The Zerg Drama Thread (formerly "how to fight ball groups")

Venom4You

Qbiken wrote: »

@Vilestride

I have had discussions with many group leaders currently active in cyrodil and all of them have the same issue regarding recruitment. It is nearly impossible to find players willing to accept that they can do better and want to do whatever it takes to do so. Players won't try new builds, they expect that guilds will recruit them on the basis of need rather than making themselves needed.

I feel like most PvP-players (just my experience) keep most stuff a secret to them self instead of sharing things with the community regarding builds and group-setups. I´ve tried to apply a few times to some more serious PvP-Guilds on the PC/EU server, and a lot of times (more than I expected) I get rejected because I lack time in PvP (Highest AR rank I´ve is 16) and doesn´t have any proper build for group-play (In 7/10 cases I can´t join due to raid-time doesn´t fit my IRL-stuff). I often proceed to ask other people who are more experienced in PvP what to run for more serious group-play in Cyrodil but it´s very rare to get any serious answer due to the PvP-community being so "secret" about their playstyle. I mainly PvE, and in the PvE community people are a lot more willing to share knowledge compared to PvP players (This is very generally speaking, and people like Crown should have a reward for making threads/websites like this).

I honestly don't know who you are asking for advice then. I don't recall that there was ever a time in ESO when the "pvp raiding meta"
1. wasn't quite obvious to figure out by just looking how the "good" guilds play
2. could be figured out by simply asking a member of those specific groups for the setup
As far as I am aware (at least on EU) there is not much secrecy about what performs very well for raiding in groups. The bigger problem is rather that most casual guys probably don't bother farming the BiS gear after getting the intel because stacking the guild with it's factions zerg seems much more convenient ^^ I know from problems in various guilds that try to do better that people have the attitude "from now on we gonna be serious" but on the other hand can't be arsed to farm the necessary gear or to be present in raids for consistent practice to build a group synergy. Its not enough to simply put on BiS gear. Time and effort has to be invested to become good in a particular playstyle. That's why I find it highly amusing that so many salty people on forums reduce highly coordinated guilds to "pressing one button in a raid". If that was true - man had we amazingly skilled faction zergs in Cyrodiil
PS: If someone rejects you because of your alliance rank he hasn't much understanding of pvp anyway. We have so many grand overlords in cyrodiil that either zergsurfed themselves to that rank or lately traded their pvp ranks in the "pvp roleplay" event in march!
Show good attitude and be dedicated and good guilds will pick you up eventually. work yourself "up" the foodchain or be happy with going to cyrodiil casually!

PenguinInACan

Vilestride wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

CyrusArya wrote: »

AnonUnk wrote: »

I've never seen Drac begging zone chat for guild members, but I've seen VE do it.

Being inclusive and open to fostering community engagement hardly constitutes ‘begging’. VE hasn’t had a need to ‘beg’ for guild members ever I don’t think. You’ll find that it’s just a difference in philosophy.

Minnesinger wrote: »

I have never played in VE but these attempts to tarnish their effort in this game looks sillier by every attempt. My respect for them grows the more I read the Forums.

Yup. I have never been affiliated with VE either, but have played with and am pretty close with some of their core members. Really cool people who are also great players. Their ranks do have more players who are carried, but at the same time I don’t think they want or feel the need to carry themselves as God’s gift to cyrodiil for being able to stack 30 k health and spam destro ultis. Elitism among zerg players just seems like such an oxymoron to me.

Amusing thread.

There's a difference between isolating your guild from the community and not putting anything back into it, and elitism.

Elitism is fantastic for the health of a game, and is required as much as mentors and teachers are. There is nothing wrong with expecting your members to be at the level of play you need them to be. Some teaching is always required, but this is why guilds trial members.

A standard of elitism generates a motive for improvement, all other competitive games have this and it fosters a community that strives to get better rather than become complacent with their current abilities. if you think this is bad for the game we have hugely varying ideals on what gaming, or generally speaking, life is about.

Sure for some they just want to come online and take it easy, relax a bit, and that's great, that hasn't gone away. What has disappeared, to the detriment of the games health, is elitism.

I have had discussions with many group leaders currently active in cyrodil and all of them have the same issue regarding recruitment. It is nearly impossible to find players willing to accept that they can do better and want to do whatever it takes to do so. Players won't try new builds, they expect that guilds will recruit them on the basis of need rather than making themselves needed.

Anyone who was actually in No Mercy can correct me here if I am wrong, but this guild had a separate waiting list guild for trials. It had some 60 members in it, all of whom waiting in here for MONTHS while trialling to join this guild because they wanted to prove themselves and play with the best. Not only did this improve the guild itself, but it improved the way of thinking for an entire faction who all admired this guild. The trial guild had a ranking system on it that if I recall had ranks from 'initiate', 'keep an eye on', 'needs to improve', 'ready for trial' and a few others. The point is, and maybe I'm just too being nostalgic here, the general disposition of players (obviously with exceptions) back then was dramatically different to how it is now.

Then, players didn't blame metas, their first reaction to a loss was not that the opponent was using cheese and some exploit or hack. They looked up to the players and guilds who were beating them on a day to day basis and sought their advice or made every effort to improve themselves to join another top tier rival guild to compete against them.

Why? because there was a standard of elitism, there was a prestige that people were attracted by. The health of the game depends on the balance of casual to hardcore players. right now, it's tilted far too heavily towards the latter.

So maybe let's rethink the negative connotation behind the word elitism.

The negative connotation is earned by players resorting to name-calling and pointless trash talking. Anyone can respect the skill of a player and define them as "elite", but it does nothing for the community when that player is completely lacking in humility, respectfulness and empathy.

You can't just superimpose the definition of a healthy competitive atmosphere over a word that defines so much of the toxic PvP community. I have seen more "elite" guilds fall apart because of ego's and in-fighting due to "eliteism" than are actually PvP-ing right now.

Maybe its the "elite" that need to rethink how they define themselves rather than everyone else re-establish a connotation earned.

This is true, and I agree elitism should not inherently entail arrogance, nor should it warrant any disrespect towards those who have no desire to be competitive. People play for all different reasons and none of those are any more or less well founded than the others, no one is suggesting otherwise.

All I am doing is speaking for the rational portion of elitism that can be healthy, simply pointing out the other side of the coin that Cyrus has spoken of. I feel like you are implying there currently is a standard of elitism that is negatively effecting the game and to put it plainly, I don't see it. I don't see any active guilds displaying this sort of behaviour.

Between all the active guilds currently running on NA (TM/DK/DiG/Fantasia/Artem/BoD/CN/LoM/PM to name a few) I don't think there is much negativity at all, and I think they are all doing what they can to help one another grow, recruit and learn. Speaking personally I have discussions with raid leads from rival guilds every day we are out there about tactics, meta, recruitment and so on and to be honest, though maybe I am being hopeful, cyrodil from a guild stand point is much more enjoyable than it was this time even 6 months ago. Obviously I can only account for my own experience with these guilds so don't hold me to that as some universal ruling.

The other thing worth noting is that sometimes guilds falling apart is a good thing whether it be because of elitism or any other factor.
I simply don't see longevity as a criteria for success, happiness in that longevity yes, but longevity for the sake of longevity absolutely not. If a group of people do not share the same common goals there is absolutely nothing unhealthy about dividing those people so that they can each pursue their separate goals more effectively.

So again. I definitely don't think elitism is predisposed to being a bad thing.

A guild is only as respectable and positive as its members. This thread is a great example of eliteism casting a negative shadow. Your own guildmates talking about boring competition and lack of skill is completely contradictory to what you are trying to build on here.

Out of all of the guilds you have mentioned there, how many of them actually cause an issue to Drac when you come across them? I can tell you its none of the DC guilds (which is nothing against them, but if we dont have any issues with them, neither should you). And we've only been tailoring ourselves to more coordinated/tight group play for a month now. If VE was the only guild that caused enough drama to leak into the forums after they left then I would say you have been without "competition" for a while now...so why hasn't the PvP guild community grown to supply non-boring competition?

I don't see how my guildmates pointing out that they'd like the game to be more competitive is somehow negative? and I have no doubt we do more than most to help improve other guilds. Many have asked for advice on builds, group composition and just general strategy and we are yet to turn any of them away. Helping people doesn't necessarily mean recruiting people. But anyways...

Forgive my ignorance but I'm not actually familiar with which guild you represent so fill me in.

Moving on to you second point I can say without a doubt that even before VE quit, fighting fantasia was always the most worthwhile fight on the map. Simply because they play much more like us in their objectives as a guild. VE was always more objectively driven so they were more often supported in what they contest compared to other guilds we'd engage with regularly. So to respond directly, I would say the competition is the same as it has been for the last few months regardless, as long as guilds like this are still around to have amazing fights against.

This past weekend we fought a bigger variety of guilds than we have in the last 6 months and it was fantastic. The most notable were Crowns guild, Fantasia and Even some Venatus fights, so fingers crossed things are looking good.

Every post referring to Drac in this thread is either in reference to them being the best PvP guild still in the game, or something trying to stir drama. Besides yourself, those posts have been met with condescension, belittlement of other players, and consistent "we don't say we are the best, other people do" attitudes that paint a very arrogant picture of people you say are trying to better the community. And seeing as we're still on connotations, saying there is no competition left and there are no skilled players left to fight against is very different than "we want the game to be more competitive". You say your best fights were/are with Fantasia, but your guildmates say there isn't anyone left to provide you with competition. So what exactly happens when you fight Fantasia? Half the raid yawns and the other half sits up a little more straight in their chair? From the majority of what I have seen, and this is only based on the forums here, the majority of Drac wants "competition" like the 1vX-ers want "competition". That is, someone they can beat up on but still run maybe a 20% risk that if they do something really stupid, they might fail.

This thread was started to discuss strategy in "ball group tactics" but instead of actually trying to "do more than most", barely even two pages in the pot was stirred and any hope of actually having a constructive discussion about tactics which you say you guys want to do, was thrown out the window.

I don't see why it's relevant what guild I represent here, but its TM.

Eirella

Wow, forum PVP is way more entertaining than the actual game!

