The solutions to pvp in Cyrodiil

Tigor

Hello all,

With the change of group size limit to 12 players, I think everyone can agree that the less organised players clearly have a disadvantage over organised groups (e.g. "ball groups"), and such groups are also needed to run a trail. In that respect here is no clear distinction between PVP and PVE.

I have lately been discussing a lot with guild members, since our results (such as AP/hr, K/D ratio, KB 's) were declining. And the most important question was, what could be done by the game makers to increase results back to acceptable? A lot of players have been spewing thoughts lately, and now it is our turn.

During the testing period nothing was done with the synergies. Maybe on purpose. But we think that it could be the key to make a segregation between PVP and PVE.
Why not introducing something like the opposite of synergies, antergies.

In Cyrodiil every synergy would also be an antergy. Synergies could be used by group members, and antergies by opponents to give the opposite effect (quenching).

If we now have a situation were a group is so organised that it takes a lot of players (e.g. "zerg") to elliminate it, and the performance of the game is going down due to the critical mass. Then chances that players could quench synergies are increasing. The idea would then be that a battle would be finished quicker, with less players, resulting better performances.


According KISS-principles such a change would not take much energy to introduce.

Thanks for you attention.

IAmIcehouse

Tigor wrote: »

During the testing period nothing was done with the synergies. Maybe on purpose.

Just replying to this note because I have yet to see any acknowledgement of this game breaking bug, I know this is not to your point, but they did do something (inadvertently) to synergies and there is no limit to how many people can pop damage synergies. (this bug exists only in Cyrodil)

It's absolutely astounding that this was reported day one of the patch and there has not been a hotfix or even an acknowledgement for something so game breaking.


To your point... Are you saying you can cast a synergy that an enemy can also trigger and that hurts the casting alliance? Incoming trolls nova-bombing their own alliance.

Crash427

Ballgroups have been around since before the harmony meta. Take that away and we'll just shift to something else again. The flavor of the forum posts complaining may change, but it'll be the same issue.

Soul_Demon

Tigor wrote: »

Hello all,

With the change of group size limit to 12 players, I think everyone can agree that the less organised players clearly have a disadvantage over organised groups (e.g. "ball groups"), and such groups are also needed to run a trail. In that respect here is no clear distinction between PVP and PVE.

I have lately been discussing a lot with guild members, since our results (such as AP/hr, K/D ratio, KB 's) were declining. And the most important question was, what could be done by the game makers to increase results back to acceptable? A lot of players have been spewing thoughts lately, and now it is our turn.

During the testing period nothing was done with the synergies. Maybe on purpose. But we think that it could be the key to make a segregation between PVP and PVE.
Why not introducing something like the opposite of synergies, antergies.

In Cyrodiil every synergy would also be an antergy. Synergies could be used by group members, and antergies by opponents to give the opposite effect (quenching).

If we now have a situation were a group is so organised that it takes a lot of players (e.g. "zerg") to elliminate it, and the performance of the game is going down due to the critical mass. Then chances that players could quench synergies are increasing. The idea would then be that a battle would be finished quicker, with less players, resulting better performances.


According KISS-principles such a change would not take much energy to introduce.

Thanks for you attention.

There a quite a few things the ball groups have in use now that if Developers simply 'fixed' would remove the invulnerability they seem to have and also have the distinction of making all in the game happy. Fear has been bugged for many years now and is overused by a number of players, but due to having no immunity to it the ball groups make best use of multiple applications---when that is teamed with CC's that are also malfunctioning and are not properly offering immunity or can be outright bugged.....you will stand for about 6 seconds on average at the front end of a ball-group unable to move or control your char regardless of what you do in 99% of the pushes they make if you are close enough....and if you are back a little bit the sorc they use will simply streak into you for the initial stun and you will have the perma slow bug for 19,000 days and they slowly run you down while you can not get away fast enough.

So, they work well and are certainly good players with high damage and synergies are a large part of that....but the source of the play you are seeing isnt play from a person per say, its long standing bugs or malfunctions in the game they have not fixed more than anything else that does serious damage to the average player in being able to respond to things they see on screen or receive proper immunity when they have responded to it.

Been caught a few times and seem to always see the same pattern of the fight 99% of the time Sub assault, streak, fear, synergized harmonized and VD as you stand there screaming from the fear unable to move or break the multiple applications of it. The pattern holds true for every time its happened to me---could be for you too. So if the developers had responded to player complaints about things not functioning properly we would not really have any issues with the ball-groups besides those who chase them on the tail waiting to provide a VD bomb on anyone else nearby.

Tigor

IAmIcehouse wrote: »

To your point... Are you saying you can cast a synergy that an enemy can also trigger and that hurts the casting alliance? Incoming trolls nova-bombing their own alliance.

The idea should be

• That the controll of a synergy to your alliance stays unchanged.

