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

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · March 2018

Derra wrote: »

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LarsS wrote: »

Well we have had these smallscaler arguments before. I understand that some want to get rid of zergsquad and other larger guildgroups, but please focus on the proposals in this thread.

Go read what i wrote earlier or if you want a TL:DR:

The proposals would directly contribute in focussing everything objective based even more around the large groups who coincidentally presented them.
It reads like a bad joke or a shallow disguise of these groups wanting to reinforce their grip on absolute unrivaled power in cyrodiil and i disagree vehemently with everything suggested should grp dynamics stay the same as they are.

Actually the current implementation of cyrodiil where objectives don't really matter because there is no incentive for campaign victory promotes 'stacked keep' gameplay far more than our suggestions do. The benefit of these changes is that it gives incentive for groups to spread out and take different objectives because they will be rewarded for doing so if it benefits their faction (due to the improved rewards).

it is your choice to play at your group size. You shouldn't be rewarded or benefited for doing so in a game which has larger groups. The benefit and reward is the feeling of accomplishment you get when you win (and the slightly better AP reward).

Guilds and groups of friends are what make up the backbone of any long lived MMO. Reducing the max group size to 5 would be highly detrimental to this and cause further player dropout in the community. (terrible for everyone).

With reference to your argument that these changes reinforce larger groups. These groups can only be in one location on the map. By directly incentivizing spreading out it doesn't 'empower' them. It makes it so that groups willing to split up and factions that can spread out and take different objectives will benefit.

I understand you want group sizes lowered, you are welcome to put forward some suggestions as to the positives and negatives of different group sizes (perhaps a different post where people from all sides could discuss it) but don't pretend that you are happy with the current state of cyrodiil either.

It strikes me a little of saying "if I can't be happy no one should be happy" at this point.

LarsS · March 2018

Point is that lots of people are not in groups they just run to next keep or battle. Reducing groupsize will not spread the players over the map. In fact it is the larger guild groups who have the power to spread the battle over the map. Present status of Cyro is not due to the group size but due to design errors. The proposals made in the thread would improve the situation quite a lot.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO · March 2018

Ranger209 wrote: »

The offensive and defensive tick thing I could see modified a little. On the one hand right now you can fight at a keep for an hour and if you leave before the tick, voluntarily or otherwise (crash, respawn from death too far away, and can't make it back before the tick), you get zilch. On the other hand I wouldn't want people who pass through and are there for 60 seconds, maybe kill a guy, and then leave to get full reward for it either. If I am understanding, this is how it would work. I would like to see a way implemented that reflects a person direct participation in acquiring or defending a keep, and when the tick drops update their AP regardless of where they are on the map at that time. Maybe something that clocks an individuals time in combat and divides it by the overall time of the engagement. So if a keep is under duress for 60 minutes someone who was in combat for 2 minutes would get a different portion of the tick than someone who was in combat for 10 or 30 or 50 minutes. Not sure if this is the best way to figure it or if there is a better alternative, but I think you get the point.

I believe your scoring system is a step in the right direction with the 5 to 30 minute updates based on population. Again, as with the faction swapping, I am probably a little more hardcore than what you are suggesting. I have offered up a strictly population based adjustment that goes about accomplishing the same thing through different means and has 10 break points rather than the the 5 you guys suggest. It increases 1000% from lowest level to highest vs 600% in your suggestion. I like what you guys suggest as well though. If attaining a keep becomes more time consuming than it currently is, to allow for more of a response from the defenders, your time frames may need a little tweaking.
.

With regard to the ticks idea, that's basically the gist of the suggestion yes, essentially your activity during the fight would contribute somewhat to a % your defence reward.
I think there should be some slightly skew towards the end of the fight perhaps i.e the "final push out of the keep" but thats just the icing on the system.

I think if you increase the brackets in the scoring system then it perhaps skews the points difference slightly too much perhaps starting with the suggestion and then if nightcapping is still the major deciding factor it is now we could look to add more to that area.

Derra · March 2018

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Guilds and groups of friends are what make up the backbone of any long lived MMO. Reducing the max group size to 5 would be highly detrimental to this and cause further player dropout in the community. (terrible for everyone).