Thraben

Qbiken wrote: »

@Vilestride

I feel like most PvP-players (just my experience) keep most stuff a secret to them self instead of sharing things with the community regarding builds and group-setups. I´ve tried to apply a few times to some more serious PvP-Guilds on the PC/EU server, and a lot of times (more than I expected) I get rejected because I lack time in PvP (Highest AR rank I´ve is 16) and doesn´t have any proper build for group-play (In 7/10 cases I can´t join due to raid-time doesn´t fit my IRL-stuff). I often proceed to ask other people who are more experienced in PvP what to run for more serious group-play in Cyrodil but it´s very rare to get any serious answer due to the PvP-community being so "secret" about their playstyle. I mainly PvE, and in the PvE community people are a lot more willing to share knowledge compared to PvP players (This is very generally speaking, and people like Crown should have a reward for making threads/websites like this).

1. There are a lot of casual PvP guilds on EU servers. Sounds like you should apply there?
Casual does not automatically mean "AP fodder". It just means than you can never hope to reach the efficiency (firepower, healing output, speed) of a ball group. But there is more in PvP than efficiency: Otherwise there wouldn't be some ballgroups that everybody loves to farm, and ones that almost everybody loves to avoid.

2. What class do you play?



MagBlades are the ballgroups' main DD and are specialized in killing as many opponents as possible. Ballgroups are constructed around their playstyle. They equip Eye-of-the-storm and try to proc their vicious death set. Magblades with their Ultimate on CD slow the opponents with Lotos Fan, Fear, Dawnbreaker.

Stamsorcs are supporters (typically the only stamina class in the raid) and provide speed and crowd control immunity. Some have additional tasks like crowd control. They also equip Negates as Ultimate.

MagSorcs are typically responsible for providing Damage, CC, and sometimes they cure negative effects. Otherwise they are like Magblades with a stronger focus on ranged attacks. Either Negate or Eye-of-the-storm.

MagTemplars are healers using healing springs as their main skill. The range of their springs determines the area in which a bomb train moves as the magblades can be quite vulnerable without support.

Wardens are used because of their Pollen debuff, and their Permafrost Ulti. Additional task vary from group to group as most bomb groups have not yet found a true meta here .

Other classes/roles don't exist in ballgroups.

Lexxypwns

Thraben wrote: »

Qbiken wrote: »

@Vilestride

I feel like most PvP-players (just my experience) keep most stuff a secret to them self instead of sharing things with the community regarding builds and group-setups. I´ve tried to apply a few times to some more serious PvP-Guilds on the PC/EU server, and a lot of times (more than I expected) I get rejected because I lack time in PvP (Highest AR rank I´ve is 16) and doesn´t have any proper build for group-play (In 7/10 cases I can´t join due to raid-time doesn´t fit my IRL-stuff). I often proceed to ask other people who are more experienced in PvP what to run for more serious group-play in Cyrodil but it´s very rare to get any serious answer due to the PvP-community being so "secret" about their playstyle. I mainly PvE, and in the PvE community people are a lot more willing to share knowledge compared to PvP players (This is very generally speaking, and people like Crown should have a reward for making threads/websites like this).

1. There are a lot of casual PvP guilds on EU servers. Sounds like you should apply there?
Casual does not automatically mean "AP fodder". It just means than you can never hope to reach the efficiency (firepower, healing output, speed) of a ball group. But there is more in PvP than efficiency: Otherwise there wouldn't be some ballgroups that everybody loves to farm, and ones that almost everybody loves to avoid.

2. What class do you play?



MagBlades are the ballgroups' main DD and are specialized in killing as many opponents as possible. Ballgroups are constructed around their playstyle. They equip Eye-of-the-storm and try to proc their vicious death set. Magblades with their Ultimate on CD slow the opponents with Lotos Fan, Fear, Dawnbreaker.

Stamsorcs are supporters (typically the only stamina class in the raid) and provide speed and crowd control immunity. Some have additional tasks like crowd control. They also equip Negates as Ultimate.

MagSorcs are typically responsible for providing Damage, CC, and sometimes they cure negative effects. Otherwise they are like Magblades with a stronger focus on ranged attacks. Either Negate or Eye-of-the-storm.

MagTemplars are healers using healing springs as their main skill. The range of their springs determines the area in which a bomb train moves as the magblades can be quite vulnerable without support.

Wardens are used because of their Pollen debuff, and their Permafrost Ulti. Additional task vary from group to group as most bomb groups have not yet found a true meta here .

Other classes/roles don't exist in ballgroups.

I thought the meta for warden was stamden support? Rapids, vigor, spores, pollen, frost, etc. basically they're your negate proof healer. The 30k HP guild groups can utilize this because the extra health keeps them alive while the inferior stam based heals go off, whereas with lesser health you probably won't survive long enough in a bad negate to reap the benefits

pzschrek

I've been in a few of these groups and Thraben's overview is a good general synopsis.

I've never been in a group that uses Magsorcs the same way though. Some use them as siege shield purgebots so the healers can focus on healing, some use them as healers because they can negate too, and some use them as destro damage dealers, all of them rely on negate/encase. Some bring sets to do all 3 depending on need. I'm sure there are other uses too.

Agrippa_Invisus

Eirella wrote: »

Wow, forum PVP is way more entertaining than the actual game!

Less laggy, too!

Feanor

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Eirella wrote: »

Wow, forum PVP is way more entertaining than the actual game!

Less laggy, too!

I miss the loading screens though.

Thraben

Lexxypwns wrote: »

I thought the meta for warden was stamden support? Rapids, vigor, spores, pollen, frost, etc. basically they're your negate proof healer. The 30k HP guild groups can utilize this because the extra health keeps them alive while the inferior stam based heals go off, whereas with lesser health you probably won't survive long enough in a bad negate to reap the benefits

I play like that (I even purge as a stamwarden) if we are less than 6 players, but I play in a casual pvp group where I can only call the ultis and determine 2 skills per player - and where I have no influence on the class/role distribution, so a jack-of-all-traits support warden makes sense.

However, at least on EU Servers most bomb group wardens are magicka based, as Earthgore made stamina healing less important and in a typical 14 person bomb group, there are specialists for support roles who outperform a warden.

Irylia

Vilestride wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Rin_Senya wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Whose trying to hide or call foul? Unlike you and Frozn, I am under no illusions or fantasies as to how this game is played, what the groups and guilds I am in have done. None, I have never denied it.

You're the one trying to set your guild apart and you'll grasp at any straw to do so. Your hypocrisy shows in that you have two different standards of counting numbers. You will not count any EP in your vicinity because they aren't in your group and not coordinating with you, and yet you do not apply this same standard to the guild that you fights - if any DC is anywhere near VE, then that is conscious factions tacking and why you so casually say we run with 40. And you say I'm trying to hide? What a joke.

I am not denying that you think it helps EP to go farm DC pugs at Nickel or backcap Ash, which moves you away from the faction stack. But if you think your ball-group of destro-ultis, earthgores, and negates is somehow more palatable form of zerging because you only run 16 instead of 24, you should listen to Publius and other people non EP say in zone chat sometime. And for every time you go on your own to the Western portion of the map, we all see you and your guild, Pact Milita raid 3, with other EP guilds.

If you want to throw rocks living in a glass house, that's your prerogative. Go ahead and console yourself that you and your guild are superior sportsmen and women because you restrain your ball-group size or the amount of times you'll stack with other EP guilds. Delude yourself if it helps you sleep at night. Keep telling yourself that when you had VE and BoD names on your death-recap, it was because we stacked together as our "standard method of play." But somehow when I had Drac and PM names on my death-recap, it was somehow fundamentally different, a rare occurrence. You're just as biased and blind as Frozn is.

For someone telling others not to try and hide or cry foul when people bring up their grievances, you are pretty lousy at following your own advice.

I do not deny I have done, do, and will continue to do things that *** people off playing this game. I generally try not to, but the way the game is designed, the way the map is laid out, the way the campaigns are scored and rewarded, and the low numbers of actual people PvPing mean there are times that I do, and some of these times happen because reasons. And when I do these crappy things, I own it, I admit it, I don't hide, I don't try to excuse it because other people do those crappy things more often. So don't accuse me of doing so just because you, Frozn, and so many other people on these forums who do just to assuage their egos.

After reading all of this I can just say that you completely missed the point of what Iza, Agrippa, Frozn, me and some other people here were saying. Maybe because you actually not interested in listening to other opinions? You sit on exactly the same "high horse" that you accuse people with. Defending your behaviours by constantly repeating the same phrases: "I am under no illusions or fantasies", "I do not deny I have done", "when I do these crappy things, I own it, I admit it, I don't hide, I don't try to excuse it" and "people on these forums who do just to assuage their egos". You can't even see that all this people that I mentioned above said multiple times that everyone zerg (including themselves) in this game from time to time - some people/guilds more, some less. Yet you still claiming that it's only you here not denying this fact or being under no illusions or fantasies. Now who is feeding their own egos here?

I'll just repeat Agrippa's point: some guilds put a lot more effort into 'destacking' the faction than others. That's the fact.

Ixtyr wrote: »

I mean, Vivec's Glademist has been claimed by "Dracvictus Kushlitia" for over a month for a reason. .

Ohhh I see how it works now! So Ash/Roe that has been claimed for "Fantasia made VE quit" is there for a reason too! Interesting fact Next lvl would be bringing here Camelot's keep claims as a legit argument in the discussion!

And while you, Iza, Agrippa, Frozn get to decide what is fact from what is fiction, some of you have no problem throwing in insults and lies such as VE runs with 40 and whose standard method of playing is to stack on guild that we dislike and who dislike us. It wasn't enough for to just present fact: those insults, those accusations had to be thrown in as well. You would never stand for it. Yet you expect us to quietly accept these insults as truth and get indignant when we dispute them that somehow we aren't interesting in listening to your perspectives..

But let's get to your precious point. Exactly how was it that you come to base this fact, and let's get down to the nitty gritty: who are these guilds that put a lot more effort into 'destacking' and which guilds are the worst offenders?