• To other alliances, that same synergy (then called an antergy), can be activated as well to prevent the function from the casting alliance (quenching).

Crash427 wrote: »

Ballgroups have been around since before the harmony meta. Take that away and we'll just shift to something else again. The flavor of the forum posts complaining may change, but it'll be the same issue.

It should become a bit more competetive and challenging to fight ball groups. To encouter these groups by accident should not result in the actual non conformances (bugs/lag etc.). It takes to much time to dismantle and end a battle, this works counter productive on the performance. And you are also right. Balances are always shifting.

@Soul_Demon Thanks for the feedback of your experiences. Not many players will disagree that fighting a ball group gives a hopeless feeling. Especially about the handicaps they give us. Would it not be nice if there would be a way to prevent this.
Something that is stimulating.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Tigor wrote: »

@Soul_Demon Thanks for the feedback of your experiences. Not many players will disagree that fighting a ball group gives a hopeless feeling. Especially about the handicaps they give us. Would it not be nice if there would be a way to prevent this.
Something that is stimulating.

I think a lot of players would also agree that fighting 48+ players was a fairly hopeless feeling when you can't even use skills. At the time the players who were empowered by AOE Caps and stacking so many players did so without any thought to others. I remember quite a few groups from EU and also some from NA.

Thats why its fairly interesting to see a lot of players posting now about how they dislike ball groups when they were created and improved to specifically combat this group stacking without stooping to the same levels.

Now the players who no longer can be carried in such large groups (due to things like VD, proxy det and other changes which have made stacks weaker) have reduced their sizes generally down to 24 ish or 2 groups with the new cap are complaining about the ball groups which they spawned trying to again find ways to benefit faction stacks again.

I think the simple message is - Spread out, go take multiple keeps with your multiple individual groups and fight not just on the front lines and pvp will perform better for all.

Tigor

@Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO We are veterans now. I can't say what has been first, ballgroups or zerg. We from Decimation Elite have been running many large groups in the past, because of lack of dedicated leaders to start a group. Some people from the other alliances might have disliked our role. We stood up and helped many players at the pact side, and that counted more in this "war" (game ). Nowadays more guilds have stepped on the field and with the recent group size limit, we were forced to operate at small scale. To my I regret I heard leaders are leaving now. About the sincere compliants I can say, that those are needed to make changes to happen. I hope you can reconcile with that.

I fully encourage to spread out over the map. Only that is difficult to maintain, since there is no refery (someone like Zimmeron) repeating this, and historical data tells me that alliances are mostly stacking.

With the idea about the synergy change, I would like to add a new version of a picture that was shown at the beginning of this year. The Ideal lag free game stays an illusion but the model shows it would get closer to it.

Soul_Demon

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Tigor wrote: »

@Soul_Demon Thanks for the feedback of your experiences. Not many players will disagree that fighting a ball group gives a hopeless feeling. Especially about the handicaps they give us. Would it not be nice if there would be a way to prevent this.
Something that is stimulating.

I think a lot of players would also agree that fighting 48+ players was a fairly hopeless feeling when you can't even use skills. At the time the players who were empowered by AOE Caps and stacking so many players did so without any thought to others. I remember quite a few groups from EU and also some from NA.

Thats why its fairly interesting to see a lot of players posting now about how they dislike ball groups when they were created and improved to specifically combat this group stacking without stooping to the same levels.

Now the players who no longer can be carried in such large groups (due to things like VD, proxy det and other changes which have made stacks weaker) have reduced their sizes generally down to 24 ish or 2 groups with the new cap are complaining about the ball groups which they spawned trying to again find ways to benefit faction stacks again.

I think the simple message is - Spread out, go take multiple keeps with your multiple individual groups and fight not just on the front lines and pvp will perform better for all.

I never found 48 players as much of a problem as I find the ball groups one......and I haven't seen Radiating Regen 10 deep in a faction stack nor have I seen the structured "cc locks" and "fear locks" used as means to render opponents unable to respond.

I am certain there are players out there who would argue the ball groups were formed to more efficiently deal with large groups of players while navigating the map---specifically right after game release- but what they do now is nowhere near the same function and 100% to serve each members personal interests completely rather than the "game" as a whole or the war in Cyro. In fact if I am not mistaken ball groups are now nearly all Trifaction and move at whim between them simply to draw as many possible into tight quarters to use the methods I already described to feed AP without regard to faction or map state at any point beyond volume of players they can attract.

Of course that is NOT what the original ball groups did in the game as the early emergence was about domination of campaigns by one faction and then moved to several servers being dominated by them. This new 'version' is preoccupied with not faction play or real-estate on map, but personal AP gain per hour only and seem oblivious to the thee way war or state of map. To suggest they exist for the only for the benefit of the faction or game is disingenuous at best.

