Are 'Ball-Groups' even logical ?

pieratsos

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

pieratsos wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

pieratsos wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

pieratsos wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Rohamad_Ali wrote: »

An you guys back there ... Arguing with each other over group size ... Just stop . We do this every time . We get told performance is going to improve . Instead it gets worse . When the dev won't chime in to dozens of threads the PvP players turn inward an attack each other . Nothing improves . Nothing changes .

Keep the fire on ZoS's feet . Stay focused .

Completely agree with you. Not actually arguing over group size. I think all playstyles and group sizes should be supported and viable. They all currently have their place the only issues atm is really game performance as you mention.

You should really get out of ur raid more often if you actually believe that the only issues are with performance and that every playstyle has its place.

Feel free to elaborate on the problem. 90% of the problems with the game stem from its poor performance imo. What do you feel the problems are.

I don't even know where to begin. From itemization to core game mechanics and abilities you name it.

You are playing in raids with dedicated healers making you immune to every debuff in the game and dedicated dmg dealers doing a surplus of dmg, melting everyone in ur path. Of course you would think that everything is fine. Step out of ur raid and when u start getting hit with procs, poisons, defiles, earthgores, roots, snares, siphoner, sloads, troll kings and every other bs in the game we will see if everyone have their place in cyrodil.

You run around in cyrodil and you hit some random guy with everything u have and you tickle his hp. Then u go to the next guy and you one shot him without an ult. You see a random guy spamming 15k burst heals and then the next guy who can't heal for ****.

The overall balance is so out of control to the point where it's easier to list the things that are actually OK than those that are not. All the classes feel OP and useless at the same time. Then u can add all the bugs, glitches, lag and fps drops that can actually get u killed if u are not in a group and u are lucky if you find a couple of decent fights every night.

It's alarming how uninformed you are about group play whilst criticising it so heavily. Raids are by no way immune to debuffs. We actually probably receive more debuffs in our fights than you would ever encounter when 1vXing or surfing. The difference is that we actively work to mitigate them in the way that any level of organisation could do.

For example let's take a 1v1 vs someone running forward momentum. They are completely immune to snares and roots whilst being able to damage. They can pick the location they fight avoiding siege and kiting enemies to avoid dmg. Sure you can be overwhelmed and unable to deal with the situation very easily but that's not unique to any playstyle.

Compare this to a group, we are often fighting inside objectives such as keeps with 10-20 siege surrounding us. We are fighting approximately 30-40 players normally each casting different debuffs and poisons etc.
We use retreating maneouvers for more optimal bar setups but that gives us the weakness that whenever we dmg or heal we lose our root and snare immunity. We often fight inside an unflagging keep where enemies can freely respawn if they are unable to simply res due to their excessive numbers as we move around. (Harder to keep on top of 30 players than just 2-3)

Finally Mmos will always have balancing issues and meta changes. It's part of what keeps them unique. Dealing with these changes is part of what makes good players a step above the bad. Cyro is an openworld game meaning that you will encounter good and bad players as well as varied fights, it's up to you as a player to gear and play effectively for those situations. You are more limited if you CHOOSE not to play in a group. Just as you face different challenges if you do between large, small groups and solo.

The majority of the time to core issue is that the game doesn't perform well so that you are unable to react to situations you would normally be able to manage. This is the advantage of group play. Someone has your back if you cant do something. The disadvantage is that those situations occur more and more based on the fights you are taking as a group.

When I say you are immune to debuffs it means That u have a way to deal them. Aka you have people purging you. You literally admitted that u have people giving u rapids. You don't have that luxury while playing solo. The vast majority of builds playing solo don't have access to purge. Do you even pay attention to the dozens of threads about sloads defiles etc? Or do u just simply ignore them because u don't really feel them?

Calling people uninformed while believing that those debuffs affect groups more than solo players is the definition of irony. Even in the most normal fights u can literally have 10 different debuffs on u. Major defile is like the most common debuff u have when playing solo. It's so funny to the point that even purge wouldn't help u cause all the debuffs will instantly reapply on you. And those debuffs are 100 times more effective when u are playing solo. If you have cost poisons on u and u run out of resources u will prob die. If u are in a group and u run out u still have dedicated healers with you.

You can choose to defend all that crap for whatever reason. Maybe u believe they are good for the game maybe not. But that's not what this is about. The point you made was all playstyles having a place. Which is flatout false. For better or for worse solo play relies on skill to overcome numbers. When u have all that skilless crap like oblivion dmg that were literally designed for Xv1 raining down on you and you end up playing with sload stacks cost poisons while ur healing is reduced by 80% then it's kinda obvious what is going to happen.