From the comments made by you, Iza, and Frozn, you would have me believe that the guilds that you are a part of put a lot of effort into 'destacking,' whereas VE and other DC guilds, NPK and BoD mentioned, routinely and deliberately stack together as standard method of playing?

You, Iza, and Frozn say that at in your voice coms that you try to avoid faction-stacks, go out and attack objectives away from map, and point to examples in Vivek's campaign cycle where you have done this. As for those times when you do stack, it's regrettable, it's necessary because of the map, it's something that has got to be done, it;s not representative of how you at least try to play. Am I right? What all this boils down to, though is a big fat "trust me." Because you are asking me to dismiss those times Drac and PM names are on my death recounts as not something you want to do, something you try not to do. It's a pretty big leap of faith, is is not?

But because I'm such an open-minded person and idealistic person, let's say that you are right in this respect.

Now how is it that you come to the conclusion that VE's behavior is fundamentally different, such that we routinely and deliberately stacked together with other guilds as standard method of playing? What exactly are you basing this on? Has Bulb, Steve, Zheg, or any VE officer told you this was guild policy and has this been confirmed by other VE members? Has Saramis, Harlock, or other DC guild leaders corroborated that they do in fact make is a stand procedure that they willingly stack with VE? If the answer to these questions is no, and correct me in assuming that is the answer, then that means your factual conclusion comes entirely from hearsay and anecdotal evidence gathered primarily from the perspective of a rival opposing guild. Not exactly trustworthy sources.

But let's go deeper. Somehow, someway, your, Iza, and Frozn's testimony is valid, trustworthy, truthful, and commensurate with reality. But the same testimony we offer is not. I can point to many, many times, and Vex had these on her streams, that our leads directed us away BoD, away from NPK, away from CN, away from all of that because of many reasons. Like yourselves, there were times we didn't want to trash the server. Sometime our raid leads saw a better strategy than the ones the other DC guilds were pursuing. But most of the time, it really was all about that we don't like those guilds and they don't like us. Hell, I remember more than one time Bulb deliberately did not go and assist them defending DC home keeps - when it clearly was the correct play on the map - because he deliberately wanted them to fail in order to teach them a lesson or something like that. For a long period of time, bulb actually had Saramis blocked; the notion that we routinely and willingly collaborated, let alone stacked, is laughable to anyone in either guild. You know there were many times VE, and only VE, would try to take back-keeps such as BRK or Arrius. And for whatever reason, the VE leads were fascinated with the prospect, again on their own, of back-capping Alessia. Were there times we were with 50 others at Chalman mine? Yep. Were there times just your guild was alone in a tower and in your death-recaps you have VE, BoD, NPK names? Yep. Somehow, though, this behavior is interpreted as the norm, whereas it is not in your case. Why the difference? Why the double-standard? Why do we have to trust and accept your testimony but you don't trust ours? Why is your perspective privileged?

You, Frozn, and Iza are basing your conclusion not on primary or even secondary sources, but from your own anecdotal recollections, something that is more than biased, it is flawed as memory is notoriously unreliable and subject to change over time. You and Frozn may believe in your heart or hearts that VE has had a significant number of stacking transgressions more than your own, but your basis for such a conclusion is based on untenable evidence. You have no way of counting and because the three of you are pretty much exclusively EP, you have zero comprehension exactly what goes in from the DC perspective. That you could casually and emphatically insist that guilds who have pretty much from day 1 disliked and in some case downright hated each other would stack together as a matter of standard procedure just show none of you have any insight into what motivates the DC guilds or why they do the things they do. Most of the times you don't see what the DC guilds are doing. Your perspectives are very much incomplete, so you fill in the gaps with your own biases to explain what's going on. In short, you perceive the worst in us because you are missing a great many facts and your negative reminiscences of those times VE and BoD members appeared in your death-recaps reinforce this (mis)perception.

You wonder if I am listening to others or actually interested in their opinions. The same can be said for you, Iza, and Frozn. All of you insist VE ran 40 and stacked with other guilds based on nothing we said. We don't even run anymore, but that doesn't stop the three of you from dragging our name in the mud to prove your "fact" that we engaged in reprehensible behavior that was fundamentally different, such that a stark distinction should be drawn between guilds trying to the the right thing - yours - and guilds that were/are the problem, ours. You have not considered our opinions or testimony as valid; instead you want to privilege your own beliefs and recollections, which comprise much of the basis for this fact that you so desperately want to believe.

CN told me that PoD saw VE say they heard Animosity are actually the zergiest guild in game right now. Confirmed by faction mascots publius, iskra and toosk.

Glademist claim was well honoured today.

Sensitive satori's everywhere.

I told kodi that if we added him it would no longer be a small group. **** 5 was 1 too many and now we are marked as the zerg guild.

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions”

SaraMoonandStar wrote: »

In my opinion the best way to defeat a ball group is to get together a bunch of friends and theorycraft and then try it out on the "ball group" until you stop dying.

Organized GVG's would go a long way to help people having trouble beating any "ball group". And the only guilds I have ever seen in 3 years of playing that actively seek out GVGs are Haxus and Drac. Jules was the person who organized the first GVG, and if you were there you know it was a fun time had by everyone regardless of outcome.

Any guild can make excuses, any guild can paint things in such a way that they are the best and everyone else is just "cheating". While that kind of thing is honestly super funny to read on the forums, and promotes interest in the game by riling people up, it doesn't actually determine the success of your guild.

Guild Pride is important, and I always try to stay away from making negative public comments about individuals or groups, because it helps the population of the game if people think they are doing extremely well (and its not nice to be mean). If I can make a lot of AP off of a guild that wants to think they are amazing and refuse to try something new, then yay for me.

If we had some sort of organized GVG event schedule then:
1. new and current players would have a method by which they can test out and practice group builds and ideas
2. it would foster a greater pvp community and possibly bring new players interested in group play
3. BE A SUPER FUN TIME !!!
4. allow some actual leader-board type rankings which are undeniable. I wont ever call out anybody or any guild, but many guilds refuse to GVG... and its doesnt make sense to me at all. If you want to soundly show people you can theory-craft a 12 man better than anyone else, GVGs are the forum in which to do so
5. give people even more fodder to complain on these forums and let me popcorn

The idea behind this thread was amazing, lets try and help people and bring people in. But the problem is, even if these tactics are sound, you wont really know how well they work unless you TEST them. And if you test them in open world conflicts then you wont be getting meaningful results because there are too many variables at play. If you can be sure of beating every other guild in an organized GVG then you can be sure you will be a threat in cyro.

Sara

Animosity has attempted to pull guilds in for gvg’s by starting a discord with a dozen or so guilds. The struggle Is getting those players to meet up.
With the help of dracarys, Jules, kodi, and a few other guilds it could become a common weekly event.
@Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

asneakybanana wrote: »

IxSTALKERxI wrote: »

SaraMoonandStar wrote: »

In my opinion the best way to defeat a ball group is to get together a bunch of friends and theorycraft and then try it out on the "ball group" until you stop dying.

Organized GVG's would go a long way to help people having trouble beating any "ball group". And the only guilds I have ever seen in 3 years of playing that actively seek out GVGs are Haxus and Drac. Jules was the person who organized the first GVG, and if you were there you know it was a fun time had by everyone regardless of outcome.

Any guild can make excuses, any guild can paint things in such a way that they are the best and everyone else is just "cheating". While that kind of thing is honestly super funny to read on the forums, and promotes interest in the game by riling people up, it doesn't actually determine the success of your guild.

Guild Pride is important, and I always try to stay away from making negative public comments about individuals or groups, because it helps the population of the game if people think they are doing extremely well (and its not nice to be mean). If I can make a lot of AP off of a guild that wants to think they are amazing and refuse to try something new, then yay for me.

If we had some sort of organized GVG event schedule then:
1. new and current players would have a method by which they can test out and practice group builds and ideas
2. it would foster a greater pvp community and possibly bring new players interested in group play
3. BE A SUPER FUN TIME !!!
4. allow some actual leader-board type rankings which are undeniable. I wont ever call out anybody or any guild, but many guilds refuse to GVG... and its doesnt make sense to me at all. If you want to soundly show people you can theory-craft a 12 man better than anyone else, GVGs are the forum in which to do so
5. give people even more fodder to complain on these forums and let me popcorn

The idea behind this thread was amazing, lets try and help people and bring people in. But the problem is, even if these tactics are sound, you wont really know how well they work unless you TEST them. And if you test them in open world conflicts then you wont be getting meaningful results because there are too many variables at play. If you can be sure of beating every other guild in an organized GVG then you can be sure you will be a threat in cyro.

Sara

I agree. I am actually interested in doing some GvG's atm (just started playing again this patch). Our setup / builds are different to everyone elses so would be interesting to see how well they perform. I havn't been able to get into any good fights with enemy guilds yet though. (6-8v8ish give or take with minimal outside interference) Think I've been playing at the wrong times.

Edit: also that GvG event was super fun.

Talk to animosity. Fairly sure they're looking for 6v6 gvgs.

@IxSTALKERxI

Here! GvG!! Hello we want gvg’s!! Please pick me pick me!

We have a discord for guilds interested in gvg’s. They just need more motivation to challenge other guilds or meet.

Irylia

I think we need gvg’s In our life.
Anyone?

ZOS_Mika

Hey there everyone, we have recently removed a handful of comments that contained inappropriate language. Please keep this discussion civil and respectful.

heystreethawk

Vilestride wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

CyrusArya wrote: »

AnonUnk wrote: »

I've never seen Drac begging zone chat for guild members, but I've seen VE do it.

Being inclusive and open to fostering community engagement hardly constitutes ‘begging’. VE hasn’t had a need to ‘beg’ for guild members ever I don’t think. You’ll find that it’s just a difference in philosophy.

Minnesinger wrote: »

I have never played in VE but these attempts to tarnish their effort in this game looks sillier by every attempt. My respect for them grows the more I read the Forums.

Yup. I have never been affiliated with VE either, but have played with and am pretty close with some of their core members. Really cool people who are also great players. Their ranks do have more players who are carried, but at the same time I don’t think they want or feel the need to carry themselves as God’s gift to cyrodiil for being able to stack 30 k health and spam destro ultis. Elitism among zerg players just seems like such an oxymoron to me.