I find it odd the way you speak of the other players who are not in groups- or possibly you mean not 12 mans. Words like "stoop" and "carried" seem to be derogatory enough to betray an insight into personal opinions you have about what play-style should be supported and is therefore 'acceptable' to you. I assure you not all the players of the game share your opinions of who is being 'carried' or who is 'stooping' for an advantage, groups or solo players......

I also find the removal of cross heals outside of group problematic- I hope you see this as an issue too as the number of advantages one play-style needs to be able to function should be limited and something we as players should speak out on if it threatens the volume of new players in cyro- ball group or solo, less players means a lot less fun.

NeillMcAttack

So your solution to fighting a ball group, is to jump head first into them in the hope that an antergy will pop that I can activate in the 2 secs I will survive.

I mean, the current means of fighting a ball is staying out of their “B-line”, let’s call it. Moving around them, and staying out of that “event horizon” that insta kills a solo player.

I also can’t see it leading to interesting or rewarding gameplay. Not that ball v ball is in any way interesting right now. But just jumping straight onto each other and hoping to pop synergies doesn’t sound like a solution.

Tigor

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

So your solution to fighting a ball group, is to jump head first into them in the hope that an antergy will pop that I can activate in the 2 secs I will survive.

I mean, the current means of fighting a ball is staying out of their “B-line”, let’s call it. Moving around them, and staying out of that “event horizon” that insta kills a solo player.

I also can’t see it leading to interesting or rewarding gameplay. Not that ball v ball is in any way interesting right now. But just jumping straight onto each other and hoping to pop synergies doesn’t sound like a solution.

I think the idea about synergies (antergies) should not be ending at the bottom of the stack to easy.

Staying out of this "B-line" is not an option, since the invaders are mostly unannounced, and therefore disturbing our plan, and you know they do it only with a few resources, and we come repeatedly into contact with this (boring) playstyle. We will never leave the important keypoints on the map because of those groups. Do I make myself clear?

There has to be a solution (or more than one) that can deal with this problem, and often (maybe mostly) problems are solved by introducing something new.

So there should also be a way for solo players to fight ball groups, before leaving Cyrodiil with a hopeless feeling. And I bet you also want to fight on the key points of the map. Don't let yourself be turned away. No one should.

I would recomment solo players not to jump into ball groups with the hope to trigger an antergy. But a bunch of solo players should have a higher chance. In that way there are certainly possibilities for everybody, especially in turning the lag-favor to the majority. Because that is what it is all about.

The synergy itself may also be scrutinized (in Cyrodiil only). What are actually the ranges of synergies? Maybe it needs to be enlarged, or decreased (then antergies would not be needed), or maybe totally removed, to increase chances even more.

This is just and idea. Idea's originate (maybe mostly) from complaints. So write them down, and let it know. It is not over yet.

Soul_Demon

Tigor wrote: »

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

So your solution to fighting a ball group, is to jump head first into them in the hope that an antergy will pop that I can activate in the 2 secs I will survive.

I mean, the current means of fighting a ball is staying out of their “B-line”, let’s call it. Moving around them, and staying out of that “event horizon” that insta kills a solo player.

I also can’t see it leading to interesting or rewarding gameplay. Not that ball v ball is in any way interesting right now. But just jumping straight onto each other and hoping to pop synergies doesn’t sound like a solution.

I think the idea about synergies (antergies) should not be ending at the bottom of the stack to easy.

Staying out of this "B-line" is not an option, since the invaders are mostly unannounced, and therefore disturbing our plan, and you know they do it only with a few resources, and we come repeatedly into contact with this (boring) playstyle. We will never leave the important keypoints on the map because of those groups. Do I make myself clear?

There has to be a solution (or more than one) that can deal with this problem, and often (maybe mostly) problems are solved by introducing something new.

So there should also be a way for solo players to fight ball groups, before leaving Cyrodiil with a hopeless feeling. And I bet you also want to fight on the key points of the map. Don't let yourself be turned away. No one should.

I would recomment solo players not to jump into ball groups with the hope to trigger an antergy. But a bunch of solo players should have a higher chance. In that way there are certainly possibilities for everybody, especially in turning the lag-favor to the majority. Because that is what it is all about.

The synergy itself may also be scrutinized (in Cyrodiil only). What are actually the ranges of synergies? Maybe it needs to be enlagered, or decreased (then antergies would not be needed), or maybe totally removed, to increase chances even more.

This is just and idea. Idea's originate (maybe mostly) from complaints. So write them down, and let it know. It is not over yet.

I see your points here and they are good ones...but an even simpler version of this would be that ZOS simply enacted the only testing all the groups seemed to hide away from Cyro for----put a two second cooldown when using either a HOT or AOE (including synergies) and watch the tide of battle turn dramatically. During the test you could cast one but not both in a three second timeframe (too long) but one per two seconds would make major impact----no more spamming overheals to dip into for burst DPS for groups means surviveability or damage, but not both at the same time.

