Update on Cyrodiil Performance & Upcoming AOE Tests

Ostonoha

Love the 12man group caps with ally abilities on working on group. Will actually resub for this.

Dojohoda

we liked the behavioral changes they brought

I'm not sure what to think about this. This was performance tests not kindergarten. I don't like being manipulated into a behavior that is liked by WE. I don't group much as I generally play on a nightblade but, now, if I want to play 'healer' on my templar I have to group?

KageNin

relentless_turnip wrote: »

KageNin wrote: »

Few months wasted to implement what Fengrush said years ago, laughable.

I wonder how long it will be until they stop heal stacking... Another idea Fengrush has pushed for for a long time and an idea that would actually hurt ball groups. I do imagine it would further upset the PvP healers...

I doubt they will do it, as it would require dedicated healers ,not anyone with resto on their back bar.
For me there are 2 problems with healing:

1 you dont have to build for it, as long as yove got high magicka pool youre doing your job
2 theres no skill to it , meaning put resto backbar or set and with 2 people you can heal for ages.
Unless they make healing relevant to build for and skill based ( which is unlikely ) healers in general will be irrelevant and upset as they should be.

How many years now can you run DLC Hardmodes without healers? 2-3 maybe more?

Raammzzaa

MasterSpatula wrote: »

This is an irredeemably bad decision. While this might not be the final nail into the coffin of the PVP community, it's a rather large nail in its coffin. You've just made entry into PVP for new players much more hostile. You've shredded playstyles many enjoy. And you've further empowered the most overpowered and toxic playstyle in Cyrodiil. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

This is what concerns me about this change as well. I personally don't enjoy playing in groups larger than 12 players anyhow, but when I think of very large groups of 24 players and zergs - I typically associate them with new players and very casual players. I worry that this change will make Cyrodiil that much less welcoming for them. At a stage in the game's life where we have one active campaign left and others that have population on nights and weekends - I think we need every new and casual player that we can get to play.

bellanca6561n

badmojo wrote: »

The way people are talking about joining groups like its going to suddenly create a utopia of perfect gameplay is showing a great ignorance to how much work and strategy goes into running a proper group. Organized groups arent suddenly organized and strategic because of some markers above their heads. I would love to have a group of 12 good players to run with during the early morning hours that I usually play, but just like the game of russian roulette that is the dungeon group finder, I have zero expectations that forced grouping in cyrodiil is going to result in finding a guild of seasoned veteran pvpers who happen to play at the same tines I do, AND always have a spot open for me. More than likely I would be joining pugs and lecturing them on how not to get farmed at a resource tower. Its going to be similar to finding a good PUG to do the most difficult vet trials, I am sure it could happen, but its going to be the 1 in 100, not the norm.

That's really the point. Cyrodiil is a massive battlefield. But the Alliances can never be like armies from history, organized from a central command structure.

And I don't recall a test that increased the maximum group size while limiting the effects of AoE to group members.

What you're talking about here is social design, the weakest element of ESO overall. ESO began as an MMO to appeal to online game players but was released as a hybrid to appeal to single-player gamers following the success of Skyrim. Plus the stated goal of the Morrowind release, by the head of the studio, was to appeal to people who loved the original single-player Morrowind release.

Good MMO social design requires role diversity. And we see it in PvE in the holy trinity of PvE. What we lose with smaller groups and abilities segregated to apply only to small groups, is role diversity too. Or, put into group PvP terms, group comp.

24 person groups could have roles other than healers who were not damage dealers. Defile tanks. Distruptor builds. Pure negators.

I think it's reasonable and fair to expect improvement in a game over time.

This is the opposite.

merevie

The assumption that small groups do not look after new players as well as 24 man pug zergs is [snip]

The pug zerg sees a new player as an interchangeable rando person. Most of the times they do not even have coms.
Very big organized guilds are likely to have very set rules and playstyles.

Small teams are built from people who are experienced, know all the tricks to survive and do well.
A lot of those people also play solo or in BGs and are not going to force a playstyle down a new person's throat -they'll support what that person wants to do.