It's widely known that solo play is slowly becoming harder in every single patch and u are here calling me misinformed while u actually believe that lethal arrow and major defile affect more ur group than the solo player.

All organised and skilled play is getting more difficult each patch not just solo. How many groups do you see which can really take on well defended keeps or perform that we'll these days.

I'm not defending poor itemization and bugged sets but equally it's going to happen in an Mmo how you deal with it is on you. You are choosing to play solo and you must work out how to overcome the challenges which come with that. For example class / item sets / ability selection are all under your control for that environment. Even as a solo player enemy selection is for the most part too. It's less the case as a group.

You're the one who calls us immune to effects so yes you are uninformed active mitigation is not immunity.
This is a multiplayer game. Why wouldn't you work as a team to achieve better results and a different game experience / fight selection.

All playstyles do have a place. They are all possible with varying levels of success. Just because you can't pug stomp quite so hard doesn't mean you don't have a place now.

I'm calling it immune because of their very small relevance. If it makes u feel better that u can be marked or sniped in a group and say u have debuffs on u then OK I guess. Whatever floats ur boat. That doesn't change their relevance.

Again, I'm not bashing ur playstyle or group play. It's not about me liking it or not. Of course group play should be the focus of an mmo. But We are talking about the viability of different playstyles. You literally admitted to multiple gameplay issues so saying that everything comes down to performance is not true. You mentioned before the rez bots making ur life difficult. Have u watched any 1vx clips? You can literally run out of Stam because u have to bash rez bots every 3 seconds. Not kidding. It's so dumb to the point where trying to rez each other is a valid tactic to Xv1. Instead of bashing them being a counter to them like it was supposed to be, it ends up being the reason u die.

And while u are right about mmos changing etc it doesnt change the fact that it's changing in a way that makes solo play redundant. There is a reason for the recent changes to resources including ur own suggestion of cyro redesign. That's because the only place solo players have in cyro is farming potatoes in towers.

Performance is the main issue ofc cause otherwise u can't even play but even if it's not lagging there are still a million different problems.

Nermy

The only way (imho) to get rid of ball groups is to make the healing specific and not AoE, i.e. Healers have to click on players to heal them rather than having to be within 25 metres of them.

Cyro lags, always will. If they haven't sorted it by now, you really think they are going to? (It is a helluva lot better than it used to be.)

Anyway, just my tuppence.

Jam

One day, a wall met another wall, and they are still debating on an incurable subject.

The fact is : you're using your keyboard touches for nothing here.

Irylia

VaranisArano wrote: »

Irylia wrote: »

Yo is my game bugged ?
I add a fifth person to group and every time without fail it tells me “are you sure? You will now be a large group”

Am I zerging? Am I the problem?

The game is telling you that to make sure that you realize your group is too big for 4-man group activities like group dungeons. Given that the Alliance War groupfinder works for groups of 2 to 24 players, you're fine. Except for the the people who's definition of a zerg equals "one more person than is in my group." I've been called a zerg when I was in a group of 12 people and no extra PUGs around, so YMMV.

Because 12 is a zerg

Derra

FakeZavos wrote: »

I agree that ballgroups can create (more) lagg, I dont agree that because of that we should stop playing what we like. But also dont act that ballgroups are the only reason that lagg excist. Because sometimes you and Etaniel do make it look like you think that.

No ballgrps aren´t the only cause everything creates lag even if 4 ppl drop meteors coordinated the game has a noticeable hiccup.

But situations where ballgroups intentionally create a 3way fight at an outpost or keep between the two other factions (and stupid ppl actually go there) is definetly one of the top contenders for causing lag, alongside scrolltakes/defs and last emp keeps.

Sadly the farming happens more often than not (and it might even be partially caused by the broken scoring system as there is absolutely 0 reason to play the map on EU).

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Ball groups didn't cause that lag. The pug zerg and zone groups were 100% to blame the lag didn't stop until we prevented them from respawning and faction stacking without groups you would have the same effect almost constantly.

ballgroups the cure to lag

idk what to say anymore - apart from factions stacks can be too well organised too - but they´d be affected by the same things that´d affect ballgrps.

I cant wait to see the coding for the "Derras magic make things I don't like bad feature" it seems like you have put a lot of thought into it so far. I'll wait for you to elaborate on your ideas and 'fixes'. I hope that you won't disappoint by trying to suggest that pug zergs will be affected by a group size reduction.

Since everything i reply is apparently the words of a loony for you why would i bother - how would you go about fixing performance? It´s apparent that it can´t be fixed on serverside/gamecode level - otherwise it would have been done.
How would you change the undesireable status quo?