Tigor

Soul_Demon wrote: »

Tigor wrote: »

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

So your solution to fighting a ball group, is to jump head first into them in the hope that an antergy will pop that I can activate in the 2 secs I will survive.

I mean, the current means of fighting a ball is staying out of their “B-line”, let’s call it. Moving around them, and staying out of that “event horizon” that insta kills a solo player.

I also can’t see it leading to interesting or rewarding gameplay. Not that ball v ball is in any way interesting right now. But just jumping straight onto each other and hoping to pop synergies doesn’t sound like a solution.

I think the idea about synergies (antergies) should not be ending at the bottom of the stack to easy.

Staying out of this "B-line" is not an option, since the invaders are mostly unannounced, and therefore disturbing our plan, and you know they do it only with a few resources, and we come repeatedly into contact with this (boring) playstyle. We will never leave the important keypoints on the map because of those groups. Do I make myself clear?

There has to be a solution (or more than one) that can deal with this problem, and often (maybe mostly) problems are solved by introducing something new.

So there should also be a way for solo players to fight ball groups, before leaving Cyrodiil with a hopeless feeling. And I bet you also want to fight on the key points of the map. Don't let yourself be turned away. No one should.

I would recomment solo players not to jump into ball groups with the hope to trigger an antergy. But a bunch of solo players should have a higher chance. In that way there are certainly possibilities for everybody, especially in turning the lag-favor to the majority. Because that is what it is all about.

The synergy itself may also be scrutinized (in Cyrodiil only). What are actually the ranges of synergies? Maybe it needs to be enlagered, or decreased (then antergies would not be needed), or maybe totally removed, to increase chances even more.

This is just and idea. Idea's originate (maybe mostly) from complaints. So write them down, and let it know. It is not over yet.

I see your points here and they are good ones...but an even simpler version of this would be that ZOS simply enacted the only testing all the groups seemed to hide away from Cyro for----put a two second cooldown when using either a HOT or AOE (including synergies) and watch the tide of battle turn dramatically. During the test you could cast one but not both in a three second timeframe (too long) but one per two seconds would make major impact----no more spamming overheals to dip into for burst DPS for groups means surviveability or damage, but not both at the same time.

And another good idea! When the testing continues in the new year, then ZOS should also look to what we would like to see, we are the costumers and should be included in the whole process. More good ideas can be posted here.

Aedrion

The problem with ballgroups runs much deeper than harmony bombs mate.
Much deeper.

Tigor

Aedrion wrote: »

The problem with ballgroups runs much deeper than harmony bombs mate.
Much deeper.

Yes. Tell us more pls. What do you know?

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Tigor wrote: »

@Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO We are veterans now. I can't say what has been first, ballgroups or zerg. We from Decimation Elite have been running many large groups in the past, because of lack of dedicated leaders to start a group. Some people from the other alliances might have disliked our role. We stood up and helped many players at the pact side, and that counted more in this "war" (game ). Nowadays more guilds have stepped on the field and with the recent group size limit, we were forced to operate at small scale. To my I regret I heard leaders are leaving now. About the sincere compliants I can say, that those are needed to make changes to happen. I hope you can reconcile with that.

I fully encourage to spread out over the map. Only that is difficult to maintain, since there is no refery (someone like Zimmeron) repeating this, and historical data tells me that alliances are mostly stacking.

With the idea about the synergy change, I would like to add a new version of a picture that was shown at the beginning of this year. The Ideal lag free game stays an illusion but the model shows it would get closer to it.

I could simply get similar effects by not allowing the zerg to 'zombie res' and instead encouraging decisive victories or defeats too.

the difference is one rewards players for being in a zerg (the anti synergy idea) and the other rewards players who beat other players in combat.

PeterUnlustig

1. Just give a second set similar to vicious death that damages targets in a 3m Radius but with a staggering damage the more people are in the circle. 1 Person 5k damage up to 12 People 30k Damage and a 15 second cooldown. That together with VD and inevitable detonation (which explodes from the cleanses) and you can bomb any ballgroup that is stacking too tight.
2. increase cleanse cost per cost/ reduce the targets to 3 with reduce cost. Without the mobility ball groups are doomed to be dead. Rooted in a negate and no one to cleanse you -> you ded

one of these would already make it much much harder for the worse ballgroups, leaving only the few actually good groups like fist.

relentless_turnip

The solutions to the biggest PvP complaints are simple.

Ball groups and their detriment on performance:

Stop heals stacking of the same type. I.e. only one rapid regen active on a player at a time, receiving another regen will simply refresh the effect.

Individual purge only 8 seconds. Meaning an individual can only remove effects every 8 seconds and not all the time as the synergy operates outside of the GCD.

This is much less calculations performed and ensures ball groups are killed faster reducing server strain again. It is also minimal impact on the majority of players, but huge to the mechanics of a ball group.