Yeah.
Because eso guilds are groups of friends and not groups of people united under the common interest to farm plebs. You gave me a good chuckle there. That´s also why rosters of guilds change more frequently than i can write this sentence apart from the few core players.

I´m in the same main guild for 15 years now. I have met most of those people in person and spend various new years eves, birthdays or short holidays with them.
Most of them quit this game because the groupsize in this game is highly detrimental for having a social guild around a group of friends because groups are too large (unless you´re ok with inviting 10 dummy players to fill replaceable roles in your roster that is).

What you fail to see is that the size of groups is highly harmful to development of social pvp guilds and causes player dropout because a game that can support one or two competetive guilds per faction at best is idiotic.
All the smaller guilds are highly irrelevant bc they can´t do anything as soon as one of the choochoos shows up in the first place.

Also i never wrote five players. You don´t even take the time to properly read what i write.

Do you truely believe the propaganda you´re writing about weighting objectives more would make people spread out? What it does is force randoms to care about objectives your groups can take at will and in the process forces them to run into your meatgrinder of an organized group. That´s what it does and you know it very well.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

It strikes me a little of saying "if I can't be happy no one should be happy" at this point.

No i honestly believe that your suggested changes would make it worse than it currently is for anyone not wanting to run in 12+ person groups regularly.

Agrippa_Invisus · March 2018

Is it me, or is this thread devolving into a "Large guilds hurt the game!" vs "No they don't!" pair of camps?

Because when it comes to lag and performance issues, remember there is only one group of individuals that should be held accountable: Zenimax Online Studios.

If Guild Wars 2 can have 80+ man zergs in their WvWvW with minimal performance issues, and even DAoC could handle its zergs better back in the day, that shows us quite clearly that the performance issues are systemic, and not predicated on player behavior.

Yes, we have found ways in which player behavior can exacerbate the issue, but that exaggeration of the problem is only highlighting the systemic failures of the technical architecture behind the ESO PvP experience.

frozywozy · March 2018

Derra wrote: »

show previous quotes

Vilestride wrote: »

RinaldoGandolphi wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

For me, ESO is the only game I know of where I can play without a group - having nobody rely on me (and my sudden AFK's) - yet still be able to take part in large-scale combat and help my team with heals/buffs etc.. Maybe that makes it casual friendly - but its a unique (afaik) feature that I really, really like. Yes - I'm the averaqe 'Random' - but there are quite a lot of us.
Don't be a-trying to break my game!

To be honest - i think smaller groups and less possible organisation would greatly improve the game for players like you (or me when i play solo).

Organisation of many is the enemy of the few. Removing the tools to organize many gives more points of attack for someone soloing/duoing.

@Derra

This statement is so true it should be the post of the year.

Large organization and how it’s done is responsible for most of Cyrodiil performance issues. They could fix Cyrodiil performance issues by addressing these issues, but I doubt they will at this point. Better off playing BG at this point if you don’t want to lag

Well OK let's not be arbitrary about it. If you guys think lowering group size is the answer have a think about it and let's discuss exactly what group size you think is perfect and what will the gameplay look like after the hypothetical implementation?

Ideally in my opinion the maximum groupsize would be somewhere around 5 to an absolute maxium of 10% of one factions population and a good organized group can expect to fight 2 to 3 times their numbers of average players (i think 10% is too high but at the same time i think current pop caps are too low for 5).

Personally i think 12 is too big for an organized group but might be just right for pug groups - if you understand where i´m coming from.

I think twelve is too big for most social pvp guilds to have a reliable playerpool aswell (thus would do little to help alleviating issues with low number of guilds/groups due to high playercount requirement).

From a grp vs grp pov i´d go with 6 to 8 - from a pug pov i´d go with 12.

The problem i see with 12 currently would be that it do relatively little to larger organiszed group performance while it would definetly reduce the performance of factionzergs + pugs (exactly the scenario i personally would like to avoid).

So the large organized group players tell me - what groupsize do you think would begin to severely impact the ability of one group binding 50% of a faction to one fight location?

From a metagame pov on grp vs grp - one group would be of a size that required singletarget + aoe dps instead of just dedicated bombing + support. Currently i don´t see any singletarget ranged/melee DPS in grp rosters which im dumbs everything down a bit in terms of roles. As soon as this becomes vaible you also create room for counterplay with guard.