Amusing thread.

There's a difference between isolating your guild from the community and not putting anything back into it, and elitism.

Elitism is fantastic for the health of a game, and is required as much as mentors and teachers are. There is nothing wrong with expecting your members to be at the level of play you need them to be. Some teaching is always required, but this is why guilds trial members.

A standard of elitism generates a motive for improvement, all other competitive games have this and it fosters a community that strives to get better rather than become complacent with their current abilities. if you think this is bad for the game we have hugely varying ideals on what gaming, or generally speaking, life is about.

Sure for some they just want to come online and take it easy, relax a bit, and that's great, that hasn't gone away. What has disappeared, to the detriment of the games health, is elitism.

I have had discussions with many group leaders currently active in cyrodil and all of them have the same issue regarding recruitment. It is nearly impossible to find players willing to accept that they can do better and want to do whatever it takes to do so. Players won't try new builds, they expect that guilds will recruit them on the basis of need rather than making themselves needed.

Anyone who was actually in No Mercy can correct me here if I am wrong, but this guild had a separate waiting list guild for trials. It had some 60 members in it, all of whom waiting in here for MONTHS while trialling to join this guild because they wanted to prove themselves and play with the best. Not only did this improve the guild itself, but it improved the way of thinking for an entire faction who all admired this guild. The trial guild had a ranking system on it that if I recall had ranks from 'initiate', 'keep an eye on', 'needs to improve', 'ready for trial' and a few others. The point is, and maybe I'm just too being nostalgic here, the general disposition of players (obviously with exceptions) back then was dramatically different to how it is now.

Then, players didn't blame metas, their first reaction to a loss was not that the opponent was using cheese and some exploit or hack. They looked up to the players and guilds who were beating them on a day to day basis and sought their advice or made every effort to improve themselves to join another top tier rival guild to compete against them.

Why? because there was a standard of elitism, there was a prestige that people were attracted by. The health of the game depends on the balance of casual to hardcore players. right now, it's tilted far too heavily towards the latter.

So maybe let's rethink the negative connotation behind the word elitism.

The negative connotation is earned by players resorting to name-calling and pointless trash talking. Anyone can respect the skill of a player and define them as "elite", but it does nothing for the community when that player is completely lacking in humility, respectfulness and empathy.

You can't just superimpose the definition of a healthy competitive atmosphere over a word that defines so much of the toxic PvP community. I have seen more "elite" guilds fall apart because of ego's and in-fighting due to "eliteism" than are actually PvP-ing right now.

Maybe its the "elite" that need to rethink how they define themselves rather than everyone else re-establish a connotation earned.

This is true, and I agree elitism should not inherently entail arrogance, nor should it warrant any disrespect towards those who have no desire to be competitive. People play for all different reasons and none of those are any more or less well founded than the others, no one is suggesting otherwise.

All I am doing is speaking for the rational portion of elitism that can be healthy, simply pointing out the other side of the coin that Cyrus has spoken of. I feel like you are implying there currently is a standard of elitism that is negatively effecting the game and to put it plainly, I don't see it. I don't see any active guilds displaying this sort of behaviour.

Between all the active guilds currently running on NA (TM/DK/DiG/Fantasia/Artem/BoD/CN/LoM/PM to name a few) I don't think there is much negativity at all, and I think they are all doing what they can to help one another grow, recruit and learn. Speaking personally I have discussions with raid leads from rival guilds every day we are out there about tactics, meta, recruitment and so on and to be honest, though maybe I am being hopeful, cyrodil from a guild stand point is much more enjoyable than it was this time even 6 months ago. Obviously I can only account for my own experience with these guilds so don't hold me to that as some universal ruling.

The other thing worth noting is that sometimes guilds falling apart is a good thing whether it be because of elitism or any other factor.
I simply don't see longevity as a criteria for success, happiness in that longevity yes, but longevity for the sake of longevity absolutely not. If a group of people do not share the same common goals there is absolutely nothing unhealthy about dividing those people so that they can each pursue their separate goals more effectively.

So again. I definitely don't think elitism is predisposed to being a bad thing.

A guild is only as respectable and positive as its members. This thread is a great example of eliteism casting a negative shadow. Your own guildmates talking about boring competition and lack of skill is completely contradictory to what you are trying to build on here.

Out of all of the guilds you have mentioned there, how many of them actually cause an issue to Drac when you come across them? I can tell you its none of the DC guilds (which is nothing against them, but if we dont have any issues with them, neither should you). And we've only been tailoring ourselves to more coordinated/tight group play for a month now. If VE was the only guild that caused enough drama to leak into the forums after they left then I would say you have been without "competition" for a while now...so why hasn't the PvP guild community grown to supply non-boring competition?

Moving on to you second point I can say without a doubt that even before VE quit, fighting fantasia was always the most worthwhile fight on the map. Simply because they play much more like us in their objectives as a guild. VE was always more objectively driven so they were more often supported in what they contest compared to other guilds we'd engage with regularly. So to respond directly, I would say the competition is the same as it has been for the last few months regardless, as long as guilds like this are still around to have amazing fights against.

WARM AND FUZZY FEELINGS.

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

CyrusArya wrote: »

AnonUnk wrote: »

I've never seen Drac begging zone chat for guild members, but I've seen VE do it.

Being inclusive and open to fostering community engagement hardly constitutes ‘begging’. VE hasn’t had a need to ‘beg’ for guild members ever I don’t think. You’ll find that it’s just a difference in philosophy.

Minnesinger wrote: »

I have never played in VE but these attempts to tarnish their effort in this game looks sillier by every attempt. My respect for them grows the more I read the Forums.

Yup. I have never been affiliated with VE either, but have played with and am pretty close with some of their core members. Really cool people who are also great players. Their ranks do have more players who are carried, but at the same time I don’t think they want or feel the need to carry themselves as God’s gift to cyrodiil for being able to stack 30 k health and spam destro ultis. Elitism among zerg players just seems like such an oxymoron to me.

Amusing thread.

There's a difference between isolating your guild from the community and not putting anything back into it, and elitism.

Elitism is fantastic for the health of a game, and is required as much as mentors and teachers are. There is nothing wrong with expecting your members to be at the level of play you need them to be. Some teaching is always required, but this is why guilds trial members.

A standard of elitism generates a motive for improvement, all other competitive games have this and it fosters a community that strives to get better rather than become complacent with their current abilities. if you think this is bad for the game we have hugely varying ideals on what gaming, or generally speaking, life is about.

Sure for some they just want to come online and take it easy, relax a bit, and that's great, that hasn't gone away. What has disappeared, to the detriment of the games health, is elitism.

I have had discussions with many group leaders currently active in cyrodil and all of them have the same issue regarding recruitment. It is nearly impossible to find players willing to accept that they can do better and want to do whatever it takes to do so. Players won't try new builds, they expect that guilds will recruit them on the basis of need rather than making themselves needed.

Anyone who was actually in No Mercy can correct me here if I am wrong, but this guild had a separate waiting list guild for trials. It had some 60 members in it, all of whom waiting in here for MONTHS while trialling to join this guild because they wanted to prove themselves and play with the best. Not only did this improve the guild itself, but it improved the way of thinking for an entire faction who all admired this guild. The trial guild had a ranking system on it that if I recall had ranks from 'initiate', 'keep an eye on', 'needs to improve', 'ready for trial' and a few others. The point is, and maybe I'm just too being nostalgic here, the general disposition of players (obviously with exceptions) back then was dramatically different to how it is now.

Then, players didn't blame metas, their first reaction to a loss was not that the opponent was using cheese and some exploit or hack. They looked up to the players and guilds who were beating them on a day to day basis and sought their advice or made every effort to improve themselves to join another top tier rival guild to compete against them.

Why? because there was a standard of elitism, there was a prestige that people were attracted by. The health of the game depends on the balance of casual to hardcore players. right now, it's tilted far too heavily towards the latter.

So maybe let's rethink the negative connotation behind the word elitism.

The negative connotation is earned by players resorting to name-calling and pointless trash talking. Anyone can respect the skill of a player and define them as "elite", but it does nothing for the community when that player is completely lacking in humility, respectfulness and empathy.

You can't just superimpose the definition of a healthy competitive atmosphere over a word that defines so much of the toxic PvP community. I have seen more "elite" guilds fall apart because of ego's and in-fighting due to "eliteism" than are actually PvP-ing right now.

Maybe its the "elite" that need to rethink how they define themselves rather than everyone else re-establish a connotation earned.

This is true, and I agree elitism should not inherently entail arrogance, nor should it warrant any disrespect towards those who have no desire to be competitive. People play for all different reasons and none of those are any more or less well founded than the others, no one is suggesting otherwise.

All I am doing is speaking for the rational portion of elitism that can be healthy, simply pointing out the other side of the coin that Cyrus has spoken of. I feel like you are implying there currently is a standard of elitism that is negatively effecting the game and to put it plainly, I don't see it. I don't see any active guilds displaying this sort of behaviour.

Between all the active guilds currently running on NA (TM/DK/DiG/Fantasia/Artem/BoD/CN/LoM/PM to name a few) I don't think there is much negativity at all, and I think they are all doing what they can to help one another grow, recruit and learn. Speaking personally I have discussions with raid leads from rival guilds every day we are out there about tactics, meta, recruitment and so on and to be honest, though maybe I am being hopeful, cyrodil from a guild stand point is much more enjoyable than it was this time even 6 months ago. Obviously I can only account for my own experience with these guilds so don't hold me to that as some universal ruling.

The other thing worth noting is that sometimes guilds falling apart is a good thing whether it be because of elitism or any other factor.
I simply don't see longevity as a criteria for success, happiness in that longevity yes, but longevity for the sake of longevity absolutely not. If a group of people do not share the same common goals there is absolutely nothing unhealthy about dividing those people so that they can each pursue their separate goals more effectively.

So again. I definitely don't think elitism is predisposed to being a bad thing.