Been doing this game a long time -and while small man teams only pick up one or two new people, they're 100% interested in that person. And they're a hellva lot more fun.

[Edited for Censor Bypass]

driosketch

Fwip, RIP my freelance healer playstyle. Whatever, I'm one to roll with the changes, and I'll find a way to enjoy Cyrodiil on other builds.

But you know, the game already groups players by alliance. Is doesn't matter how you ended up at a keep, whether to take or defend it, you share goals with other players. And now there are dividers set between us. That's all.

Although, you won't have remembered every skill. You didn't during testing. The community will find those, and make use of them.


P.S. At least I can still heal dragon fights in PVE.

bellanca6561n

Also, regarding this behavior modification theme, I believe you need, first, to consider the design of Cyrodiil itself. Player behavior is inarguably a product of game design.

Right now Cyrodiil is early Air Warrior, with Red, Blue, and Yellow teams, some fighting over strategic/tactical objectives, and some just fighting, with a reset every 30 days.

There is no metagame. There has been no further development of the core design since launch.

Meanwhile, ESO has undergone constant innovation, much of it significant. And, no, I don't mean the KPI focused stuff.

Just the battle leveling alone and, with it, making every zone relevant on an ongoing basis, is perhaps the least appreciated major innovation of this game.

Yet, sadly, Cyrodiil remains that child of the first marriage living with another parent while you've moved on and started another family.

What, exactly, that metagame would be. What, precisely, would a major rethinking of Cyrodiil entail is a vast subject on its own.

But this feels like a remembered birthday for a child you've not seen in years after many forgotten birthdays.

I believe that a fair assessment given all the new zones, all the new features, all the development elsewhere in a game in its seventh year.

Game performance this year has improved enormously. I can easily run ESO with a GTX 1080 on a 4K HDR monitor at frames exceeding the 60hz of my previous monitor. Cutting group sizes in half feels wholly out of place as the punctuation to the year of performance improvement.

bellanca6561n

merevie wrote: »

The assumption that small groups do not look after new players as well as 24 man pug zergs is [snip]

The pug zerg sees a new player as an interchangeable rando person. Most of the time they do not even have coms.
Very big organized guilds are likely to have very set rules and playstyles.

Small teams are built from people who are experienced, know all the tricks to survive and do well.
A lot of those people also play solo or in BGs and are not going to force a playstyle down a new person's throat -they'll support what that person wants to do.

Been doing this game a long time -and while small man teams only pick up one or two new people, they're 100% interested in that person. And they're a hellva lot more fun.

[Edited for Censor Bypass]

Not sure anyone meant to suggest there's THE ONE CHOSEN WAY to play Cyrodiil. I know what I like and what we'll lose when that happens. But I just loved the small group play too, especially with all stamina builds cross healing with yellow vigor when green vigor was nerfed.

Stam builds are not exactly prized in ball group play

The point is diversity, diversity in builds, playstyles, approaches to the game, and player experiences, many of them you'll be surprised you remember, in great detail, decades from now.

There's just something about PvP. It's dynamic, unpredictable, no two fights are the same. It's about thinking you're mightily and wiping, and thinking you're wiping only to, goodness only knows how, prevail. It's about that one rez that turns the tide in a seemingly doomed situation. It's the hot camps. The urgency. All of it.

All that's at stake now. Not just ball groups.

Dame_Scorpio

Welp, I'm super disappointed that my favourite playstyle, solo hybrid support healer/dps, is now irrelevant, especially since ZOS admitted it made little difference overall. I loved spending hours in Cyro chosing my fights and my pace, lending dps support and heals where needed without worrying about finding a good group. Sometimes I'd get lucky and group up with awesome people, but if not it wasn't a problem because could always find somewhere to be useful and have fun.