Irylia

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Irylia wrote: »

frozywozy wrote: »

Etaniel wrote: »

Once again, I don't care about the ball group play style in itself, I don't give a crap if I get stomped by one, people can enjoy any and every type of gameplay *until* it impacts server performance, and then I get loud about it because it's our jobs as players to do something. Saying Zos is responsible, posting thousands of forums posts blaming them telling them to get their act together has shown to serve *zero* purpose over the last 4 years. We get one acknowledgment message from Matt Firor in 4 years, yeeehaaaw.

I agree 100% about what you said here. That's why most people who have played this game since release competitively and actively understand that running a group with the actual max group size is not an option and decide to cap their group at 16 instead of 24 to help server performances. People realized that 16 is the perfect balance between being able to counter massive numbers thrown at us while limiting the lag caused as much as possible.

What is your suggestion exactly @Etaniel? What would be a convenient max group size? Before you answer this question, please consider all the aspects of the question. Do you think that a group of X members could be able to capture a well defended objective? If the answer is no, do you advice them to stack with other guilds in a massive guilds VS guilds in the same area to capture said objective?

All that sounds boring af, at least for me. Until they decide to release battlegrounds (real battlegrounds and not the arena-like style we have right now) with 10-16players on each side, we are going to seek our own fights away from our faction as much as possible & too bad for them if the enemy team has to throw 50 players at us instead of stepping up their game play and :

1) min/max a nightblade and bomb us at the proper time
2) Chain / Frozen Gate players out of the ball

Stop blaming a 16men raid for lagging the server. Blame players for not using the tools to break them.

I don’t think you drop to 16 with lag and the server in mind. You do it because you then have a way to justify yourselves as not being a zerg while also not really having to push any micro skill.

Why not drop to 8 or under?
Destro vd stacking is far too easy.

Assuming you actually want a discussion. Groups below 8 have a very different playstyle and goal compared to groups higher.

For example the aim of our group is to be able to have a reliable outcome of winning any fight the map may present. Regardless of the numbers of enemies against us. With that goal in mind we look to the minimum number of players to accomplish (usually between 12 and 16, depending on day, group comp and opposition).

I'm fascinated by this new 'micro skill' that people keep mentioning, first Thogard now you. He wouldn't talk about it so perhaps you will?

Your group aims to fight other small groups and small-medium amounts of pugs. For this you use single target skills, a combination of survival sets or survival focused classes and ultimates along with coordinated burst.

Our groups aims to fight other large groups and massive amounts of pugs. For this we use specific roles to maximise our effectiveness. We still use all our abilities in a similar way to you, and trust that our group members have our back too just like you when you focus down single players one by one after kiting them out or shalk db hit a stack.

I would say that shalk+db on a clueless pug is also far too easy but unless im wrong about your group I would expect you to actually prefer harder fights just like we do.

Feel free to actually reply sensibly if you want to talk about it more.

? Nani?
“For example the aim of our group is to be able to have a reliable outcome of winning any fight the map may present. Regardless of numbers of enemies against us. With that goal in mind we look to the minimum number of players to accomplish (usually between 6 and 8)”
Like what. We don’t fight small to medium sized groups we put ourselves across the map in between two faction Zergs in a resource/gate/tower/keep and attempt to farm despite the numbers.

The only difference is our lack of interest in playing the map and capping objectives.
That and we run double damage sets on our dd’s. We only use bs/trans in terms of defensive sets. The rest is damage and our sustain comes from self weaving or the occasional synergy undaunted command/shard.
We don’t use eg’s to save us

Micro is the ability to play your character and small things like self sustaining/weaving, characters movements to mitigate the most damage, uptime of own buffs, killing single target or a cone clump with comboed abilities with the Use of animation cancel and understanding of skill order.

-When you spam aoe’s all that goes out the window.
-When you have the luxury to stack 8k more hp that goes out the window
-When you don’t need to rely on self sustaining your resource pool because you can spell sym/master Resto.
-when you can make individual player mistakes and still go unpunished due to eg/stacked healing/hp

Macro is where and what you play around. The knowledge of the games map positioning, and other classes/tools available to the enemy and yourself. Dumping aoe ults.

Even then it’s propped up by numbers/eg/health stacking

A majority of your players are fundamentally less micro inclined and would struggle if they were removed from the safety blanket of numbers because they wouldn’t know how or be able to put in practice self sustaining/mitigating/buffing/self healing/and killing for the enemies alone.

“I would say that destro+vd on a clueless pug or even an organized group is far too easy but unless I’m wrong about your group I would expect you to actually prefer harder fights like we do.”

Even in a competent group run in, fishing for vd’s is not skill. You layer your aoe’s and catch a proc.
Small scale fights aren’t just ult oriented there’s an entire brawl phase where micro skill comes into play and setting up burst with your teammates while also preventing (cc,body block,peeling) enemy pressure.