You are so disconnected and out of your mind. You still misunderstand the first approach Zenimax brought when releasing the game. Let me refresh this for you. They clearly stated that they were interested in LARGE siege battles with hundred of players on the screen at once. Now, before you go on your high heels and tell me "We all know that the game cannot support such game play with the poor performances blablabla", it does not mean that the game cannot support it that the incentive for large group play has disappeared forever.

People tend to focus alot on actual problems and bugs, rather than thinking of what has been fixed and how better the game runs compared to release. Yes, there have been up and down but, as an early beta tester, I can guarantee that the game performances nowadays are greatly improved and allow large scale PvP (large groups) without problems. I believe that reducing max population to what 3bars actually is, and adding campaigns dynamically as we need them rather then having empty campaigns would go a long way.

Back to the actual point. You are suggesting to bring the max group size to something alike of 5 players. This will never happen in Cyrodiil because taking a keep with 5 players would make no sense. I understand your desire to be able to fight a large amount of people (something different than a battleground) but this has never been the main goal to have small skirmishes in Cyrodiil. The goal was to get as many players as we can on the screen in a large warfare. Your vision simply doesn't fit the Cyrodiil Zenimax wanted from the beginning and probably even less from the majority of players (I cannot speak for everybody else but I have a good idea about it).

Derra · March 2018

frozywozy wrote: »

show previous quotes

Derra wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

RinaldoGandolphi wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Biro123 wrote: »

For me, ESO is the only game I know of where I can play without a group - having nobody rely on me (and my sudden AFK's) - yet still be able to take part in large-scale combat and help my team with heals/buffs etc.. Maybe that makes it casual friendly - but its a unique (afaik) feature that I really, really like. Yes - I'm the averaqe 'Random' - but there are quite a lot of us.
Don't be a-trying to break my game!

To be honest - i think smaller groups and less possible organisation would greatly improve the game for players like you (or me when i play solo).

Organisation of many is the enemy of the few. Removing the tools to organize many gives more points of attack for someone soloing/duoing.

@Derra

This statement is so true it should be the post of the year.

Large organization and how it’s done is responsible for most of Cyrodiil performance issues. They could fix Cyrodiil performance issues by addressing these issues, but I doubt they will at this point. Better off playing BG at this point if you don’t want to lag

Well OK let's not be arbitrary about it. If you guys think lowering group size is the answer have a think about it and let's discuss exactly what group size you think is perfect and what will the gameplay look like after the hypothetical implementation?

Ideally in my opinion the maximum groupsize would be somewhere around 5 to an absolute maxium of 10% of one factions population and a good organized group can expect to fight 2 to 3 times their numbers of average players (i think 10% is too high but at the same time i think current pop caps are too low for 5).

Personally i think 12 is too big for an organized group but might be just right for pug groups - if you understand where i´m coming from.

I think twelve is too big for most social pvp guilds to have a reliable playerpool aswell (thus would do little to help alleviating issues with low number of guilds/groups due to high playercount requirement).

From a grp vs grp pov i´d go with 6 to 8 - from a pug pov i´d go with 12.

The problem i see with 12 currently would be that it do relatively little to larger organiszed group performance while it would definetly reduce the performance of factionzergs + pugs (exactly the scenario i personally would like to avoid).

So the large organized group players tell me - what groupsize do you think would begin to severely impact the ability of one group binding 50% of a faction to one fight location?

From a metagame pov on grp vs grp - one group would be of a size that required singletarget + aoe dps instead of just dedicated bombing + support. Currently i don´t see any singletarget ranged/melee DPS in grp rosters which im dumbs everything down a bit in terms of roles. As soon as this becomes vaible you also create room for counterplay with guard.

You are so disconnected and out of your mind. You still misunderstand the first approach Zenimax brought when releasing the game. Let me refresh this for you. They clearly stated that they were interested in LARGE siege battles with hundred of players on the screen at once. Now, before you go on your high heels and tell me "We all know that the game cannot support such game play with the poor performances blablabla", it does not mean that the game cannot support it that the incentive for large group play has disappeared forever.