For people asking why someone would want to play a solo hybrid healer, here are my reasons:

1) I usually play off hours, when population isn't capped and it's harder to find good groups.
2) I don't play regularly enough to join a PVP guild, and the guilds I'm in run PVP events during times I can't be online.
3) I play to relax, and groups can be stressful in the sense you have to follow one path at a fast pace. It's fun sometimes, but more often for me it's draining.
4) I hate 1v1, and loved Cyrodiil because I don't have to do that to PVP. I can do it, and sometimes can win (hence the hybrid DPS build into my playstyle), but I MUCH prefer supporting others.
5) I hate being a group leader, in PVE and PVP, partly because I'm shy and partly because I find it stressful. I'm an introvert IRL, and an introvert in game.

There are more reasons, but those are the main ones.

What bothers me about this change the most is that now instead of logging in and checking the map to see where the action is, and simply choosing where to go and finding action right away, I'm going to have to try and find a group, hope it's a good group, and lose control over chosing an objective. Moreover, I totally agree with everything Joy Division said about how this is only going to make groups stronger vs ungrouped players. To me, not being able to help any allies I'm not grouped with, means I'm only relevant to 11 other people, which totally ruins the feeling of being part of a larger whole.

So yeah, count me as one of the players massively disappointed by this decision.

allan0n

Hell yeah. These were the only parts about the tests that were enjoyable, and now you're actually having them go live. I don't care what any of these doomers say, these changes did have a positive impact on the game (even during hours where everyone was pop locked). There's still a lot of work that needs to be done to make this game as good as it should be, but this is a wonderful step in the right direction.

I also noticed that the Stuck in Combat bug happened a lot less frequently when not being able to heal others (for obvious reasons). I can't wait for these changes.

Gwynde

Joy_Division wrote: »

Why would a healer want to not group? Maybe they don't have voice coms. Maybe they are shy. Maybe they don't personally like the people who typically pugheard. Maybe they don't feel like following orders, Maybe they're only logging on for an hour and just want to do their own thing. Maybe they don't want to be in a useless 12 man that won't be able to do a thing except PvDoor. Maybe they enjoy the freedom to do what they feel is the correct strategy rather than listen to some know it all. Maybe they don't like being told what to put on their bars. Maybe they're hybrid healers/DPS. Maybe they like to play the game differently than you think it should be played.

So much this. I pretty much only heal in Cyrodiil and run solo. I typically only have a short time I can play each day, and running on my own I can go where I want and leave whenever I want, and play how I want. And still feel like I'm contributing to my faction's effort. If I have to AFK in a keep because I have to take care of something in RL for a few minutes, nobody cares.

This pretty much kills Cyrodiil for me. I second the above poster who suggests just reducing the group size and seeing if that does what you want.

ErMurazor

Adapt or Die. I used to play stamblade in PvP.

Valdek

You can adapt to altered group setups. Lag and dying servers. on the other hand, you can do very little to mitigate. For people who enjoy larger groups, what is to stop you from having several teams working together, like squadrons do in other games etc? Could make for more interesting group dynamics and tactics if you ask me.

However, I still feel that Fengrush has some cracking ideas to help improve gameplay. Please @ZOS_GinaBruno could one of the devs spend some time speaking to him about his recommended ideas?

LostToTheSea

allan0n wrote: »

Hell yeah. These were the only parts about the tests that were enjoyable, and now you're actually having them go live. I don't care what any of these doomers say, these changes did have a positive impact on the game (even during hours where everyone was pop locked). There's still a lot of work that needs to be done to make this game as good as it should be, but this is a wonderful step in the right direction.

I also noticed that the Stuck in Combat bug happened a lot less frequently when not being able to heal others (for obvious reasons). I can't wait for these changes.

Of course the game ran smoother during those specific tests. Most of the ball groups stopped playing the game altogether during them, due to burnout/frustration with the tests. There will still be the same unplayable crippling lag during those hours with these changes live and the ball groups mowing down pugs. It's just now the ball groups will have a much easier time with it.

techyeshic

*limits group size and outside healing to change behavior.

*still has the hammer that attracts the entire server

*buffs proc set gameplay which favors numbers.

NotTaylorSwift

LostToTheSea wrote: »

Of course the game ran smoother during those specific tests. Most of the ball groups stopped playing the game altogether during them, due to burnout/frustration with the tests. There will still be the same unplayable crippling lag during those hours with these changes live and the ball groups mowing down pugs. It's just now the ball groups will have a much easier time with it.

