractive to join cyrodiil for players like me.

Cut grpsize to 6. No more aoe heals outside of grp. No more buffs outside of grp.

Get rid of stick to crown training wheels.

Or, go play battlegrounds if you don't like Openworld Large Scale PvP (Cyrodiil). You are saying that you enjoy large scale PvP but not large groups. Sorry to disappoint you but your scenario of every player doing a 1v1 next to each other is not going to happen. This is not a movie, this is a video game.

No, he's saying, and I agree 100% with him, that he'd rather have fights spread around the entire map with groups of 5-12 fighting it out instead of 200 people in a keep, with a bomb squad rolling in and farming for 30, while subsequently making the entire server lag because the guild group isn't dying, and the pugs are rezzing.

What you described is exactly what is discussed in the video. Spreading out the fight.

You won´t spread out the fight if one full group (pug or organizsed does not matter here) makes up for literally 20% of a factions population (remove IC/afk/questers and it might be up to 30%).

You won´t spread out the fight if an organized group of 15 to 20 people can literally occupy 50+ people of one faction(or two factions if they also fight each other) in one fight location for 30 to 60 minutes without either side winning the fight.

There is no incentive for soloers and smallgroups to try to spread people out when every engagement if you poke a zerg or take a resource results in (semi)organized groups of 20 coming at you - or nobody coming.

With the current population caps one group is too large of a portion of the total population to begin with.
One competent organized group needs way too many enemies when looking at overall players on the map to get enjoyable fights.

This is not even getting into the argument that creating and maintaining a large group roster is insanely difficult and timeconsuming (as a result excluding many players from participating in the first place - they can´t begin to get good an create competition).
This also resulting in chaos as an enabler for non largescale groups/players in objective fights gets effectively removed as soon as a large group is present.

As i said: I do believe people find largegrp pvp fun. I just don´t think it´s fun for anyone else not playing in a large organized group and overall i think it´s unhealthy for the games pvp and leads to it´s decline.
Both large pug groups and large organized groups being detrimental to spreading out fights and creating an enjoyable cyrodiil experience.

I know 6 players is very smallgrp biased - and probably a middleground from 8 to 12 would be better - but hey after posting sth like this you can´t really blame people for bringing in personal bias into this debate.
My point does not change: Current groups are too large and/or too effective to spreadout pvp and have an enjoyable cyrodiil experience for everyone else.

Vilestride

Derra wrote: »

There is no incentive for soloers and smallgroups to try to spread people out when every engagement if you poke a zerg or take a resource results in (semi)organized groups of 20 coming at you - or nobody coming.
.

This is specifically one of the problems we acknowledge and addressed. I agree it's frustrating to get zerged down on an objective like a resource. But the answer isn't just delete large groups from the game, Do you disagree that a fairer and more effective solution is to simply better define the objective roles of varying sized groups?

Derra

Vilestride wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

There is no incentive for soloers and smallgroups to try to spread people out when every engagement if you poke a zerg or take a resource results in (semi)organized groups of 20 coming at you - or nobody coming.
.

This is specifically one of the problems we acknowledge and addressed. I agree it's frustrating to get zerged down on an objective like a resource. But the answer isn't just delete large groups from the game, Do you disagree that a fairer and more effective solution is to simply better define the objective roles of varying sized groups?

Yes i do - because quite simply it would not happen (because people are not completely stupid and like to win).

It´s more efficient to just zerg the objective with a 20 person grp against 4 than sending 6 that might or might not be successful - especially if you have those 20 ppl in your group in the first place. Why the heck would you split up your grp.
So what i described is exactly what will happen (and what´s happening now). You´ll get 20 or nothing. Because that´s the size of your pizza slice. It´s not gonna cut itself in half magically because it´s gonna land on a breakfast instead of a dinner plate. Expecting that to happen is not smart.

Also you´ve only adressed the least relevant point i´ve made. The others are far more important.

Vilestride

I'm curious, explain to me exactly how you envision cyrodil to be if there was say an 8 man group cap. Do you think population would grow and we could in turn eventually re-increase the population caps?

Also, remaining on the objectives topic. Do you think the proposed system is better or worse than the current one?

Derra

Vilestride wrote: »

I'm curious, explain to me exactly how you envision cyrodil to be if there was say an 8 man group cap. Do you think population would grow and we could in turn eventually re-increase the population caps?

Also, remaining on the objectives topic. Do you think the proposed system is better or worse than the current one?

For one it would decrease the barrier of participation for smaller guilds - it´s easier to maintain a semi competetive 8 man roster than it is to do the same for 24. It atleast becomes theoretically easier to compete for small to medium sized social pvp guilds (those that had 6 to 15 man rosters and basically all died out in zos futile attempts to nerf ballgroups).
It would also make larger groups more vulnerable - even if you stack 2 or 3 8mans these are more vulnerable if you restrict aoe heals to group. It would be harder (basically impossible) to fit backup rapids, purgebots, heals and damagedealers into one group - if you loose a vital part of one grp the whole grp dies.
It would create situations where when you poke the back of a zerg not 20 players get notified that and where you killed their mate but instead only 7.
In large fights the reduced grpcap would create more chaotic fights as 20 people following 3 leaders is far harder than 20 following one crown. Even the top end guilds currently are carrying a few just average players because numbers matter most - for pugs it might become outright impossible.