People tend to focus alot on actual problems and bugs, rather than thinking of what has been fixed and how better the game runs compared to release. Yes, there have been up and down but, as an early beta tester, I can guarantee that the game performances nowadays are greatly improved and allow large scale PvP (large groups) without problems. I believe that reducing max population to what 3bars actually is, and adding campaigns dynamically as we need them rather then having empty campaigns would go a long way.

Back to the actual point. You are suggesting to bring the max group size to something alike of 5 players. This will never happen in Cyrodiil because taking a keep with 5 players would make no sense. I understand your desire to be able to fight a large amount of people (something different than a battleground) but this has never been the main goal to have small skirmishes in Cyrodiil. The goal was to get as many players as we can on the screen in a large warfare. Your vision simply doesn't fit the Cyrodiil Zenimax wanted from the beginning and probably even less from the majority of players (I cannot speak for everybody else but I have a good idea about it).

I never wrote 5 players. Go read again.

Large siege battles dont need large groups. If you fail to see that correlation does not mean causation in this case i don´t know what to say - except:

I have played games over 10 years ago that handled large scale objective fights with more than 100 players better than eso currently does - and these had 6 respectively 8 player groups.

Large groups are detrimental to having large scale fights where all participants (even those not in a large groups) can have fun and feel useful.

I´m not out of my mind. You need to learn to read what i write and then find the mental capacity to understand what was written.

#largescaledoesnotmeanlargegroups

IV_Deity · March 2018

Derra wrote: »

Do you truely believe the propaganda you´re writing about weighting objectives more would make people spread out? What it does is force randoms to care about objectives your groups can take at will and in the process forces them to run into your meatgrinder of an organized group. That´s what it does and you know it very well.

No i honestly believe that your suggested changes would make it worse than it currently is for anyone not wanting to run in 12+ person groups regularly.

If you give objectives an actual purpose, then yes, people would actually spread out and hold those objectives until the keep has been taken. This spreads out the fight instead of "everyone stack front door with siege". There's really no reason to even go after the resources, unless you don't want people traveling to the keep.

I don't run in large groups much. My group sizes have been 5 or 6 max, but I'm usually going solo or duo with a friend. How on earth would these changes make it worse for me? I'm not really sure what game you want to play, but I'm very certain ESO isn't it. This game was focused on large scale pvp battles. If you don't like it at this point of the game's release, I think it's time for you to move on.

EDIT: Regarding group size, does it really matter if it's 24 or 16? 12? I've seen 50 man zergs heading to a keep. Obviously, all are not in one group, but perhaps several. Lowering the group limit will not fix performance issues. That alone is something the devs need to work on. Since I play on Xbox, I know it's hardware is also limited, so I keep that in mind.

HaroniNDeorum · March 2018

And once again, people who only wants to dissapear the large organised groups.

Derra · March 2018

IV_Deity wrote: »

I don't run in large groups much. My group sizes have been 5 or 6 max, but I'm usually going solo or duo with a friend. How on earth would these changes make it worse for me? I'm not really sure what game you want to play, but I'm very certain ESO isn't it. This game was focused on large scale pvp battles. If you don't like it at this point of the game's release, I think it's time for you to move on.
.

Can you explain to me why a large scale battle needs large groups and how these large groups make these battles more fun for all players involved?
Because i can give an idea why i believe they don´t and having smaller groups would make these battles more fun for everyone involved (except those currently in a large grp) based on admittedly anecdotal evidence (not that anyone would be in a position to provide anything else) from having played multiple games that focused on large scale objective pvp (with small and large groups).

Ranger209 · March 2018

Derra wrote: »

show previous quotes

IV_Deity wrote: »

I don't run in large groups much. My group sizes have been 5 or 6 max, but I'm usually going solo or duo with a friend. How on earth would these changes make it worse for me? I'm not really sure what game you want to play, but I'm very certain ESO isn't it. This game was focused on large scale pvp battles. If you don't like it at this point of the game's release, I think it's time for you to move on.
.

Can you explain to me why a large scale battle needs large groups and how these large groups make these battles more fun for all players involved?
Because i can give an idea why i believe they don´t and having smaller groups would make these battles more fun for everyone involved (except those currently in a large grp) based on admittedly anecdotal evidence (not that anyone would be in a position to provide anything else) from having played multiple games that focused on large scale objective pvp (with small and large groups).