Ball groups aren’t the only reason for lag. We didn’t play at all during the last 2 tests and only once or twice during some of the others and I heard from many people that the lag, especially during the very last test, was very bad. Even other ball groups on no cp pc eu were not playing so how can you blame ballgroups for the lag during these tests when they weren’t even running? Faction stacking and zerging is just as much to blame as ball grouping but people who play primarily in zergs just want to put ALL the blame on ball groups because they already dislike them. The game didn’t run smoother at all during some of the tests. Ball groups or no ball groups.

And you make it sound like ‘mowing down pugs’ is a bad thing. What’s so bad about a group of players killing other groups of players in pvp? The only people that hate ballgroups are the ones that die to them over and over.

Tigor

The test have screwed up everyting, there goes our last hope for nice pvp. From now on we have to run after unkillable ballgroups during primetime, and ballgroups will be the only viable play style there, and is nothing left for those who don't like to play that style. Disaster. . We are back in a worse version of the "old situation".

Please include the 3s cooldowns on AOE healing for groups, otherwise pvp will be †.

Faded

MasterSpatula wrote: »

This is an irredeemably bad decision. While this might not be the final nail into the coffin of the PVP community, it's a rather large nail in its coffin. You've just made entry into PVP for new players much more hostile. You've shredded playstyles many enjoy. And you've further empowered the most overpowered and toxic playstyle in Cyrodiil. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

This is essentially what I came here to say. Group size change is whatever, we'll adapt, but ally effects only for groupmates is going to have far-reaching effects you're not thinking through. Whatever "behavioral change" in a group of adults enjoying themselves playing a game you're so pleased with isn't worth it.

Since you don't like to balance them separately, presumably this change will also be moving to PVE-land? I can't think of any reason a bunch of temporary allies at a dragon fight or world boss should be allowed to heal and buff one other without formally grouping first, once allies on the same team in a war can't. People probably don't even know they're behaving badly, throwing down cleanses for just anybody who happens to be on fire at those dragon fights.

Will magicka specs be getting a cost reduction and/or power boost on their class skill morphs once all those extra ally buffs and heals won't be useable except in formal groups? Or are all skills going to be balanced based on what things are like when the player is in a group?

And how exactly does this fit in with Play The Way You Want to Play, not allowing me to use my resource pool and weapon choice to throw Combat Prayer on my comrade if I want to?

This is just sad. Joy Division has it right, as usual. You're not going to hear it -this is why I haven't bothered with PTS feedback or your forum for years, because time and again there's no point. You won't hear it, and you don't seem to employ anybody who can foresee obvious consequences to your sudden direction swerves, but holy *** this is so sad. It's a direct hit to the spontaneity and casual camaraderie that hooked many of us on open world PVP in the first place.

For nothing.

RMerlin

So not only has these past two months be mostly wasted as there will be NO performance improvement as a result of these, but now you also decide to screw up casual/solo players like me.

I can't deal with this anymore. I am done. It makes me sad to leave ESO after nearly 7 years, but there is absolutely nothing enjoyable left for me in this game.

Ufretin

Buffing the few guilds responsible for 95% of lags.
Smart.

ExistingRug61

The change to targeted heals/buffs only affecting group members is certainly discouraging to me.

I would say the way I normally play in cyrodiil falls into the a similar cateogry to those as described by @Joy_Division, @Dame_Scorpio and others earlier in this thread, often being hybrid dps/heals, like to do my own thing a bit in Cyrodiil in terms of deciding my own objectives but at the same time always assisting any alliance mates I come across. Sometimes I'll group up with others in these sceanrios, other times not - it depends on any number or things (how long I'm playing for, do I feel like being social, does it look like that group will continue to push similar objectives that I want). Note that I play in off hours (Aus) on xbox so am generally in a low population evironment, meaning that this sort of solo and dynamic small group play is often effective as the map isn't simply dominated by large groups.