Proc sets, tankiness and their synergy with malacath

All damage scales the same i.e with offensive stats. A proc damage set should have its base damage reduced to that of an equivalent skill and then scale exactly the same and be able to crit. Malacath then becomes an option.

When building we make a choice we can wear a stat set like new moon and a proc set and have reasonable damage on our proc and our skills, but have a higher rate of damage.

We wear to stat sets briar and new moon and increase the damage of all our skills, but have reduced rate of damage.

We stack health and wear proc sets then we do no damage, but can heal our selves well with our heal that scales with our health.

We wear 2 defensive sets and become a tank.

We wear a mix of offensive/defensive and we have viable build diversity.

It's clear in my mind at least, that this should be the goal when trying to achieve balance whilst giving players choice. The current meta where you can have it all with next to no impact isn't healthy.

LarsS

Franky ballgroups have little to to with the lag. Yesterday early primetime on pc/eu Gray Host we had a huge fight with severe lag, note even one ballgroup in sight!

Reasonably the lag depends on the number of actions the servers have to do per second, that reasonably depends on the number of players stacked in a small area. It will also depend on the complexity of the skill (aoe singel target and proc sets) in the area. Ballgroups probably have the highest output of actions due to their knowledge of the game, thus they do cotribute but so do the total numbers of players around.

Some tests I would like to see;
1. Shut of all procsets in cyro. They have proliferated in recent years so they may be an importans source of lag.
2. Remove the camps from cyro. It will shorten the battles, substantially.
3. Give people a good reason to spread out over the map. Events on the map that give you ap and campaign points for ex. More resons to win a campaign like betters rewards and shorter campaigns.

Tigor

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Tigor wrote: »

@Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO We are veterans now. I can't say what has been first, ballgroups or zerg. We from Decimation Elite have been running many large groups in the past, because of lack of dedicated leaders to start a group. Some people from the other alliances might have disliked our role. We stood up and helped many players at the pact side, and that counted more in this "war" (game ). Nowadays more guilds have stepped on the field and with the recent group size limit, we were forced to operate at small scale. To my I regret I heard leaders are leaving now. About the sincere compliants I can say, that those are needed to make changes to happen. I hope you can reconcile with that.

I fully encourage to spread out over the map. Only that is difficult to maintain, since there is no refery (someone like Zimmeron) repeating this, and historical data tells me that alliances are mostly stacking.

With the idea about the synergy change, I would like to add a new version of a picture that was shown at the beginning of this year. The Ideal lag free game stays an illusion but the model shows it would get closer to it.

I could simply get similar effects by not allowing the zerg to 'zombie res' and instead encouraging decisive victories or defeats too.

the difference is one rewards players for being in a zerg (the anti synergy idea) and the other rewards players who beat other players in combat.

Fighting other players should always be rewarding. Ideas should be innovative, your idea about ressing might again result in an advantage for ballgroups, as they can wander over the map with less opposition. What are your intentions to come on the field with a ballgroup anyway?

PeterUnlustig wrote: »

1. Just give a second set similar to vicious death that damages targets in a 3m Radius but with a staggering damage the more people are in the circle. 1 Person 5k damage up to 12 People 30k Damage and a 15 second cooldown. That together with VD and inevitable detonation (which explodes from the cleanses) and you can bomb any ballgroup that is stacking too tight.
2. increase cleanse cost per cost/ reduce the targets to 3 with reduce cost. Without the mobility ball groups are doomed to be dead. Rooted in a negate and no one to cleanse you -> you ded

one of these would already make it much much harder for the worse ballgroups, leaving only the few actually good groups like fist.

This looks a bit complex to me. Could you plesae try again with another explanation?

relentless_turnip wrote: »

The solutions to the biggest PvP complaints are simple.

Ball groups and their detriment on performance:

Stop heals stacking of the same type. I.e. only one rapid regen active on a player at a time, receiving another regen will simply refresh the effect.

Individual purge only 8 seconds. Meaning an individual can only remove effects every 8 seconds and not all the time as the synergy operates outside of the GCD.

This is much less calculations performed and ensures ball groups are killed faster reducing server strain again. It is also minimal impact on the majority of players, but huge to the mechanics of a ball group.

Proc sets, tankiness and their synergy with malacath

All damage scales the same i.e with offensive stats. A proc damage set should have its base damage reduced to that of an equivalent skill and then scale exactly the same and be able to crit. Malacath then becomes an option.

When building we make a choice we can wear a stat set like new moon and a proc set and have reasonable damage on our proc and our skills, but have a higher rate of damage.

We wear to stat sets briar and new moon and increase the damage of all our skills, but have reduced rate of damage.

We stack health and wear proc sets then we do no damage, but can heal our selves well with our heal that scales with our health.

We wear 2 defensive sets and become a tank.