The less players you have the more they have to be able to hold their own. When you were at 12 you could have dropped to 8 and done 5 dps 2 heals 1 rapids (if you wanted to maintain that playstyle) but instead you chose to add 4 more because numbers is easier.

Most of the stuff cleared with aoe vd is easier to do regardless of enemy skill level just due to game mechanics with layered aoe.
It’s a cast and forget.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Derra wrote: »

Since everything i reply is apparently the words of a loony for you why would i bother - how would you go about fixing performance? It´s apparent that it can´t be fixed on serverside/gamecode level - otherwise it would have been done.
How would you change the undesireable status quo?

Fortunately I made a seperate post about the changes I would make quite some months ago.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/375313/pvp-patch-4-0-0-bringing-the-fight-back-to-cyrodiil-podcast-dracast-episode-5

Derra

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Since everything i reply is apparently the words of a loony for you why would i bother - how would you go about fixing performance? It´s apparent that it can´t be fixed on serverside/gamecode level - otherwise it would have been done.
How would you change the undesireable status quo?

Fortunately I made a seperate post about the changes I would make quite some months ago.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/375313/pvp-patch-4-0-0-bringing-the-fight-back-to-cyrodiil-podcast-dracast-episode-5

Yeah read that back then.
Still don´t how you´d get the idea any of these changes would improve the games performance as none of the changes aims at changing combat behaviour of people.

So you´re basically telling me again you´d change nothing about combat/gamemechanics itself - because it works so great.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Derra wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Since everything i reply is apparently the words of a loony for you why would i bother - how would you go about fixing performance? It´s apparent that it can´t be fixed on serverside/gamecode level - otherwise it would have been done.
How would you change the undesireable status quo?

Fortunately I made a seperate post about the changes I would make quite some months ago.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/375313/pvp-patch-4-0-0-bringing-the-fight-back-to-cyrodiil-podcast-dracast-episode-5

Yeah read that back then.
Still don´t how you´d get the idea any of these changes would improve the games performance as none of the changes aims at changing combat behaviour of people.

Adjusting rewards. Promoting campaign play. Diminishing nightcapping effectiveness. Giving more weight to holding multiple objectives. Yeh I'm sure none of that would impact how players play at all

Derra

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Since everything i reply is apparently the words of a loony for you why would i bother - how would you go about fixing performance? It´s apparent that it can´t be fixed on serverside/gamecode level - otherwise it would have been done.
How would you change the undesireable status quo?

Fortunately I made a seperate post about the changes I would make quite some months ago.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/375313/pvp-patch-4-0-0-bringing-the-fight-back-to-cyrodiil-podcast-dracast-episode-5

Yeah read that back then.
Still don´t how you´d get the idea any of these changes would improve the games performance as none of the changes aims at changing combat behaviour of people.

Adjusting rewards. Promoting campaign play. Diminishing nightcapping effectiveness. Giving more weight to holding multiple objectives. Yeh I'm sure none of that would impact how players play at all

Oh it would change certain aspects of how people play.

It wouldn´t change the dynamics of the aspect of the game that causes the lag though - you know - the fighting.

People are succesful in current fight dynamics - and you can´t offer them a big enough carrot or long term goal that tastes sweeter than winning the next encounter.

That´s why i believe that you have to change fight dynamics in a way that the current lagcausing behavior becomes unsuccessful thus undesireable.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Derra wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Since everything i reply is apparently the words of a loony for you why would i bother - how would you go about fixing performance? It´s apparent that it can´t be fixed on serverside/gamecode level - otherwise it would have been done.
How would you change the undesireable status quo?

Fortunately I made a seperate post about the changes I would make quite some months ago.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/375313/pvp-patch-4-0-0-bringing-the-fight-back-to-cyrodiil-podcast-dracast-episode-5

Yeah read that back then.
Still don´t how you´d get the idea any of these changes would improve the games performance as none of the changes aims at changing combat behaviour of people.

Adjusting rewards. Promoting campaign play. Diminishing nightcapping effectiveness. Giving more weight to holding multiple objectives. Yeh I'm sure none of that would impact how players play at all

Oh it would change certain aspects of how people play.

It wouldn´t change the dynamics of the aspect of the game that causes the lag though - you know - the fighting.

People are succesful in current fight dynamics - and you can´t offer them a big enough carrot or long term goal that tastes sweeter than winning the next encounter.

That´s why i believe that you have to change fight dynamics in a way that the current lagcausing behavior becomes unsuccessful thus undesireable.