I think if heals, buffs, and things of that nature all applied to allies instead of group members it would make less of a difference on what group size really is from a combat standpoint. Organized groups would still be at an advantage over disorganized but the synergies organized groups can obtain would not be so much greater than the disorganized. The gap would lessen. The unorganized would now start to synergize more with each other as well obtaining buffs and heals from allies in a more random and sporadic manner than the organized groups do.

As far as a social aspect, I guess I don't understand why a group of friends can't just run together in a group of 8 or 10 or however many there are. I don't see the need to have exactly 24 in a group. Most groups I run with are somewhere in between 4 and 24 most of the time. I also am not a fan of the super groups, but I don't see this as a slanted way to increase their kill count. I think they have done a good job of coming up with some ways to improve the experience in Cyrodiil. It's a big old world and they can only be in one place at one time.

pieratsos · March 2018

IV_Deity wrote: »

show previous quotes

Derra wrote: »

Do you truely believe the propaganda you´re writing about weighting objectives more would make people spread out? What it does is force randoms to care about objectives your groups can take at will and in the process forces them to run into your meatgrinder of an organized group. That´s what it does and you know it very well.

No i honestly believe that your suggested changes would make it worse than it currently is for anyone not wanting to run in 12+ person groups regularly.

If you give objectives an actual purpose, then yes, people would actually spread out and hold those objectives until the keep has been taken. This spreads out the fight instead of "everyone stack front door with siege". There's really no reason to even go after the resources, unless you don't want people traveling to the keep.

Not necessarily. Making objectives relevant to spread the fights requires a very large number of people to support those fights. When an entire faction can only support 2 full groups and when an organised raid can distract half of the population of cyrodiil in one keep then making objectives relevant doesnt necessarily mean spread fights cause there are simply no people left to support those smaller fights in the first place. Making objectives relevant is good, but it will fail to do what its suppose to do without reducing the size of groups.

Groups of 24 people were designed for a campaign that can support thousands of players. Not a few hundred.

frozywozy · March 2018

pieratsos wrote: »

Groups of 24 people were designed for a campaign that can support thousands of players. Not a few hundred.

to siege a well defended keep successfully. I agree that 24 is too much, 16 would be ideal.

Murador178 · March 2018

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Is it me, or is this thread devolving into a "Large guilds hurt the game!" vs "No they don't!" pair of camps?

Because when it comes to lag and performance issues, remember there is only one group of individuals that should be held accountable: Zenimax Online Studios.

If Guild Wars 2 can have 80+ man zergs in their WvWvW with minimal performance issues, and even DAoC could handle its zergs better back in the day, that shows us quite clearly that the performance issues are systemic, and not predicated on player behavior.

Yes, we have found ways in which player behavior can exacerbate the issue, but that exaggeration of the problem is only highlighting the systemic failures of the technical architecture behind the ESO PvP experience.

Ofc its mostly zenimax mistake - but its a Fact that performance goes down to unplayalbe when one of the huge zergs decides to roll over the campaign - fun Largescale battles just arent a thing in Eso. We could just insanely punish stacking of groups unitl its complete unviable playstyle. Lets increase dmg on all Aoe spells in the game according to how many guys they hit - 20 man stacking - one streak 20 dead bodies

- Then atleast zerging would have one skillful thing about it.- ofc exaggarated.
OR players that died getting hit by more then 8 players in the last 5 sec give 0 AP - or (-1000 AP) - (negative AP decreases ur rank). Imagine all the GO zerger decreasing there rank back to 1

.
Or making gear lootable of guys running in big groups

I agree with @Derra decrease group size(I think about 4-6 would be nice).
The issue with sieging is another: Eso sieging just defines pure boredom - i know there a few that like PvDooring (prob around 0.1% of the playerbase). I think the whole system would need a complete rework. 90% of the guys playing cyrodil (including myself) dont care about the map at all. It only indicates where i can get a good fight not what would be a good decision to help the faction to victory.

Vilestride · March 2018

pieratsos wrote: »

Groups of 24 people were designed for a campaign that can support thousands of players.