A guild is only as respectable and positive as its members. This thread is a great example of eliteism casting a negative shadow. Your own guildmates talking about boring competition and lack of skill is completely contradictory to what you are trying to build on here.

Out of all of the guilds you have mentioned there, how many of them actually cause an issue to Drac when you come across them? I can tell you its none of the DC guilds (which is nothing against them, but if we dont have any issues with them, neither should you). And we've only been tailoring ourselves to more coordinated/tight group play for a month now. If VE was the only guild that caused enough drama to leak into the forums after they left then I would say you have been without "competition" for a while now...so why hasn't the PvP guild community grown to supply non-boring competition?

I don't see how my guildmates pointing out that they'd like the game to be more competitive is somehow negative? and I have no doubt we do more than most to help improve other guilds. Many have asked for advice on builds, group composition and just general strategy and we are yet to turn any of them away. Helping people doesn't necessarily mean recruiting people. But anyways...

Forgive my ignorance but I'm not actually familiar with which guild you represent so fill me in.

Moving on to you second point I can say without a doubt that even before VE quit, fighting fantasia was always the most worthwhile fight on the map. Simply because they play much more like us in their objectives as a guild. VE was always more objectively driven so they were more often supported in what they contest compared to other guilds we'd engage with regularly. So to respond directly, I would say the competition is the same as it has been for the last few months regardless, as long as guilds like this are still around to have amazing fights against.

This past weekend we fought a bigger variety of guilds than we have in the last 6 months and it was fantastic. The most notable were Crowns guild, Fantasia and Even some Venatus fights, so fingers crossed things are looking good.

You say your best fights were/are with Fantasia, but your guildmates say there isn't anyone left to provide you with competition. So what exactly happens when you fight Fantasia? Half the raid yawns and the other half sits up a little more straight in their chair?

Probably depends on our group comp at that point in the evening

MLRPZ

Reading this makes me want to finish my NA char, login on it on the other hand...

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Every post referring to Drac in this thread is either in reference to them being the best PvP guild still in the game, or something trying to stir drama. Besides yourself, those posts have been met with condescension, belittlement of other players, and consistent "we don't say we are the best, other people do" attitudes that paint a very arrogant picture of people you say are trying to better the community.

You may not have read all the posts in this topic so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. The majority of players commenting about Dracarys have nothing to do with the guild. In fact I would welcome you posting an example of what you mean

PenguinInACan wrote: »

And seeing as we're still on connotations, saying there is no competition left and there are no skilled players left to fight against is very different than "we want the game to be more competitive". You say your best fights were/are with Fantasia, but your guildmates say there isn't anyone left to provide you with competition. So what exactly happens when you fight Fantasia? Half the raid yawns and the other half sits up a little more straight in their chair? From the majority of what I have seen, and this is only based on the forums here, the majority of Drac wants "competition" like the 1vX-ers want "competition". That is, someone they can beat up on but still run maybe a 20% risk that if they do something really stupid, they might fail.

Players can have an opinion about anything they wish, this isn't a bad thing, from my side my view is that there is very little competition between guilds in ESO and it was something we wanted to try and change (you can listen to the podcasts we put out for more information about this).
This doesn't mean that the guilds we fight against are all bad or weak it just means that we wish we had more and that those guilds were more focused towards group vs group play in interesting areas on the map which can prompt different fights and movement the same way we are.

You ask about our reactions when we are fighting strong guilds one on one. mostly "Nice we get to have a cool fight", if we win its often "gg, we did this well, that well, good fight all, this is what we could improve" if we lose its normally "IM KICKING YOU ALL FROM GUILD RIGHT NOW" (Joking).
We identify what went wrong, if we could prevent it, what to work on or be aware of for next time. This is why fighting other guilds is so valuable and fun. It gives us a chance to grow and improve. GVG type fights are much more interesting then pug chokepoint baiting because you are battling against generally more organised and focused players who are capable of coming up with surprises.

PenguinInACan wrote: »

This thread was started to discuss strategy in "ball group tactics" but instead of actually trying to "do more than most", barely even two pages in the pot was stirred and any hope of actually having a constructive discussion about tactics which you say you guys want to do, was thrown out the window.

I don't see why it's relevant what guild I represent here, but its TM.

You mention that the first two pages were discussing the topic - you can see that many Dracarys members were discussing this topic too within those pages and giving suggestions for additions.
Then someone (not in guild) mentions:

Lexxypwns wrote: »

When we look at a guild like Drac, for example, they're some of the most experienced players in the game and the learning curve to outplay them is enormous, daunting for newer groups. That doesn't mean you can't get wins here or there, but it means that just telling people to outplay these ball groups is functionally useless information.

Then you factor in not only their experience, but all the time they've played together and even if you have experienced players on the other side its very difficult to match their level of coordination as a group. Currently there are no consistently viable counters against the types of groups for less experienced players

Followed by another GM (from a DC guild) saying:

Rickter wrote: »

So are we saying that, amoungst the remaining PvP raid guilds left, <Dracarys> is number 1? legit question. Cuz it sounds that way.

This lead to a discussion as to how good or bad our guild was by the post creator. Notice still none of us replied.
Our group was then analysed and compared to other 'Large groups' and in replying to this I mentioned that I don't think the comparison is accurate because we don't run the same way as other large groups as they are normally running in larger numbers.
As well as this I added a few other comments to add towards the post.
This is what triggered the 'Drama' with the post creator responding that

Crown wrote: »

Les than that, and I don't mean to be insulting in any way, but you're not a threat to a group that builds and plays regularly for the 6-8 person comp ...
More often than not, the fights that I was part of VE vs Drac were 16-24 VE players and 10-15 Drac players. We almost always outnumbered you by at least a few, and had at least an 80% win rate in fights

Which in turn lead to posts like:

Shaggygaming wrote: »

Drac it doesn't count excuses because..

You beat us with 6 and we were only running 5 and one of them was a stamblade so it doesn't count.
You beat us with 16 and we only had 15 so it doesn't count.
You beat us with 24 and we only had 18 with two dedicated "speed pots to put up camps build" and we normally only run 16 so it doesn't count.

I feel like I'm missing a few more Drac excuses?

Oh yeah, the newest one! You didn't beat our group of 5 because we already switched into our group builds and were we running to meet our group but were in load screens while fighting and mom had the meatloaf ready so I was like f' you mom I'm raiding and people were still signing up on the spreadsheet if they were going to attend or not while we were all in a TS meeting so it doesn't count.

Ixtyr wrote: »

Shaggy, you forgot the classic "every time we win it's impressive, but every time we lose it doesn't count because we're outnumbered" 16-man psychological crutch meta. C'mon man, you're slacking.

As well as some further posts against us which are now sadly unquote-able because they have been removed by mods (so you can guess how they were phrased)

Definitely us stiring the drama pot right

You are more than welcome to ask our shared player(s) about my views on TM if this is something you are concerned about. I've often mentioned that I wish we played against each other more regularly as I consider you guys to be performing really well right now.

Vilestride

MLRPZ wrote: »

Reading this makes me want to finish my NA char, login on it on the other hand...

NA definitely needs more ZS. Stop being lazy I will send you all the XP pots you could ever need :P

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

CyrusArya wrote: »

AnonUnk wrote: »

I've never seen Drac begging zone chat for guild members, but I've seen VE do it.

Being inclusive and open to fostering community engagement hardly constitutes ‘begging’. VE hasn’t had a need to ‘beg’ for guild members ever I don’t think. You’ll find that it’s just a difference in philosophy.

Minnesinger wrote: »

I have never played in VE but these attempts to tarnish their effort in this game looks sillier by every attempt. My respect for them grows the more I read the Forums.

Yup. I have never been affiliated with VE either, but have played with and am pretty close with some of their core members. Really cool people who are also great players. Their ranks do have more players who are carried, but at the same time I don’t think they want or feel the need to carry themselves as God’s gift to cyrodiil for being able to stack 30 k health and spam destro ultis. Elitism among zerg players just seems like such an oxymoron to me.

Amusing thread.

There's a difference between isolating your guild from the community and not putting anything back into it, and elitism.

Elitism is fantastic for the health of a game, and is required as much as mentors and teachers are. There is nothing wrong with expecting your members to be at the level of play you need them to be. Some teaching is always required, but this is why guilds trial members.

A standard of elitism generates a motive for improvement, all other competitive games have this and it fosters a community that strives to get better rather than become complacent with their current abilities. if you think this is bad for the game we have hugely varying ideals on what gaming, or generally speaking, life is about.

Sure for some they just want to come online and take it easy, relax a bit, and that's great, that hasn't gone away. What has disappeared, to the detriment of the games health, is elitism.

I have had discussions with many group leaders currently active in cyrodil and all of them have the same issue regarding recruitment. It is nearly impossible to find players willing to accept that they can do better and want to do whatever it takes to do so. Players won't try new builds, they expect that guilds will recruit them on the basis of need rather than making themselves needed.

Anyone who was actually in No Mercy can correct me here if I am wrong, but this guild had a separate waiting list guild for trials. It had some 60 members in it, all of whom waiting in here for MONTHS while trialling to join this guild because they wanted to prove themselves and play with the best. Not only did this improve the guild itself, but it improved the way of thinking for an entire faction who all admired this guild. The trial guild had a ranking system on it that if I recall had ranks from 'initiate', 'keep an eye on', 'needs to improve', 'ready for trial' and a few others. The point is, and maybe I'm just too being nostalgic here, the general disposition of players (obviously with exceptions) back then was dramatically different to how it is now.

Then, players didn't blame metas, their first reaction to a loss was not that the opponent was using cheese and some exploit or hack. They looked up to the players and guilds who were beating them on a day to day basis and sought their advice or made every effort to improve themselves to join another top tier rival guild to compete against them.

Why? because there was a standard of elitism, there was a prestige that people were attracted by. The health of the game depends on the balance of casual to hardcore players. right now, it's tilted far too heavily towards the latter.

So maybe let's rethink the negative connotation behind the word elitism.

The negative connotation is earned by players resorting to name-calling and pointless trash talking. Anyone can respect the skill of a player and define them as "elite", but it does nothing for the community when that player is completely lacking in humility, respectfulness and empathy.