I think you vastly underestimate the effectiveness of rewards to drive player behaviour. Let's look at double AP week. Players who hate pvp join the servers so they don't miss out on simple AP which has completely garbage rewards. Imagine if you could get something actually worthwhile in exchange for spreading out and defending different areas of the map rather than pushing in one line with the whole faction

Derra

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Derra wrote: »

Since everything i reply is apparently the words of a loony for you why would i bother - how would you go about fixing performance? It´s apparent that it can´t be fixed on serverside/gamecode level - otherwise it would have been done.
How would you change the undesireable status quo?

Fortunately I made a seperate post about the changes I would make quite some months ago.
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/375313/pvp-patch-4-0-0-bringing-the-fight-back-to-cyrodiil-podcast-dracast-episode-5

Yeah read that back then.
Still don´t how you´d get the idea any of these changes would improve the games performance as none of the changes aims at changing combat behaviour of people.

Adjusting rewards. Promoting campaign play. Diminishing nightcapping effectiveness. Giving more weight to holding multiple objectives. Yeh I'm sure none of that would impact how players play at all

Oh it would change certain aspects of how people play.

It wouldn´t change the dynamics of the aspect of the game that causes the lag though - you know - the fighting.

People are succesful in current fight dynamics - and you can´t offer them a big enough carrot or long term goal that tastes sweeter than winning the next encounter.

That´s why i believe that you have to change fight dynamics in a way that the current lagcausing behavior becomes unsuccessful thus undesireable.

I think you vastly underestimate the effectiveness of rewards to drive player behaviour. Let's look at double AP week. Players who hate pvp join the servers so they don't miss out on simple AP which has completely garbage rewards. Imagine if you could get something actually worthwhile in exchange for spreading out and defending different areas of the map rather than pushing I'm one line with the whole faction

We get doubleap every morning due to ad being overpopulated and capping the whole map - so far this hasn´t changed the campaign scores or playerbehaviour.

The problem is that you´d still need a faction stack to kill ballgrp X.
You´d still need factionstack vs other factionstack.

If the fight dynamics don´t change - the lag doesn´t change.

ZOS_JesC

Greetings, we've removed several comments that were baiting in nature. This is a reminder to stay on topic with your posts. Comments should remain constructive. Thank you.

StaticWave

Wanna know the best way to instantly improve server performance?









Wait for it...


















Wait for it...











Stop running 14+ man groups that spam healing springs and all sorts of defensive skills every second, and migrate to shor when vivec is pop lock,. That's how you improve server performance.

Agrippa_Invisus

It's not beholden upon the playerbase to fix ZOS's ineptitude when it comes to server performance and stability.

Stop blaming players when the only place that deserves the blame is the company we're paying good money for bad service from.

Bergzorn

There seem to be more guild groups than usual online in PC/EU Sotha Sil this evening and my performance is utter crap (skills, heavy attacks, bar swaps, break free noticeably delayed if working at all). Make of that what you want.

It is basically unplayable. Staying away from large fights doesn't help since it's all handled by one server. All that remains to do is to derp around a bit until hopefully the PTS patch notes are up.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Irylia wrote: »

Like what. We don’t fight small to medium sized groups we put ourselves across the map in between two faction Zergs in a resource/gate/tower/keep and attempt to farm despite the numbers.

I haven't seen examples of this from your group. I would love to see a video of you fighting another competent smallscale group that also have lets say 10-15 pugs on top of them (its probs a fair number at your size)?
Honestly you guys do well in the clips I've seen though.

Irylia wrote: »

The only difference is our lack of interest in playing the map and capping objectives.
That and we run double damage sets on our dd’s. We only use bs/trans in terms of defensive sets. The rest is damage and our sustain comes from self weaving or the occasional synergy undaunted command/shard.
We don’t use eg’s to save us

Its a nice challenge fighting in an unflagged keep or tri faction fight you should try it some time we don't do it for the map or campaign.
Our DD's also run double damage sets.
Saying you lack defensive sets variety doesn't really make me think we are doing something worse than you?
EG is an effective set for healers the only alternative is really bloodspawn or stat boosters, if you think its EG which carries groups these days then you don't really understand group gameplay

Its like me saying we aren't carried by Duroks bane, Fury/Truth/Old Seventh (insert any other decent item set here).

Irylia wrote: »

Micro is the ability to play your character and small things like self sustaining/weaving, characters movements to mitigate the most damage, uptime of own buffs, killing single target or a cone clump with comboed abilities with the Use of animation cancel and understanding of skill order.

-When you spam aoe’s all that goes out the window.
-When you have the luxury to stack 8k more hp that goes out the window
-When you don’t need to rely on self sustaining your resource pool because you can spell sym/master Resto.
-when you can make individual player mistakes and still go unpunished due to eg/stacked healing/hp

Micro is generally referred to in RTS or MOBA games for the ability to micromanage multiple different characters or units at once. Its very strange to me that you think that players in groups also don't manage sustain (using different tools), character movement to mitigate damage, uptime of buffs, focus damage and aoe dmg. Its almost like you have no clue how competent large groups play.