Which is where we want to get back to. As I said, the changes we are trying to discuss here are with the hope of improving cyrodil to a point where we can begin to raise the pop cap again. Reactivity making changes that are overly pragmatic based on only the 'current' state of game play is a sure way to continue a spiral of decline.

If you're sick, the ultimate goal is to become healthy again no? not just find ways of better dealing with being perpetually sick.

montiferus · March 2018

pieratsos wrote: »

show previous quotes

IV_Deity wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Do you truely believe the propaganda you´re writing about weighting objectives more would make people spread out? What it does is force randoms to care about objectives your groups can take at will and in the process forces them to run into your meatgrinder of an organized group. That´s what it does and you know it very well.

No i honestly believe that your suggested changes would make it worse than it currently is for anyone not wanting to run in 12+ person groups regularly.

If you give objectives an actual purpose, then yes, people would actually spread out and hold those objectives until the keep has been taken. This spreads out the fight instead of "everyone stack front door with siege". There's really no reason to even go after the resources, unless you don't want people traveling to the keep.

Not necessarily. Making objectives relevant to spread the fights requires a very large number of people to support those fights. When an entire faction can only support 2 full groups and when an organised raid can distract half of the population of cyrodiil in one keep then making objectives relevant doesnt necessarily mean spread fights cause there are simply no people left to support those smaller fights in the first place. Making objectives relevant is good, but it will fail to do what its suppose to do without reducing the size of groups.

Groups of 24 people were designed for a campaign that can support thousands of players. Not a few hundred.

Derra and Pieratsos are on point. I think limiting group size could help the situation. As it stands now on Xbox typically there is only one major fight going on at any one time (sometimes 2) where 90% of the population converges and lags the server out. It has become ridiculously stale and boring. Since ZOS will never fix the game on a performance front they have to devise a way to spread the population (what little is left) out more. I think if they capped groups at around 10-12 then it might force guilds to split up and take multiple objectives.

At the end of the day though this is all really just an exercise in futility. Nothing is going to change. Guess it makes for a good thought exercise.

PS - I will say the situation may be different for PC than console. Console only has a few zerg groups and frankly none of them are particularly good or organized. Even the lamest PC guild would take over the map on console in a heartbeat.

pieratsos · March 2018

Vilestride wrote: »

show previous quotes

pieratsos wrote: »

Groups of 24 people were designed for a campaign that can support thousands of players.

Which is where we want to get back to. As I said, the changes we are trying to discuss here are with the hope of improving cyrodil to a point where we can begin to raise the pop cap again. Reactivity making changes that are overly pragmatic based on only the 'current' state of game play is a sure way to continue a spiral of decline.

If you're sick, the ultimate goal is to become healthy again no? not just find ways of better dealing with being perpetually sick.

The ultimate goal. Sure i completely agree. But you need smaller goals first to achieve ur ultimate goal in the end. When u are sick the ultimate goal is to become healthy again. But medication and recovery takes time. You ease back into it. It doesnt happen overnight. And lets be real. The PVP issues are not restricted to just objectives. The overall PVP population has been dramatically decreased, performance issues, balance issues. You just cant fix PVP with a few objective changes. Baby steps mate, baby steps. The current population just doesnt support that big groups. Even the map is too big. Group size needs to be reduced. When you start improving PVP and raising the pop cap again assuming performance is good you can start increasing group size again.

LarsS · March 2018

Wonder were the supposed 2 group limit comes from, at least on PC the limit is substatially higher. I have seen 3 big raidgroups and randoms on the same place so the max number of players in an alliance is most probably at least 100, most probably more.

More important, removing large groups solves nothing, you dont need to be in a group to go to the closest fight. Lagg is due to the number of players in one place, please look at the evidences, instead of trying to destroy the fun for many players in cyro. You can have more friends than 4 or 5, I have.

pieratsos · March 2018

LarsS wrote: »

Wonder were the supposed 2 group limit comes from, at least on PC the limit is substatially higher. I have seen 3 big raidgroups and randoms on the same place so the max number of players in an alliance is most probably at least 100, most probably more.

More important, removing large groups solves nothing, you dont need to be in a group to go to the closest fight. Lagg is due to the number of players in one place, please look at the evidences, instead of trying to destroy the fun for many players in cyro. You can have more friends than 4 or 5, I have.