We wear a mix of offensive/defensive and we have viable build diversity.

It's clear in my mind at least, that this should be the goal when trying to achieve balance whilst giving players choice. The current meta where you can have it all with next to no impact isn't healthy.

Good points: Reduce the amount of calculations, and nowadays people have the opportunity to play a tank and still do damage with procsets. Killing a tank is taking more time, and requires more players. 1 vs 10 is not an exception (and the repeating discussion, he cheats vs we zerg). Clearly affecting the performance.

LarsS wrote: »

Franky ballgroups have little to to with the lag. Yesterday early primetime on pc/eu Gray Host we had a huge fight with severe lag, note even one ballgroup in sight!

Reasonably the lag depends on the number of actions the servers have to do per second, that reasonably depends on the number of players stacked in a small area. It will also depend on the complexity of the skill (aoe singel target and proc sets) in the area. Ballgroups probably have the highest output of actions due to their knowledge of the game, thus they do cotribute but so do the total numbers of players around.

Some tests I would like to see;
1. Shut of all procsets in cyro. They have proliferated in recent years so they may be an importans source of lag.
2. Remove the camps from cyro. It will shorten the battles, substantially.
3. Give people a good reason to spread out over the map. Events on the map that give you ap and campaign points for ex. More resons to win a campaign like betters rewards and shorter campaigns.

1. I agree.
2. Has been done in the past already. Removing them might again be an advantage to the ball groups, as they could then move over the map with less resistance. I am looking for something that is encouraging everyone, to have a chance againsts them.
3. Innovative, maybe (daily) quests to conquer a particular part of the map by turning 2 out of 3 flags, this would stimulate open field fights.

Xzysts

Tigor wrote: »

Hello all,

With the change of group size limit to 12 players, I think everyone can agree that the less organised players clearly have a disadvantage over organised groups (e.g. "ball groups"), and such groups are also needed to run a trail. In that respect here is no clear distinction between PVP and PVE.

I have lately been discussing a lot with guild members, since our results (such as AP/hr, K/D ratio, KB 's) were declining. And the most important question was, what could be done by the game makers to increase results back to acceptable? A lot of players have been spewing thoughts lately, and now it is our turn.

During the testing period nothing was done with the synergies. Maybe on purpose. But we think that it could be the key to make a segregation between PVP and PVE.
Why not introducing something like the opposite of synergies, antergies.

In Cyrodiil every synergy would also be an antergy. Synergies could be used by group members, and antergies by opponents to give the opposite effect (quenching).

If we now have a situation were a group is so organised that it takes a lot of players (e.g. "zerg") to elliminate it, and the performance of the game is going down due to the critical mass. Then chances that players could quench synergies are increasing. The idea would then be that a battle would be finished quicker, with less players, resulting better performances.


According KISS-principles such a change would not take much energy to introduce.

Thanks for you attention.

Unfortunately they said they can’t doing anything to fix the lag. Quite frankly I don’t care if people are zerging around as long as it doesn’t make me lag.

Futard

Good thread @Tigor . At least better than some rage whispers, right? But at least the rage whispers might show the real intention here.

For you, there seems to be one play style. Done. You mentioned it earlier in this thread:

Tigor wrote: »

We from Decimation Elite have been running many large groups in the past, because of lack of dedicated leaders to start a group. Some people from the other alliances might have disliked our role. We stood up and helped many players at the pact side, and that counted more in this "war" (game ). Nowadays more guilds have stepped on the field and with the recent group size limit, we were forced to operate at small scale.

You simply want that masses will kill everything. If it is healthy or not does not really matter.


But at the same time you say:

Tigor wrote: »

If we now have a situation were a group is so organised that it takes a lot of players (e.g. "zerg") to elliminate it, and the performance of the game is going down due to the critical mass. Then chances that players could quench synergies are increasing. The idea would then be that a battle would be finished quicker, with less players, resulting better performances.

So you run in large groups and many players, but when another player joins you, the critical mass is hit. right?

So when it benefits you, it is okay. Otherwise, something else has to be fixed.

You know, the thing is that there are plenty of valid play styles.
Small scale, even zerging, ball groups and other organized groups.

They are all part of Cyrodiil. The thing is, everyone will have to adapt to changes.
If you don't want to adapt, don't complain about others doing so.

If you want to zerg and get killed by an organized group / ball group you should ask yourself what you did wrong.
Yet, you prefer to:
a) rage whisper
b) complain instead of changing or adapting.

To be honest, i think you could do better here. And i don't think that your solution would be "the solution to pvp". Honestly, the issue we are all facing is ZOS and the server performance.
Honestly, you try to discuss ball groups and their play style when most groups weren't even playing during the test weeks and it was laggy af. But yes, we need solutions to a faction stack being unable to kill a group? what?