I also guess that you don't really get what its like to play on a non local server for EU and AUS players if you are judging based on my gameplay in some clips?
I like that you feel its so difficult to have 28khp, are you thinking we play in plague doctor atm? Literally all I do is tristat my gear and use blue food why wouldn't you take free stats from tristat glyphs and have better overall survival?
You also cross heal in your groups with vigor. suddenly group play is bad, I expect to see you spread out for your vigors and no more body blocking.

Individual player mistakes 100% get punished in group play. You fall to the back or get chained at the wrong time, stand in the wrong place, stack at the wrong time and you can be killed in a split second. If you don't think that's the case all you have to do is simply watch any group playing.

Irylia wrote: »

Macro is where and what you play around. The knowledge of the games map positioning, and other classes/tools available to the enemy and yourself. Dumping aoe ults.

Even then it’s propped up by numbers/eg/health stacking

Strategy, map knowledge(terrain, keep differences, chokes and LOS), enemy tactics. All things decent groups use all the time. its applied in different ways sometimes too, for example enemy group knowledge and knowledge of how pugs generally play is also extremely important when you are deciding how and when to push, move or hold ground etc..

Irylia wrote: »

A majority of your players are fundamentally less micro inclined and would struggle if they were removed from the safety blanket of numbers because they wouldn’t know how or be able to put in practice self sustaining/mitigating/buffing/self healing/and killing for the enemies alone.

Certainly if they dropped group in their group setup which relies on teamwork this would absolutely be the case. Some of our players play only in raids because they don't have time/enjoy ESO otherwise, a lot play in smaller groups or solo quite frequently you can check our and their channels to see this.

Irylia wrote: »

“I would say that destro+vd on a clueless pug or even an organized group is far too easy but unless I’m wrong about your group I would expect you to actually prefer harder fights like we do.”

Even in a competent group run in, fishing for vd’s is not skill. You layer your aoe’s and catch a proc.
Small scale fights aren’t just ult oriented there’s an entire brawl phase where micro skill comes into play and setting up burst with your teammates while also preventing (cc,body block,peeling) enemy pressure.

I'm sorry you have been so unfortunate to never play in or observe 2 equally matched larger groups fighting. There is absolutely a 'brawl phase' as you call it.

You know yourself (and you posted on your channel) our GvGs with your community, we did 8v8's and 12v12's, we didn't drop a single round. It's a shame that no one from the smallscale groups there ever stepped up together to fight us, with our clearly weaker playerbase, tactics and game skill to show us what they could do.

Irylia wrote: »

The less players you have the more they have to be able to hold their own. When you were at 12 you could have dropped to 8 and done 5 dps 2 heals 1 rapids (if you wanted to maintain that playstyle) but instead you chose to add 4 more because numbers is easier.

You have videos of our 8v8 fights on your channel. idk what you're talking about.

https://youtu.be/j2E2cHSXme8

Joy_Division

11 pages from a trollish OP. Not bad.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Joy_Division wrote: »

11 pages from a trollish OP. Not bad.

OP isn't actually trolling which is the sad part, he actually believes what he types

frozywozy

@Biro123 @Irylia @Derra @LarsS @pieratsos @ezeepeezee

I don't feel like replying individually to each of you guys and each of your points so I'll just quote all of ya and comment on important points I have seen coming back repeatedly.

There are no ways to counter ballgroups

Several of you guys continue to state that ballgroups can take over any numbers thrown at them. This is simply not true. First of all, it is simply unrealistic to claim that the removal of AOE caps allowed ballgroups to kill as many stacked players as they want. Sure, they have the power to do it once or twice, depending of the leader's call.

And then what? They have to take constant pressure and survive while rebuilding ultis and kite around under constant negates, timestops, siege damage, chains and such. As I stated previously in this thread, it is so easy to counter an enemy ball group, I do it constantly during offhours on my bomb blade and successfully. It is simply wrong and biased to declare that the only way to counter a ballgroup is to outnumber them. You can do it with one player if timed correctly.

Ballgroups ignore other ballgroups

At least most of the time in NA, we fight other guilds mixed with their faction several times a day. I know that Sanct describe why such behavior would happen but to be honest I haven't seen this happening in a long time. The only real occasion of guilds avoiding each other is the fact that some of them literally gave up and avoid us from now on.