The evidence is that back in the day there were thousands of people in one campaign. This is simply not the case anymore. Just go and watch angry joe's pvp video from back in the day. "coordinating" entire groups and sending them to achieve different objectives around the keep. Thats what we want now. But its impossible to do that now cause if u try something like that now then there are simply no people left to fight anywhere else.

One group being a quarter of the entire faction is the issue. You have keep fights with two of those groups and there you go. The entire campaign population is fighting at 2-3 keeps while 95% of the map is empty. Thats the point. You cant spread the fights like this.

You dont need to be in a group to go to the closest fight. You are right. But then again you dont have a choice to go anywhere else because the closest fight is the only fight there is. So how do you even expect them to go anywhere else.

The-Baconator · March 2018

Vilestride wrote: »

show previous quotes

pieratsos wrote: »

Groups of 24 people were designed for a campaign that can support thousands of players.

Which is where we want to get back to. As I said, the changes we are trying to discuss here are with the hope of improving cyrodil to a point where we can begin to raise the pop cap again. Reactivity making changes that are overly pragmatic based on only the 'current' state of game play is a sure way to continue a spiral of decline.

If you're sick, the ultimate goal is to become healthy again no? not just find ways of better dealing with being perpetually sick.

The problem with that argument is that it's difficult to envision ESO getting back to the point where a full 24 man raid doesn't make up ~20% of the population and a decent 12-16 man guild doesn't need +50% of a faction's pop at an objective to stay even moderately entertained. Even as someone who has made the bulk of my ap in 12-16 mans I definitely see where Dera is coming from. I'm not sure what the magic number would be, but I definitely believe a much smaller number would be healthier for the game in general. Perhaps not people that enjoy runnning in raid style guild groups, but just about everyone else.

LarsS · March 2018

Pieratos reducing group size does not solve anything, on the contrary, ungrouped an smallscalers go to next fight so the stacking will be worser. Larger organized groups can go anywhere om the map and do that, thus spreading the fighting.

The-Baconator summs up the argument for smaller groups ”I definitely believe”. We need to look at evidences not beliefes!

LarsS · March 2018

What really angers me is ZOS silence! This thread presents suggestions which should at least be commented by ZOS. They do comment other proposals, but can any one remember when they last time did that to Cyro proposals?

pieratsos · March 2018

LarsS wrote: »

Pieratos reducing group size does not solve anything, on the contrary, ungrouped an smallscalers go to next fight so the stacking will be worser. Larger organized groups can go anywhere om the map and do that, thus spreading the fighting.

The-Baconator summs up the argument for smaller groups ”I definitely believe”. We need to look at evidences not beliefes!

How do you even know that it doesnt solve anything? Do you have actual evidence to support that argument? Have you done any tests with reduced group size and changed objectives and it was the same? Do you play in a small group or solo? Why is ur word an evidence but baconator's word just his belief? If anything, its the exact opposite that is happening. He explained why he believes that this is the case with actual evidence from the live servers. You just repeat the same thing "it wont solve anything", you dont provide any evidence to back up ur argument and you ignore any points people make.

When at any given time there are just 2-3 fights on the map because 1 full group makes up a quarter of an entire faction's population then those solo/small group players dont have a choice as to where they should fight. They go where the rest of the groups are because thats the only option they have. This isnt a belief. This is evidence and common sense. I play solo and this is what is happening. I open the map and my only options are the bridge and maybe another keep fight where there is a full organised raid farming 50 pugs for like half an hour. Those are my options. Where am i supposed to go? And we are not even touching on group effectiveness and skill which reinforces the zerg/zergsurfing mentality.

You believe that it wont solve anything. And this belief is based on zero evidence. The only argument you made is that you want to play with ur friends. Which isnt even an argument cause no one is telling you not to. Feel free to play with 50 people if you want. Reducing group size doesnt prohibit you from doing that. You just have to make more groups.

Skander · March 2018

When you are a developer but the community does the job for you

IV_Deity · March 2018

pieratsos wrote: »

Groups of 24 people were designed for a campaign that can support thousands of players. Not a few hundred.