You can't just superimpose the definition of a healthy competitive atmosphere over a word that defines so much of the toxic PvP community. I have seen more "elite" guilds fall apart because of ego's and in-fighting due to "eliteism" than are actually PvP-ing right now.

Maybe its the "elite" that need to rethink how they define themselves rather than everyone else re-establish a connotation earned.

This is true, and I agree elitism should not inherently entail arrogance, nor should it warrant any disrespect towards those who have no desire to be competitive. People play for all different reasons and none of those are any more or less well founded than the others, no one is suggesting otherwise.

All I am doing is speaking for the rational portion of elitism that can be healthy, simply pointing out the other side of the coin that Cyrus has spoken of. I feel like you are implying there currently is a standard of elitism that is negatively effecting the game and to put it plainly, I don't see it. I don't see any active guilds displaying this sort of behaviour.

Between all the active guilds currently running on NA (TM/DK/DiG/Fantasia/Artem/BoD/CN/LoM/PM to name a few) I don't think there is much negativity at all, and I think they are all doing what they can to help one another grow, recruit and learn. Speaking personally I have discussions with raid leads from rival guilds every day we are out there about tactics, meta, recruitment and so on and to be honest, though maybe I am being hopeful, cyrodil from a guild stand point is much more enjoyable than it was this time even 6 months ago. Obviously I can only account for my own experience with these guilds so don't hold me to that as some universal ruling.

The other thing worth noting is that sometimes guilds falling apart is a good thing whether it be because of elitism or any other factor.
I simply don't see longevity as a criteria for success, happiness in that longevity yes, but longevity for the sake of longevity absolutely not. If a group of people do not share the same common goals there is absolutely nothing unhealthy about dividing those people so that they can each pursue their separate goals more effectively.

So again. I definitely don't think elitism is predisposed to being a bad thing.

A guild is only as respectable and positive as its members. This thread is a great example of eliteism casting a negative shadow. Your own guildmates talking about boring competition and lack of skill is completely contradictory to what you are trying to build on here.

Out of all of the guilds you have mentioned there, how many of them actually cause an issue to Drac when you come across them? I can tell you its none of the DC guilds (which is nothing against them, but if we dont have any issues with them, neither should you). And we've only been tailoring ourselves to more coordinated/tight group play for a month now. If VE was the only guild that caused enough drama to leak into the forums after they left then I would say you have been without "competition" for a while now...so why hasn't the PvP guild community grown to supply non-boring competition?

I don't see how my guildmates pointing out that they'd like the game to be more competitive is somehow negative? and I have no doubt we do more than most to help improve other guilds. Many have asked for advice on builds, group composition and just general strategy and we are yet to turn any of them away. Helping people doesn't necessarily mean recruiting people. But anyways...

Forgive my ignorance but I'm not actually familiar with which guild you represent so fill me in.

Moving on to you second point I can say without a doubt that even before VE quit, fighting fantasia was always the most worthwhile fight on the map. Simply because they play much more like us in their objectives as a guild. VE was always more objectively driven so they were more often supported in what they contest compared to other guilds we'd engage with regularly. So to respond directly, I would say the competition is the same as it has been for the last few months regardless, as long as guilds like this are still around to have amazing fights against.

This past weekend we fought a bigger variety of guilds than we have in the last 6 months and it was fantastic. The most notable were Crowns guild, Fantasia and Even some Venatus fights, so fingers crossed things are looking good.

Every post referring to Drac in this thread is either in reference to them being the best PvP guild still in the game, or something trying to stir drama. Besides yourself, those posts have been met with condescension, belittlement of other players, and consistent "we don't say we are the best, other people do" attitudes that paint a very arrogant picture of people you say are trying to better the community. And seeing as we're still on connotations, saying there is no competition left and there are no skilled players left to fight against is very different than "we want the game to be more competitive". You say your best fights were/are with Fantasia, but your guildmates say there isn't anyone left to provide you with competition. So what exactly happens when you fight Fantasia? Half the raid yawns and the other half sits up a little more straight in their chair? From the majority of what I have seen, and this is only based on the forums here, the majority of Drac wants "competition" like the 1vX-ers want "competition". That is, someone they can beat up on but still run maybe a 20% risk that if they do something really stupid, they might fail.

This thread was started to discuss strategy in "ball group tactics" but instead of actually trying to "do more than most", barely even two pages in the pot was stirred and any hope of actually having a constructive discussion about tactics which you say you guys want to do, was thrown out the window.

I don't see why it's relevant what guild I represent here, but its TM.

EDITED BECAUSE IZ GOT IN FIRST THE SCRUB:

The lack of competition is a generalisation, and I agree with them 100%. Fantasia and a few other guilds, including your own who we love fighting against, are the exception, but we don't want our entire cyrodil experience to be built on exceptions. We want these kinds of fights to be the primary state of PVP for large guilds as it once was.

And I have to re-iterate, if you re-read through the thread as I have just done, we absolutely did not make this personal, all we did was reply to post that we're specifically about us.

But, I will let you make up your own mind.

Rickter

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Followed by another GM (from a DC guild) saying:

Rickter wrote: »

So are we saying that, amoungst the remaining PvP raid guilds left, <Dracarys> is number 1? legit question. Cuz it sounds that way.

This lead to a discussion as to how good or bad our guild was by the post creator. Notice still none of us replied.
Our group was then analysed and compared to other 'Large groups' and in replying to this I mentioned that I don't think the comparison is accurate because we don't run the same way as other large groups as they are normally running in larger numbers.
As well as this I added a few other comments to add towards the post.
This is what triggered the 'Drama' with the post creator responding that

I dont think its very fair to say that my genuine inquiry "started" the drama as that inquiry was clearly generated by an existing discussion. I was legitimately curious if Dracarys were the premier ESO PvP guild. which it is. whether that started drama or not says more about everyone else, than it does about my post.

I really wish i hadnt searched my name. i checked out of this thread a couple days ago. . .

I htink its really important for people to understand that I have the least dog in this fight than anyone that has posted so far. Im not in Vehemence or Dracarys nor have i ever been on the same server as either for the - get this - entirety of their existence. I was in here for the pvp strat discussion that dissolved on like the 2nd or 3rd page. I respect both guilds equally and I wish there to be no ill will towards myself or anyone in my guild. thank you.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Rickter wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Followed by another GM (from a DC guild) saying:

Rickter wrote: »

So are we saying that, amoungst the remaining PvP raid guilds left, <Dracarys> is number 1? legit question. Cuz it sounds that way.

This lead to a discussion as to how good or bad our guild was by the post creator. Notice still none of us replied.
Our group was then analysed and compared to other 'Large groups' and in replying to this I mentioned that I don't think the comparison is accurate because we don't run the same way as other large groups as they are normally running in larger numbers.
As well as this I added a few other comments to add towards the post.
This is what triggered the 'Drama' with the post creator responding that

I dont think its very fair to say that my genuine inquiry "started" the drama as that inquiry was clearly generated by an existing discussion. I was legitimately curious if Dracarys were the premier ESO PvP guild. which it is. whether that started drama or not says more about everyone else, than it does about my post.

I really wish i hadnt searched my name. i checked out of this thread a couple days ago. . .

I htink its really important for people to understand that I have the least dog in this fight than anyone that has posted so far. Im not in Vehemence or Dracarys nor have i ever been on the same server as either for the - get this - entirety of their existence. I was in here for the pvp strat discussion that dissolved on like the 2nd or 3rd page. I respect both guilds equally and I wish there to be no ill will towards myself or anyone in my guild. thank you.

I didn't say this. I said that it lead to a discussion about our guild. (Which was the topic of @PenguinInACan 's post).
There is no ill will towards you from my part.

You see my post I said that my comment about group sizes triggered the drama responses.

PenguinInACan

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Every post referring to Drac in this thread is either in reference to them being the best PvP guild still in the game, or something trying to stir drama. Besides yourself, those posts have been met with condescension, belittlement of other players, and consistent "we don't say we are the best, other people do" attitudes that paint a very arrogant picture of people you say are trying to better the community.

You may not have read all the posts in this topic so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. The majority of players commenting about Dracarys have nothing to do with the guild. In fact I would welcome you posting an example of what you mean

I just went through the thread again, and considering the general negativity of the thread I probably just projected it onto the majority of all posts. Although bixy seemed to be pretty heavy on the flamethrower

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

And seeing as we're still on connotations, saying there is no competition left and there are no skilled players left to fight against is very different than "we want the game to be more competitive". You say your best fights were/are with Fantasia, but your guildmates say there isn't anyone left to provide you with competition. So what exactly happens when you fight Fantasia? Half the raid yawns and the other half sits up a little more straight in their chair? From the majority of what I have seen, and this is only based on the forums here, the majority of Drac wants "competition" like the 1vX-ers want "competition". That is, someone they can beat up on but still run maybe a 20% risk that if they do something really stupid, they might fail.

Players can have an opinion about anything they wish, this isn't a bad thing, from my side my view is that there is very little competition between guilds in ESO and it was something we wanted to try and change (you can listen to the podcasts we put out for more information about this).
This doesn't mean that the guilds we fight against are all bad or weak it just means that we wish we had more and that those guilds were more focused towards group vs group play in interesting areas on the map which can prompt different fights and movement the same way we are.

You ask about our reactions when we are fighting strong guilds one on one. mostly "Nice we get to have a cool fight", if we win its often "gg, we did this well, that well, good fight all, this is what we could improve" if we lose its normally "IM KICKING YOU ALL FROM GUILD RIGHT NOW" (Joking).
We identify what went wrong, if we could prevent it, what to work on or be aware of for next time. This is why fighting other guilds is so valuable and fun. It gives us a chance to grow and improve. GVG type fights are much more interesting then pug chokepoint baiting because you are battling against generally more organised and focused players who are capable of coming up with surprises.

PenguinInACan wrote: »

This thread was started to discuss strategy in "ball group tactics" but instead of actually trying to "do more than most", barely even two pages in the pot was stirred and any hope of actually having a constructive discussion about tactics which you say you guys want to do, was thrown out the window.