Performances go bad when a ballgroup is running

First, people should always have a look at the population bars. If all 3 factions are locked (with a queue), there is your problem. The servers cannot support that many players at once. It has been proven already so many times in the past. I have been playing this game at all hours of the day and still do lately. When populations drop at 3bars, even with 16men organized groups running, there is 0 latency on my side. Ping stable at 83-102ms.

I know that alot of people, including guild members disagree with the following solution because they believe the fights would be really hard to find, but personally, I believe that the population cap should be dropped drastically until they figure out how to fix performances. I will touch this point later on.

Second, when you see a ballgroup rolling in your area and you experience a very high ping, don't jump to conclusion right away. Yes of course they are a major cause of the lag but not the worse. Quite often, you simply have to open your map and have a look at the different crosses and their colors.

As Solar pointed out in one of his post, we had an episod last week where we went down to pvdoor Faregyl, Alessia, Sej and nobody would respond. In the meantime, our ping was extremely high and abilities / weapon swap very unresponsive. The real cause of the lag was 2 entire factions fighting each other in the Aleswell <=> Bleakers <=> Chalman route. If you see only one place with a faction's color, it most likely mean that all its players are there which causes terrible performances when populations are locked.

Ballgroups are immune to debuffs

This is another assumption that I can understand because it kind of make sense to believe that having dedicated purgers make us immune to them but it is simply not true. 90% of our death recaps are full of debuffs (mainly siege damage).

It is extremely hard to fight under siege pressure, especially this patch as you probably noticed. Scattershots and meatbags cause terrific amount of damage (which I think is a great change). It forces people to bring additional walls down and new strategics / tactics to cover multiple breaches for the defenders.

But again, don't assume without actually experimenting it yourself. Debuffs are very difficult to counter, for all playstyles.


@Irylia mentions that people playing in ballgroups wouldn't know what to do in small scale. This is pure trash and toxic talk, as expected coming from him. Tell you what, most of us would probably lose in small scale against your group because you know way better this playstyle and have way more experience.

This being said, I am 99% sure that you wouldn't be able to achieve what we do in a 16men raid because you don't have the experience with the current meta. You think it's easy but simply don't understand or refuse to because of your ego.

Don't tell me that you did it in the past. It was way easier before.

Server performances can be fixed, its a question of money. The marketing dept. probably has a certain amount of income to earn before they finally decide to invest and fix the problem. It always comes down to money. And when the solution resides in rewriting the entire code because of how wrong it was to start with, keeping in mind that the game took 6 years to be developed, it's a lot of investment. Then come the new hardware's, which are more than needed.

Finally, you have the terrible mentality of most business men who don't want to invest money to get results later on. They want it the other way around, which is unrealistic and stupid. This game had the potential to be the best mmo of all time and still could be. I am 100% sure that if the game performances would be fixed for good, we could have dozens of campaigns opened with thousands of players at once in PvP.

But the marketing dept. and whoever is in charge to take this decision and invest money into fixing it see the amount of players actually pvping, the money it would take to fix it VS. the amount of players actually pveing VS. the amount of players buying crown crates and they think "Do we really want to make this game great, invest long term and get an absurd amount of money / fame / glory or do we want to make easy average money now?"

And they decide to go for the safe and easy solution.

Thogard

Regardless of which style is "harder" or not, ball groups use skills, abilities, and item sets that tend to function RELATIVELY well in lag. Do they function perfectly? no. But they function better than the skills, abilities, and item sets that small scalers use.

stacking Destro ult - a pbaoe dot that follows the caster - is far more resilient to lag than stacking DBOS - a conal burst.

The small scaler argument is that because the ball group's abilities, skills, and gear don't require exact timing or synchronization to be effective then we therefore have proof of the ball group's lesser "micro" skill.

This is a bit of a logical fallacy though. Just because the playstyle doesn't REQUIRE micro (to the degree that the smallscale playstyle does), doesn't mean that the ball group players are INCAPABLE of it. It just means it hasn't been demonstrated

I've watched frozywozy's stream. Dude is good. He light attack weaves, he does the jump block on CC thing to keep momentum, his timing is good, rotations are strong, and his tap blocks are good. In short, pretty strong micro. But how far does that micro go? How much of a decrease in performance or win rate would we see if he was bad at micro? And how would we be able to tell that he was even doing it if we weren't watching live?

With small scale (3-6 group size) if one character misses a tap block or blows their purify too early, they die.

And because things like tap blocks are virtually impossible to do in laggy environments, and because the ball groups tend to stay near zergs and thrive in laggy environments, we've got a situation here where the small scalers CAN'T perform in the same environments that the ball groups do, because the micro needed to survive is impossible to pull off in that kind of laggy environment. (insert cliche phrase about 'because we don't use crutches' here)

btw, animosity and my guild, scrubs anonymous, did team up to fight a ball group at one of the GVG events. We argued for about 20 minutes about dumping ult before the start of the fight (a standard practice in GvG ... everyone starts from scratch) but the other guild ported from shor to vivec right as the fight was starting, even after we conceded the debate and let them start with ult.