I see what you are saying. It'll have a better fit for the population of the servers. The only problem is, I see more people that would be against it at first, like I was, but still not take the time to think about it.

I am wondering where ZOS is to really comment and acknowledge this thread, because it seems that the crappy "nerf this" threads are the ones with ZOS in them. But this right here is very constructive.

Joy_Division · March 2018

IV_Deity wrote: »

show previous quotes

pieratsos wrote: »

Groups of 24 people were designed for a campaign that can support thousands of players. Not a few hundred.

I see what you are saying. It'll have a better fit for the population of the servers. The only problem is, I see more people that would be against it at first, like I was, but still not take the time to think about it.

I am wondering where ZOS is to really comment and acknowledge this thread, because it seems that the crappy "nerf this" threads are the ones with ZOS in them. But this right here is very constructive.

The ZOS developers aren't in those. Just forum moderators.

I think it's pretty clear after 4 years, ZOS is just going to leave Cyrodiil be. What little resources they devote to PvP go into Battlegrounds and it's no coincidence the last 3 patches they've been trying to get more people to play them (switch to CP, then switch back to non CP, increase AP, next patch daily reward)

Ranger209 · March 2018

pieratsos wrote: »

show previous quotes

LarsS wrote: »

Pieratos reducing group size does not solve anything, on the contrary, ungrouped an smallscalers go to next fight so the stacking will be worser. Larger organized groups can go anywhere om the map and do that, thus spreading the fighting.

The-Baconator summs up the argument for smaller groups ”I definitely believe”. We need to look at evidences not beliefes!

How do you even know that it doesnt solve anything? Do you have actual evidence to support that argument? Have you done any tests with reduced group size and changed objectives and it was the same? Do you play in a small group or solo? Why is ur word an evidence but baconator's word just his belief? If anything, its the exact opposite that is happening. He explained why he believes that this is the case with actual evidence from the live servers. You just repeat the same thing "it wont solve anything", you dont provide any evidence to back up ur argument and you ignore any points people make.

When at any given time there are just 2-3 fights on the map because 1 full group makes up a quarter of an entire faction's population then those solo/small group players dont have a choice as to where they should fight. They go where the rest of the groups are because thats the only option they have. This isnt a belief. This is evidence and common sense. I play solo and this is what is happening. I open the map and my only options are the bridge and maybe another keep fight where there is a full organised raid farming 50 pugs for like half an hour. Those are my options. Where am i supposed to go? And we are not even touching on group effectiveness and skill which reinforces the zerg/zergsurfing mentality.

You believe that it wont solve anything. And this belief is based on zero evidence. The only argument you made is that you want to play with ur friends. Which isnt even an argument cause no one is telling you not to. Feel free to play with 50 people if you want. Reducing group size doesnt prohibit you from doing that. You just have to make more groups.

I believe there is no evidence of it either way. While I wouldn't mind seeing group sizes reduced for other reasons, i don't think it will change anything numbers wise in an engagement.

LarsS · March 2018

I give up! Just one last comment, people stack were the fight is regardless if they are solo, smale scale or larger group there is plenty of evidences for that, anyone in Cyro can see that. Thus group size cant be a major issue, the number of people in a small area is the real problem, so give us reasons to spread out like suggested in this proposal.

Soul_Demon · March 2018

Good stuff here Drac- regardless of the way some of the posts denigrate this play style, keep it up. The suggestions are well thought out and will create a much more dynamic strategy that will likely enhance the playability, even if the smaller groups are screaming it wont....they are wrong and have always been wrong when it comes to the behavior of players in this game. To see that one simply has to look at battlegrounds....terrible concept, badly rolled out and absolutely done to placate the small group players. They are still in cyro and not in battlegrounds to this day.

As I go down the list you put out I cant find anything that I disagree with or that I think would not enhance the experience players have here in Cyro. Well done.

AllPlayAndNoWork · March 2018

The under 50 campaign has large scale drawn out fights / battles and keep battles all the time but without all of the performance issues...... I think a lot of the performance issues in PvP comes down to the sets used (monster and proc). Maybe trial PvP (CP and No CP) servers where no monster sets are allowed and see what the difference is and move on from there. Then move on to looking at the proposed changes mentioned in this thread.

Just my view on it.