This does not really sound healthy to pvp.
And don't get me wrong here. I consider all play styles as valid and good. Do whatever floats your boat.
But I do not agree with your conclusions about play style here. You might want to think about that a bit.

But hey, there's something that interests me. You show it here:

Tigor wrote: »

The left graphic. Where does this come from? do you have data for this or is this simply your opinion?

idk

Tigor wrote: »

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

So your solution to fighting a ball group, is to jump head first into them in the hope that an antergy will pop that I can activate in the 2 secs I will survive.

I mean, the current means of fighting a ball is staying out of their “B-line”, let’s call it. Moving around them, and staying out of that “event horizon” that insta kills a solo player.

I also can’t see it leading to interesting or rewarding gameplay. Not that ball v ball is in any way interesting right now. But just jumping straight onto each other and hoping to pop synergies doesn’t sound like a solution.

I am with @Futard on being interested in the source of the data for the graphs. If this is real please provide the source of the data, and the data itself. It would be interesting to see and good for verifying the graphs are legit.

Tigor

Futard wrote: »

Good thread @Tigor . At least better than some rage whispers, right? But at least the rage whispers might show the real intention here.

For you, there seems to be one play style. Done. You mentioned it earlier in this thread:

Tigor wrote: »

We from Decimation Elite have been running many large groups in the past, because of lack of dedicated leaders to start a group. Some people from the other alliances might have disliked our role. We stood up and helped many players at the pact side, and that counted more in this "war" (game ). Nowadays more guilds have stepped on the field and with the recent group size limit, we were forced to operate at small scale.

You simply want that masses will kill everything. If it is healthy or not does not really matter.


But at the same time you say:

Tigor wrote: »

If we now have a situation were a group is so organised that it takes a lot of players (e.g. "zerg") to elliminate it, and the performance of the game is going down due to the critical mass. Then chances that players could quench synergies are increasing. The idea would then be that a battle would be finished quicker, with less players, resulting better performances.

So you run in large groups and many players, but when another player joins you, the critical mass is hit. right?

So when it benefits you, it is okay. Otherwise, something else has to be fixed.

You know, the thing is that there are plenty of valid play styles.
Small scale, even zerging, ball groups and other organized groups.

They are all part of Cyrodiil. The thing is, everyone will have to adapt to changes.
If you don't want to adapt, don't complain about others doing so.

If you want to zerg and get killed by an organized group / ball group you should ask yourself what you did wrong.
Yet, you prefer to:
a) rage whisper
b) complain instead of changing or adapting.

To be honest, i think you could do better here. And i don't think that your solution would be "the solution to pvp". Honestly, the issue we are all facing is ZOS and the server performance.
Honestly, you try to discuss ball groups and their play style when most groups weren't even playing during the test weeks and it was laggy af. But yes, we need solutions to a faction stack being unable to kill a group? what?

This does not really sound healthy to pvp.
And don't get me wrong here. I consider all play styles as valid and good. Do whatever floats your boat.
But I do not agree with your conclusions about play style here. You might want to think about that a bit.

But hey, there's something that interests me. You show it here:

Tigor wrote: »

The left graphic. Where does this come from? do you have data for this or is this simply your opinion?

Actually you are now complaining about me, that is fine, I am open to improve myself every day. But keep in mind it is really frustrating to run after ballgroups under these conditions.

In this threat I am thinking about reducing the lenght of fights with ball groups, by introducing a new thing that might be helpfull to reduce the lag. With the antergies quenching synergies, less people would be needed to achieve this. Opportunities for less critical mass, and beter dispersion over the map. It should be a win win situation with less strong ballgroups and smaller zergs. The graphics are only illustrative and from own experiences. They should help to get the picture in the right perspective.

Do you have ideas how to reduce the lag?

Futard

Tigor wrote: »

Futard wrote: »

Good thread @Tigor . At least better than some rage whispers, right? But at least the rage whispers might show the real intention here.

For you, there seems to be one play style. Done. You mentioned it earlier in this thread:

Tigor wrote: »

We from Decimation Elite have been running many large groups in the past, because of lack of dedicated leaders to start a group. Some people from the other alliances might have disliked our role. We stood up and helped many players at the pact side, and that counted more in this "war" (game ). Nowadays more guilds have stepped on the field and with the recent group size limit, we were forced to operate at small scale.

You simply want that masses will kill everything. If it is healthy or not does not really matter.


But at the same time you say:

Tigor wrote: »

If we now have a situation were a group is so organised that it takes a lot of players (e.g. "zerg") to elliminate it, and the performance of the game is going down due to the critical mass. Then chances that players could quench synergies are increasing. The idea would then be that a battle would be finished quicker, with less players, resulting better performances.

So you run in large groups and many players, but when another player joins you, the critical mass is hit. right?

So when it benefits you, it is okay. Otherwise, something else has to be fixed.