But we can't fight drac because we're both EP, and AFAIK so is drac.

---

butttttt if you guys want to queue up against us in BGs we'd obviously be more than happy to do so... but i think you already knew that lol.

Vilestride

I guess counter-strike just didn't work out for the ESO small-scale community.

Thogard

Vilestride wrote: »

I guess counter-strike just didn't work out for the ESO small-scale community.

i mean, it did for a decade. it had a good run.

Vilestride

It's a good thing you transferred all your mirco to the ESO pro scene then. Keen to watch you guys in BGs on the ESL big-screen.

Thogard

Vilestride wrote: »

It's a good thing you transferred all your mirco to the ESO pro scene then. Keen to watch you guys in BGs on the ESL big-screen.

Are you trying to imply that I'm a tryhard... with the context of that implication being a debate about which type of PvP we try is harder?

i don't know how to respond lol.

Thank you?

Vilestride

Thogard wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

It's a good thing you transferred all your mirco to the ESO pro scene then. Keen to watch you guys in BGs on the ESL big-screen.

Are you trying to imply that I'm a tryhard... with the context of that implication being a debate about which type of PvP we try is harder?

i don't know how to respond lol.

Thank you?

You're welcome.

It's cute watching top teams in the C's forget they're playing in the C's.

Thogard

Vilestride wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

It's a good thing you transferred all your mirco to the ESO pro scene then. Keen to watch you guys in BGs on the ESL big-screen.

Are you trying to imply that I'm a tryhard... with the context of that implication being a debate about which type of PvP we try is harder?

i don't know how to respond lol.

Thank you?

You're welcome.

It's cute watching top teams in the C's forget they're playing in the C's.

are you challenging me to a BG match? you know i'm down for that. just LMK when. bring your best 4. i'll have to play an alt so that our brackets/MMR are similar, but I'll stream it or record and upload a video. it'll be fun. bring your earthgores.

I've gotten a ton of warnings for naming and shaming so i have to watch what i say or i'll get banned lol. It's unfortunate.

Vilestride

Thogard wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

It's a good thing you transferred all your mirco to the ESO pro scene then. Keen to watch you guys in BGs on the ESL big-screen.

Are you trying to imply that I'm a tryhard... with the context of that implication being a debate about which type of PvP we try is harder?

i don't know how to respond lol.

Thank you?

You're welcome.

It's cute watching top teams in the C's forget they're playing in the C's.

are you challenging me to a BG match? you know i'm down for that. just LMK when. bring your best 4. i'll have to play an alt so that our brackets/MMR are similar, but I'll stream it or record and upload a video. it'll be fun. bring your earthgores.

I've gotten a ton of warnings for naming and shaming so i have to watch what i say or i'll get banned lol. It's unfortunate.

Banned!, Oh no.

And no need for stream. I'll watch it on the cloud 9 channel.

Don't stress champ, we're all in the C's

Thogard

Vilestride wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

Thogard wrote: »

Vilestride wrote: »

It's a good thing you transferred all your mirco to the ESO pro scene then. Keen to watch you guys in BGs on the ESL big-screen.

Are you trying to imply that I'm a tryhard... with the context of that implication being a debate about which type of PvP we try is harder?

i don't know how to respond lol.

Thank you?

You're welcome.

It's cute watching top teams in the C's forget they're playing in the C's.

are you challenging me to a BG match? you know i'm down for that. just LMK when. bring your best 4. i'll have to play an alt so that our brackets/MMR are similar, but I'll stream it or record and upload a video. it'll be fun. bring your earthgores.

I've gotten a ton of warnings for naming and shaming so i have to watch what i say or i'll get banned lol. It's unfortunate.

Banned!, Oh no.

And no need for stream. I'll watch it on the cloud 9 channel.

That's true. It's great that you can watch TV and play roller coaster tycoon at the same time.

Can't do that with counterstrike, unfortunately... I'm jealous of you.

Derra

@frozywozy

only talking about EU here and ballgrps ignoring each other (or more not going to locations where they´d encounter each other really) happens quite a bit. mainly bc nobody can really compete with ZS as they absorbed most good players from other grps across factions.

i don´t think you can counter them with one player - you can however join the zerg fighting them and that will help - but it faces the same problem that was brought up by sanct before: do you really wanna be the guy joining the zerg to kill them?
otherwise i´m 100% sure you wouldn´t touch zs or uf with your bombblade unless they´re not already fighting outnumbered.