The biggest concern I have with this sort of change is that it basically invalidates an entire playstyle, which is one I enjoy.
To me this is a significant difference to the sort of changes we have had in the past, primarily being changes to classes, races etc. In all cases these sort have changes may have meant a class/build etc becomes stronger or weaker, but at the end of the day if a player still wanted to play that class in a certain way because they enjoyed it they always could, and you would just have to accept that maybe its not quite as effective anymore and your life was going to be a bit harder.
Sure, I could roll with that.
But this, this just says "no you can't play like that at all anymore".

I understand that this sort of change may not affect a lot of players as it doesn't really affect how they want to play, so I get that they may be happy with this change on the off chance it gives the slightest performance improvement. It's all win for this group at no cost. But I ask that you at least consider that there is another group of players, those of us out there who it does affect, and possible the only "behavioural change" it's going to cause in this group is that we simply might not want to enter Cyrodiil at all.

silky_soft

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Just posted this in the main thread, but wanted to cross-post to ensure it's seen and can be discussed here.

First, we wanted to thank you all again for participating in Cyrodiil the last couple months while we held the various tests with AoE abilities. We know it was challenging to play at times, but running these tests on a live environment was the best way for us to test various hypotheses.

In reviewing the data for all the different tests, we did see some marked improvements in performance – on average, there was approximately a 25% reduction in the magnitude of server frame spikes and a slight reduction in the frequency of those spikes. While these improvements look good on a spreadsheet, they do not have a significant enough impact on improving the overall player experience. As a result, we will not be making any major changes at this time.

That said, there were a few elements from the various tests that we’ve decided to enable for both PC and console for the foreseeable future, as we liked the behavioral changes they brought. Starting on Monday, November 9 for consoles and November 16 for PC, we will be limiting group sizes in Cyrodiil to 12 players, and all ally-targeted abilities will only apply to those in your group.

As for next steps, we’re going to take some time to consider future tests we’d like to run; none of these will occur until sometime after the new year. We’ll be sure to let everyone know what types of tests we’ve decided on next and will reconvene here in early 2021.

Guess that's the end of this journey for most of us. It's sad to see that you had to deliver us this news instead of the people hiding behind spreadsheets. I'll see you in New World.

NotTaylorSwift

Ufretin wrote: »

Buffing the few guilds responsible for 95% of lags.
Smart.

I assume you mean ball groups? Then why was the game still laggy in a couple of the tests when ball groups were not running? The last test for example. I could go into cyro on days when no ball groups were raiding and it was still super laggy. Its not just ballgroups that spam aoes. Zergs do it too. The game is at its laggiest when entire factions stack in one place, doesnt matter if there is a ballgroup or not.

Though tbf since the tests have ended I think performance has improved. I dont know what they have done but its a lot better than during the tests and even before imo.

LostToTheSea

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

Ufretin wrote: »

Buffing the few guilds responsible for 95% of lags.
Smart.

I assume you mean ball groups? Then why was the game still laggy in a couple of the tests when ball groups were not running? The last test for example. I could go into cyro on days when no ball groups were raiding and it was still super laggy. Its not just ballgroups that spam aoes. Zergs do it too. The game is at its laggiest when entire factions stack in one place, doesnt matter if there is a ballgroup or not.

Though tbf since the tests have ended I think performance has improved. I dont know what they have done but its a lot better than during the tests and even before imo.

The game performs poorly when faction stacks are facing one another and everyone knows that. That said, anybody that is not overly defensive of their ball group playstyle will tell you without flinching that there's a massive difference between ball group lag, ball group+faction stack lag, and just zerg clash lag. Does it shock you that layering stack upon stack of rapid regen and spamming purge/proxy/aoe synergies/massive group sets per target calcs/etc lags the entire server out? It shouldn't.

NotTaylorSwift

LostToTheSea wrote: »

The game performs poorly when faction stacks are facing one another and everyone knows that. That said, anybody that is not overly defensive of their ball group playstyle will tell you without flinching that there's a massive difference between ball group lag, ball group+faction stack lag, and just zerg clash lag. Does it shock you that layering stack upon stack of rapid regen and spamming purge/proxy/aoe synergies/massive group sets per target calcs/etc lags the entire server out? It shouldn't.