I don't see why it's relevant what guild I represent here, but its TM.

You mention that the first two pages were discussing the topic - you can see that many Dracarys members were discussing this topic too within those pages and giving suggestions for additions.
Then someone (not in guild) mentions:

Lexxypwns wrote: »

When we look at a guild like Drac, for example, they're some of the most experienced players in the game and the learning curve to outplay them is enormous, daunting for newer groups. That doesn't mean you can't get wins here or there, but it means that just telling people to outplay these ball groups is functionally useless information.

Then you factor in not only their experience, but all the time they've played together and even if you have experienced players on the other side its very difficult to match their level of coordination as a group. Currently there are no consistently viable counters against the types of groups for less experienced players

Followed by another GM (from a DC guild) saying:

Rickter wrote: »

So are we saying that, amoungst the remaining PvP raid guilds left, <Dracarys> is number 1? legit question. Cuz it sounds that way.

This lead to a discussion as to how good or bad our guild was by the post creator. Notice still none of us replied.
Our group was then analysed and compared to other 'Large groups' and in replying to this I mentioned that I don't think the comparison is accurate because we don't run the same way as other large groups as they are normally running in larger numbers.
As well as this I added a few other comments to add towards the post.
This is what triggered the 'Drama' with the post creator responding that

Crown wrote: »

Les than that, and I don't mean to be insulting in any way, but you're not a threat to a group that builds and plays regularly for the 6-8 person comp ...
More often than not, the fights that I was part of VE vs Drac were 16-24 VE players and 10-15 Drac players. We almost always outnumbered you by at least a few, and had at least an 80% win rate in fights

Which in turn lead to posts like:

Shaggygaming wrote: »

Drac it doesn't count excuses because..

You beat us with 6 and we were only running 5 and one of them was a stamblade so it doesn't count.
You beat us with 16 and we only had 15 so it doesn't count.
You beat us with 24 and we only had 18 with two dedicated "speed pots to put up camps build" and we normally only run 16 so it doesn't count.

I feel like I'm missing a few more Drac excuses?

Oh yeah, the newest one! You didn't beat our group of 5 because we already switched into our group builds and were we running to meet our group but were in load screens while fighting and mom had the meatloaf ready so I was like f' you mom I'm raiding and people were still signing up on the spreadsheet if they were going to attend or not while we were all in a TS meeting so it doesn't count.

Ixtyr wrote: »

Shaggy, you forgot the classic "every time we win it's impressive, but every time we lose it doesn't count because we're outnumbered" 16-man psychological crutch meta. C'mon man, you're slacking.

As well as some further posts against us which are now sadly unquote-able because they have been removed by mods (so you can guess how they were phrased)

Definitely us stiring the drama pot right

You are more than welcome to ask our shared player(s) about my views on TM if this is something you are concerned about. I've often mentioned that I wish we played against each other more regularly as I consider you guys to be performing really well right now.

So you're saying the forum PvP was in self defense? Maybe your guys have been playing on NA too much

In all seriousness though, this turned into a negative thread real fast, I definitely made some assumptions based on my perceptions that probably weren't true.

I genuinely enjoy fighting you guys, and honestly the theorycrafting I have been doing to create our builds to counter your's is refreshing considering there hasn't really been a need for our guild to do that in a while. It's really hard to work within the restraints of not having a core, not having a consistent support selection, and working in a foreign playstyle to a lot of guildmates. But I at least enjoy doing it because you present a challenge that we haven't really had in a long time.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Every post referring to Drac in this thread is either in reference to them being the best PvP guild still in the game, or something trying to stir drama. Besides yourself, those posts have been met with condescension, belittlement of other players, and consistent "we don't say we are the best, other people do" attitudes that paint a very arrogant picture of people you say are trying to better the community.

You may not have read all the posts in this topic so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. The majority of players commenting about Dracarys have nothing to do with the guild. In fact I would welcome you posting an example of what you mean

I just went through the thread again, and considering the general negativity of the thread I probably just projected it onto the majority of all posts. Although bixy seemed to be pretty heavy on the flamethrower

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

And seeing as we're still on connotations, saying there is no competition left and there are no skilled players left to fight against is very different than "we want the game to be more competitive". You say your best fights were/are with Fantasia, but your guildmates say there isn't anyone left to provide you with competition. So what exactly happens when you fight Fantasia? Half the raid yawns and the other half sits up a little more straight in their chair? From the majority of what I have seen, and this is only based on the forums here, the majority of Drac wants "competition" like the 1vX-ers want "competition". That is, someone they can beat up on but still run maybe a 20% risk that if they do something really stupid, they might fail.

Players can have an opinion about anything they wish, this isn't a bad thing, from my side my view is that there is very little competition between guilds in ESO and it was something we wanted to try and change (you can listen to the podcasts we put out for more information about this).
This doesn't mean that the guilds we fight against are all bad or weak it just means that we wish we had more and that those guilds were more focused towards group vs group play in interesting areas on the map which can prompt different fights and movement the same way we are.

You ask about our reactions when we are fighting strong guilds one on one. mostly "Nice we get to have a cool fight", if we win its often "gg, we did this well, that well, good fight all, this is what we could improve" if we lose its normally "IM KICKING YOU ALL FROM GUILD RIGHT NOW" (Joking).
We identify what went wrong, if we could prevent it, what to work on or be aware of for next time. This is why fighting other guilds is so valuable and fun. It gives us a chance to grow and improve. GVG type fights are much more interesting then pug chokepoint baiting because you are battling against generally more organised and focused players who are capable of coming up with surprises.

PenguinInACan wrote: »

This thread was started to discuss strategy in "ball group tactics" but instead of actually trying to "do more than most", barely even two pages in the pot was stirred and any hope of actually having a constructive discussion about tactics which you say you guys want to do, was thrown out the window.

I don't see why it's relevant what guild I represent here, but its TM.

You mention that the first two pages were discussing the topic - you can see that many Dracarys members were discussing this topic too within those pages and giving suggestions for additions.
Then someone (not in guild) mentions:

Lexxypwns wrote: »

When we look at a guild like Drac, for example, they're some of the most experienced players in the game and the learning curve to outplay them is enormous, daunting for newer groups. That doesn't mean you can't get wins here or there, but it means that just telling people to outplay these ball groups is functionally useless information.

Then you factor in not only their experience, but all the time they've played together and even if you have experienced players on the other side its very difficult to match their level of coordination as a group. Currently there are no consistently viable counters against the types of groups for less experienced players

Followed by another GM (from a DC guild) saying:

Rickter wrote: »

So are we saying that, amoungst the remaining PvP raid guilds left, <Dracarys> is number 1? legit question. Cuz it sounds that way.

This lead to a discussion as to how good or bad our guild was by the post creator. Notice still none of us replied.
Our group was then analysed and compared to other 'Large groups' and in replying to this I mentioned that I don't think the comparison is accurate because we don't run the same way as other large groups as they are normally running in larger numbers.
As well as this I added a few other comments to add towards the post.
This is what triggered the 'Drama' with the post creator responding that

Crown wrote: »

Les than that, and I don't mean to be insulting in any way, but you're not a threat to a group that builds and plays regularly for the 6-8 person comp ...
More often than not, the fights that I was part of VE vs Drac were 16-24 VE players and 10-15 Drac players. We almost always outnumbered you by at least a few, and had at least an 80% win rate in fights

Which in turn lead to posts like:

Shaggygaming wrote: »

Drac it doesn't count excuses because..

You beat us with 6 and we were only running 5 and one of them was a stamblade so it doesn't count.
You beat us with 16 and we only had 15 so it doesn't count.
You beat us with 24 and we only had 18 with two dedicated "speed pots to put up camps build" and we normally only run 16 so it doesn't count.

I feel like I'm missing a few more Drac excuses?

Oh yeah, the newest one! You didn't beat our group of 5 because we already switched into our group builds and were we running to meet our group but were in load screens while fighting and mom had the meatloaf ready so I was like f' you mom I'm raiding and people were still signing up on the spreadsheet if they were going to attend or not while we were all in a TS meeting so it doesn't count.

Ixtyr wrote: »

Shaggy, you forgot the classic "every time we win it's impressive, but every time we lose it doesn't count because we're outnumbered" 16-man psychological crutch meta. C'mon man, you're slacking.

As well as some further posts against us which are now sadly unquote-able because they have been removed by mods (so you can guess how they were phrased)

Definitely us stiring the drama pot right

You are more than welcome to ask our shared player(s) about my views on TM if this is something you are concerned about. I've often mentioned that I wish we played against each other more regularly as I consider you guys to be performing really well right now.

So you're saying the forum PvP was in self defense? Maybe your guys have been playing on NA too much

In all seriousness though, this turned into a negative thread real fast, I definitely made some assumptions based on my perceptions that probably weren't true.

I genuinely enjoy fighting you guys, and honestly the theorycrafting I have been doing to create our builds to counter your's is refreshing considering there hasn't really been a need for our guild to do that in a while. It's really hard to work within the restraints of not having a core, not having a consistent support selection, and working in a foreign playstyle to a lot of guildmates. But I at least enjoy doing it because you present a challenge that we haven't really had in a long time.

I don't really understand what you mean by "Maybe you guys have been playing on NA too much"
I'm saying that imo we have only ever responded to posts rather than initiated them condemning us and seemingly pardoning others seems a little unfair to me.

Also
Rubixy was responding directly to Shaggy regarding this post based also on a history of other posts on other topics some of which have been removed by mods:

Shaggygaming wrote: »

Drac it doesn't count excuses because..

You beat us with 8 and we were only running 7 and one of them was a stamblade so it doesn't count.
You beat us with 16 and we only had 15 so it doesn't count.
You beat us with 24 and we only had 18 with two dedicated "speed pots to put up camps build" and we normally only run 16 so it doesn't count.

I feel like I'm missing a few more Drac excuses?