I do believe some of your proposed changes are better, some i´m indifferent about and some for me atleast just point towards wanting to create even more absolute unrivaled largegrp superiority (if that´s even possible).
I do also think that most of your changes would make hardly any difference for anyone but large groups in everyday cyrodiil because of the established largegrp and resulting zerging dynamics.
I do like the objective changes - i just don´t think it would matter much.

I don´t have a clear vision - i just think that a situation where 1 group can create an hourlong fight and occupy 50% of the total pvp population in one spot is not desireable - because they also need to fight these numbers to get an interesting fight. This directly counteracts any incentive for the players to spread out. They need half of their faction to get 1 objective from one grp. How are they supposed to spread? There is nobody left when this scenario happens on two locations on the map.
You won´t resolve that without cutting groupsize in a way that that these kind of numbers become unhandable (or nerfing things even more but that would hurt everyone equally and i´m not a fan of that).

Biro123

I can't say I agree with you in this, Derra. I personally think small-group is the most toxic kind of gameplay in cyrodiil.

But then I play alone. I can see a large group coming a mile away, easily avoid them, pick at the edges of them get some kills, distract a lot of people for a while. Often I'll make a mistake and die - but that's my fault.

But I see a friendly resource flip or a player or 2 in a distance, head out to engage and then get ganked bey an organised 4-6 man with their timed ulti-dumps, and synergising buffs/heals/tankiness making them indestructible vs one player...

And yes, there are plenty 'small-scale' groups who I see do nothing BUT prey on soloers. They add nothing to the campaign, nothing to their faction - just repeatedly lure out people in their ones and 2's then gang up and dish out a kicking. You especially see them hanging around an enemy keep late at night when population is really low, jumping on anybody who tries to exit said keep. These guys *think* they are the small-scale heroes - but really they are the worst form of zergling there is.

Are you really asking that the people on the receiving-end lose their ability to heal each other, while said toxic farmers get to keep theirs?

Not to mention that it takes a large group - especially when talking pugs - to even think about starting an attack on an enemy keep or opening up a new front. Without large groups, these 'small-scalers' would have no counter. No keeps would get sieged, fights would just run around resources.

I honestly don't know the population demographics in Vivec - but I suspect its maybe 30% large groups, 10% small groups playing alone, 58% soloers/small groups running with the zerg. This would probably make much of the 30% quit - and since the 10% then have no counters - much of the 58% quit too.

Vilestride

Derra wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

I'm curious, explain to me exactly how you envision cyrodil to be if there was say an 8 man group cap. Do you think population would grow and we could in turn eventually re-increase the population caps?

Also, remaining on the objectives topic. Do you think the proposed system is better or worse than the current one?

For one it would decrease the barrier of participation for smaller guilds - it´s easier to maintain a semi competetive 8 man roster than it is to do the same for 24. It atleast becomes theoretically easier to compete for small to medium sized social pvp guilds (those that had 6 to 15 man rosters and basically all died out in zos futile attempts to nerf ballgroups).
It would also make larger groups more vulnerable - even if you stack 2 or 3 8mans these are more vulnerable if you restrict aoe heals to group. It would be harder (basically impossible) to fit backup rapids, purgebots, heals and damagedealers into one group - if you loose a vital part of one grp the whole grp dies.
It would create situations where when you poke the back of a zerg not 20 players get notified that and where you killed their mate but instead only 7.
In large fights the reduced grpcap would create more chaotic fights as 20 people following 3 leaders is far harder than 20 following one crown. Even the top end guilds currently are carrying a few just average players because numbers matter most - for pugs it might become outright impossible.

I do believe some of your proposed changes are better, some i´m indifferent about and some for me atleast just point towards wanting to create even more absolute unrivaled largegrp superiority (if that´s even possible).
I do also think that most of your changes would make hardly any difference for anyone but large groups in everyday cyrodiil because of the established largegrp and resulting zerging dynamics.
I do like the objective changes - i just don´t think it would matter much.

I don´t have a clear vision - i just think that a situation where 1 group can create an hourlong fight and occupy 50% of the total pvp population in one spot is not desireable. You won´t resolve that without cutting groupsize in a way that that these kind of numbers become unhandable (or nerfing things even more but that would hurt everyone equally and i´m not a fan of that).

Your logic for group size change isn't in valid, as Iz conceded, the % of population that a large group makes up is the primary rationale for why they are less and less a part of the game. Obviously I am biased, but I would just rather see the result tip the other way. Rather than adjusting the game to cater for the now pathetic levels of players participating I'd rather opt for at least attempting to re-create some of the passion and intensity that used to exist within large scale organised group PVP by adding more levels of depth and strategy to the core mechanics of cyrodil objective play.

We're obviously not going to agree on matters of group size, which is fine. I just doubt the day is coming where ESO is relegated to a small scale PVP game only. To be frank, there are 1000 better outlets available for 4-8 man tactical PVP out there right now, large group PVP is the only thing ESO has going for it.

And to really re-iterate the point, I think we are forgetting the primary reason people play this game. Let's be honest, next to no one is playing this game because it's 'good'. The primary reason for PVP, for myself at least, and I have no doubt many others, is the community and people you get to raid and play with day to day. I just don't see ZoS taking the risk to compromise that.

But, maybe they will and you'll have the cyrodil you envision.