Ofc lag is associated with ball groups also, im not saying it isn't. I'm saying that people just like to blame ALL lag on ballgroups, probably because they already dislike them and don't want to admit that their own 40+ man zerg playstyles have an affect on the server also. Players take so much **** just for playing in a ballgroup from much of the pvp playerbase, being told all the time we are hackers, cheaters, exploiters, bad players bla bla bla. We are blamed all the time for the lag and whenever a conversation about lag comes up it is straight to throwing it all on ballgroups. So yes I'm aware that ballgroups DO affect server performance.

We can have gvg's out in the open with another ball group with no lag at all, we can take keeps with no lag at all. As soon as the entirety of AD shows up at Bloodmayne 5 mins after we have taken it the lag spikes horribly and continues to get worse as more and more people turn up. But it is not even consistent lag. This doesn't happen all the time, some days it is fine, other days it is unplayable under the same conditions. I just don't see how '95%' of the lag (probably an exaggerated number) as the person I quoted put it, can be attributed to ball groups when server performance can be just as bad on days when maybe 1 or even no ball groups are raiding at prime time to days when 3+ are raiding.

Prax3des

Very happy to see the changes. The "group limit + heals to group members only" week was my favorite week of PVP during the tests by a mile, since my heals actually went to me and my friends (no, really, it's peak gameplay casting Rapid Regen as I'm dying and it going to the random person following me). Combat bug was basically non-existent for it too, even on my magplar, which was nice.

Still hoping for some better updates to performance next year, but I'll gladly take this in the short-term, since it makes Cyrodiil more playable and enjoyable in the meantime.

Crash427

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

LostToTheSea wrote: »

The game performs poorly when faction stacks are facing one another and everyone knows that. That said, anybody that is not overly defensive of their ball group playstyle will tell you without flinching that there's a massive difference between ball group lag, ball group+faction stack lag, and just zerg clash lag. Does it shock you that layering stack upon stack of rapid regen and spamming purge/proxy/aoe synergies/massive group sets per target calcs/etc lags the entire server out? It shouldn't.

Ofc lag is associated with ball groups also, im not saying it isn't. I'm saying that people just like to blame ALL lag on ballgroups, probably because they already dislike them and don't want to admit that their own 40+ man zerg playstyles have an affect on the server also. Players take so much **** just for playing in a ballgroup from much of the pvp playerbase, being told all the time we are hackers, cheaters, exploiters, bad players bla bla bla. We are blamed all the time for the lag and whenever a conversation about lag comes up it is straight to throwing it all on ballgroups. So yes I'm aware that ballgroups DO affect server performance.

We can have gvg's out in the open with another ball group with no lag at all, we can take keeps with no lag at all. As soon as the entirety of AD shows up at Bloodmayne 5 mins after we have taken it the lag spikes horribly and continues to get worse as more and more people turn up. But it is not even consistent lag. This doesn't happen all the time, some days it is fine, other days it is unplayable under the same conditions. I just don't see how '95%' of the lag (probably an exaggerated number) as the person I quoted put it, can be attributed to ball groups when server performance can be just as bad on days when maybe 1 or even no ball groups are raiding at prime time to days when 3+ are raiding.

This^

Earlier this year we participated in a GvG. 5 or 6 ballgroups, all in one place. A few hiccups here and there but overall the game was fine. Couple of months later same groups, same place, same night of the week and the game was unplayable. Constant crashes, skill delays, rubber banding, etc.

techyeshic

I just realized tonight how I run my magplar not really as a healer yet obviously I can throw out a heal here and there. Waa waiting for friends to get back so was just running solo to where fights were. Not much siege up, so I put 1 up as I watch allies running around fighting while there's a lot of counter siege. Between shots, toss a heal and ER. See someone getting ganked 2 to 1, toss a heal and jump in to help. .

Really eliminates nice courtesies that encourage helping the faction and turns it into just leaving them to die while running away.

NinchiTV

Zergs finally got nerfed huh? bout time.