Oh yeah, the newest one! You didn't beat our group of 5 because we already switched into our group builds and were we running to meet our group but were in load screens while fighting and mom had the meatloaf ready so I was like f' you mom I'm raiding and people were still signing up on the spreadsheet if they were going to attend or not while we were all in a TS meeting so it doesn't count.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

@Irylia
I'll see what I can do, 2-6 doesn't really interest me too much because its more of a dueling style fight, with all the rules and stipulations that come along with that.

From my side GVG's have always been at least 8+ normally 12's because this style of fight more accurately indicates how a guild like ours normally fights. The only stipulations have normally been "stay within this area" and "Don't res" and "no crouch stealth". We also generally used to build ultis prior to the fight because when you are fighting open world guilds don't normally engage before they have ultis anyway.

Are you planning any open night style group v group or gvg 'dueling style' events for groups to come have some fun at?

Irylia

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

@Irylia
I'll see what I can do, 2-6 doesn't really interest me too much because its more of a dueling style fight, with all the rules and stipulations that come along with that.

From my side GVG's have always been at least 8+ normally 12's because this style of fight more accurately indicates how a guild like ours normally fights. The only stipulations have normally been "stay within this area" and "Don't res" and "no crouch stealth". We also generally used to build ultis prior to the fight because when you are fighting open world guilds don't normally engage before they have ultis anyway.

Are you planning any open night style gvg dueling style events for groups to come have some fun at?

Tbh any amount of players for a gvg is fine by me. 2v2 all the way up to 12v12.

I can give you a discord link. What's your @ name in game.
The discord is a platform for guilds to use to communicate and set up gvg's or meet at specified times.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

I've sent you a mail

12v12 sounds like fun could try and get some others guilds interested & involved at that size maybe.

PenguinInACan

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

Every post referring to Drac in this thread is either in reference to them being the best PvP guild still in the game, or something trying to stir drama. Besides yourself, those posts have been met with condescension, belittlement of other players, and consistent "we don't say we are the best, other people do" attitudes that paint a very arrogant picture of people you say are trying to better the community.

You may not have read all the posts in this topic so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. The majority of players commenting about Dracarys have nothing to do with the guild. In fact I would welcome you posting an example of what you mean

I just went through the thread again, and considering the general negativity of the thread I probably just projected it onto the majority of all posts. Although bixy seemed to be pretty heavy on the flamethrower

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

PenguinInACan wrote: »

And seeing as we're still on connotations, saying there is no competition left and there are no skilled players left to fight against is very different than "we want the game to be more competitive". You say your best fights were/are with Fantasia, but your guildmates say there isn't anyone left to provide you with competition. So what exactly happens when you fight Fantasia? Half the raid yawns and the other half sits up a little more straight in their chair? From the majority of what I have seen, and this is only based on the forums here, the majority of Drac wants "competition" like the 1vX-ers want "competition". That is, someone they can beat up on but still run maybe a 20% risk that if they do something really stupid, they might fail.

Players can have an opinion about anything they wish, this isn't a bad thing, from my side my view is that there is very little competition between guilds in ESO and it was something we wanted to try and change (you can listen to the podcasts we put out for more information about this).
This doesn't mean that the guilds we fight against are all bad or weak it just means that we wish we had more and that those guilds were more focused towards group vs group play in interesting areas on the map which can prompt different fights and movement the same way we are.

You ask about our reactions when we are fighting strong guilds one on one. mostly "Nice we get to have a cool fight", if we win its often "gg, we did this well, that well, good fight all, this is what we could improve" if we lose its normally "IM KICKING YOU ALL FROM GUILD RIGHT NOW" (Joking).
We identify what went wrong, if we could prevent it, what to work on or be aware of for next time. This is why fighting other guilds is so valuable and fun. It gives us a chance to grow and improve. GVG type fights are much more interesting then pug chokepoint baiting because you are battling against generally more organised and focused players who are capable of coming up with surprises.

PenguinInACan wrote: »

This thread was started to discuss strategy in "ball group tactics" but instead of actually trying to "do more than most", barely even two pages in the pot was stirred and any hope of actually having a constructive discussion about tactics which you say you guys want to do, was thrown out the window.

I don't see why it's relevant what guild I represent here, but its TM.

You mention that the first two pages were discussing the topic - you can see that many Dracarys members were discussing this topic too within those pages and giving suggestions for additions.
Then someone (not in guild) mentions:

Lexxypwns wrote: »

When we look at a guild like Drac, for example, they're some of the most experienced players in the game and the learning curve to outplay them is enormous, daunting for newer groups. That doesn't mean you can't get wins here or there, but it means that just telling people to outplay these ball groups is functionally useless information.

Then you factor in not only their experience, but all the time they've played together and even if you have experienced players on the other side its very difficult to match their level of coordination as a group. Currently there are no consistently viable counters against the types of groups for less experienced players

Followed by another GM (from a DC guild) saying:

Rickter wrote: »

So are we saying that, amoungst the remaining PvP raid guilds left, <Dracarys> is number 1? legit question. Cuz it sounds that way.

This lead to a discussion as to how good or bad our guild was by the post creator. Notice still none of us replied.
Our group was then analysed and compared to other 'Large groups' and in replying to this I mentioned that I don't think the comparison is accurate because we don't run the same way as other large groups as they are normally running in larger numbers.
As well as this I added a few other comments to add towards the post.
This is what triggered the 'Drama' with the post creator responding that

Crown wrote: »

Les than that, and I don't mean to be insulting in any way, but you're not a threat to a group that builds and plays regularly for the 6-8 person comp ...
More often than not, the fights that I was part of VE vs Drac were 16-24 VE players and 10-15 Drac players. We almost always outnumbered you by at least a few, and had at least an 80% win rate in fights

Which in turn lead to posts like:

Shaggygaming wrote: »

Drac it doesn't count excuses because..

You beat us with 6 and we were only running 5 and one of them was a stamblade so it doesn't count.
You beat us with 16 and we only had 15 so it doesn't count.
You beat us with 24 and we only had 18 with two dedicated "speed pots to put up camps build" and we normally only run 16 so it doesn't count.

I feel like I'm missing a few more Drac excuses?

Oh yeah, the newest one! You didn't beat our group of 5 because we already switched into our group builds and were we running to meet our group but were in load screens while fighting and mom had the meatloaf ready so I was like f' you mom I'm raiding and people were still signing up on the spreadsheet if they were going to attend or not while we were all in a TS meeting so it doesn't count.

Ixtyr wrote: »

Shaggy, you forgot the classic "every time we win it's impressive, but every time we lose it doesn't count because we're outnumbered" 16-man psychological crutch meta. C'mon man, you're slacking.

As well as some further posts against us which are now sadly unquote-able because they have been removed by mods (so you can guess how they were phrased)

Definitely us stiring the drama pot right

You are more than welcome to ask our shared player(s) about my views on TM if this is something you are concerned about. I've often mentioned that I wish we played against each other more regularly as I consider you guys to be performing really well right now.

So you're saying the forum PvP was in self defense? Maybe your guys have been playing on NA too much

In all seriousness though, this turned into a negative thread real fast, I definitely made some assumptions based on my perceptions that probably weren't true.

I genuinely enjoy fighting you guys, and honestly the theorycrafting I have been doing to create our builds to counter your's is refreshing considering there hasn't really been a need for our guild to do that in a while. It's really hard to work within the restraints of not having a core, not having a consistent support selection, and working in a foreign playstyle to a lot of guildmates. But I at least enjoy doing it because you present a challenge that we haven't really had in a long time.

I don't really understand what you mean by "Maybe you guys have been playing on NA too much"
I'm saying that imo we have only ever responded to posts rather than initiated them condemning us and seemingly pardoning others seems a little unfair to me.

Also
Rubixy was responding directly to Shaggy regarding this post based also on a history of other posts on other topics some of which have been removed by mods:

Shaggygaming wrote: »

Drac it doesn't count excuses because..

You beat us with 8 and we were only running 7 and one of them was a stamblade so it doesn't count.
You beat us with 16 and we only had 15 so it doesn't count.
You beat us with 24 and we only had 18 with two dedicated "speed pots to put up camps build" and we normally only run 16 so it doesn't count.

I feel like I'm missing a few more Drac excuses?

Oh yeah, the newest one! You didn't beat our group of 5 because we already switched into our group builds and were we running to meet our group but were in load screens while fighting and mom had the meatloaf ready so I was like f' you mom I'm raiding and people were still signing up on the spreadsheet if they were going to attend or not while we were all in a TS meeting so it doesn't count.

My original point in bringing up responses to responses was to highlight the whole "elitism has a stigma" thing. I completely understand defending your guild on the forums, I've done it enough for my own, I just never understood the need to escalate an obvious troll with name calling and insults.

Also the NA thing was a joke that "it was self defense" is used all the time in the states.

IxSTALKERxI

Irylia wrote: »

@IxSTALKERxI

Here! GvG!! Hello we want gvg’s!! Please pick me pick me!

We have a discord for guilds interested in gvg’s. They just need more motivation to challenge other guilds or meet.

@Irylia

Hey, send me a discord link etc. My @ name in game is ixstalkerxi

Interested in 8v8 group size.

Soul_Demon

I thought all the arguments for competitive guilds was laid to rest with the opening of Trueflame server so long ago- if memory serves the competitive guilds took a shot at the server one at a time, each one loosing the campaign cycle with no excuses or arguments over who won.

Why resurrect so much animosity now and suggest todays guilds are the same as the competitive guilds of years ago? Some morphed their policy and style and kept the same names, some moved to other games and core group members came back under new names- But the game changed enough that to say competitive groups from then to now are very different players and styles that simply refuse direct comparison.

frozywozy

WTB larger battlegrounds with CTF mode for guild challenges.

Beardimus

^ yeah private BG for your guild only would be sweet. For comps, training, matches etc. Even tank practice against multiple attackers etc etc

Sadly no one cares what we want in BG else CP would be disabled

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Would be fun if they added combat to housing where players could place objects and have interactables which assigned them a team and started the match etc. Nice way to earn zos some money too.

If I could construct a battleground for 12v12 would be really fun and saves them having to work on new bgs for a shrinking player base.
Could even take the best ones and implement them for everyone.

Ghostbane

Can we pin this thread? Can't believe I missed this wee gem.