You know, the thing is that there are plenty of valid play styles.
Small scale, even zerging, ball groups and other organized groups.

They are all part of Cyrodiil. The thing is, everyone will have to adapt to changes.
If you don't want to adapt, don't complain about others doing so.

If you want to zerg and get killed by an organized group / ball group you should ask yourself what you did wrong.
Yet, you prefer to:
a) rage whisper
b) complain instead of changing or adapting.

To be honest, i think you could do better here. And i don't think that your solution would be "the solution to pvp". Honestly, the issue we are all facing is ZOS and the server performance.
Honestly, you try to discuss ball groups and their play style when most groups weren't even playing during the test weeks and it was laggy af. But yes, we need solutions to a faction stack being unable to kill a group? what?

This does not really sound healthy to pvp.
And don't get me wrong here. I consider all play styles as valid and good. Do whatever floats your boat.
But I do not agree with your conclusions about play style here. You might want to think about that a bit.

But hey, there's something that interests me. You show it here:

Tigor wrote: »

The left graphic. Where does this come from? do you have data for this or is this simply your opinion?

Actually you are now complaining about me, that is fine, I am open to improve myself every day. But keep in mind it is really frustrating to run after ballgroups under these conditions.

In this threat I am thinking about reducing the lenght of fights with ball groups, by introducing a new thing that might be helpfull to reduce the lag. With the antergies quenching synergies, less people would be needed to achieve this. Opportunities for less critical mass, and beter dispersion over the map. It should be a win win situation with less strong ballgroups and smaller zergs. The graphics are only illustrative and from own experiences. They should help to get the picture in the right perspective.

Do you have ideas how to reduce the lag?

I'm not really complaining here. I just think your main issue is that you do not want to adapt and others are at fault while the main issue of the game still is the performance (which got worse with their performance update).

Furthermore, every group / player will have to adapt after an update. This holds true for small scale and organized groups / ball groups. Yet, for whatever reason, this should not apply to random zergs and while outnumbering others, they should get more utility while already having an advantage due to numbers. I don't think that's a healthy approach.

To answer your last question:
As players:
- Split fights to multiple locations
As ZOS:
- Fix the performance update performance issues
- Reduce the amount of players per campaign (this should only be a temporary solution)

Tigor

Futard wrote: »

Tigor wrote: »

Futard wrote: »

Good thread @Tigor . At least better than some rage whispers, right? But at least the rage whispers might show the real intention here.

For you, there seems to be one play style. Done. You mentioned it earlier in this thread:

Tigor wrote: »

We from Decimation Elite have been running many large groups in the past, because of lack of dedicated leaders to start a group. Some people from the other alliances might have disliked our role. We stood up and helped many players at the pact side, and that counted more in this "war" (game ). Nowadays more guilds have stepped on the field and with the recent group size limit, we were forced to operate at small scale.

You simply want that masses will kill everything. If it is healthy or not does not really matter.


But at the same time you say:

Tigor wrote: »

If we now have a situation were a group is so organised that it takes a lot of players (e.g. "zerg") to elliminate it, and the performance of the game is going down due to the critical mass. Then chances that players could quench synergies are increasing. The idea would then be that a battle would be finished quicker, with less players, resulting better performances.

So you run in large groups and many players, but when another player joins you, the critical mass is hit. right?

So when it benefits you, it is okay. Otherwise, something else has to be fixed.

You know, the thing is that there are plenty of valid play styles.
Small scale, even zerging, ball groups and other organized groups.

They are all part of Cyrodiil. The thing is, everyone will have to adapt to changes.
If you don't want to adapt, don't complain about others doing so.

If you want to zerg and get killed by an organized group / ball group you should ask yourself what you did wrong.
Yet, you prefer to:
a) rage whisper
b) complain instead of changing or adapting.

To be honest, i think you could do better here. And i don't think that your solution would be "the solution to pvp". Honestly, the issue we are all facing is ZOS and the server performance.
Honestly, you try to discuss ball groups and their play style when most groups weren't even playing during the test weeks and it was laggy af. But yes, we need solutions to a faction stack being unable to kill a group? what?

This does not really sound healthy to pvp.
And don't get me wrong here. I consider all play styles as valid and good. Do whatever floats your boat.
But I do not agree with your conclusions about play style here. You might want to think about that a bit.

But hey, there's something that interests me. You show it here:

Tigor wrote: »

The left graphic. Where does this come from? do you have data for this or is this simply your opinion?

Actually you are now complaining about me, that is fine, I am open to improve myself every day. But keep in mind it is really frustrating to run after ballgroups under these conditions.

In this threat I am thinking about reducing the lenght of fights with ball groups, by introducing a new thing that might be helpfull to reduce the lag. With the antergies quenching synergies, less people would be needed to achieve this. Opportunities for less critical mass, and beter dispersion over the map. It should be a win win situation with less strong ballgroups and smaller zergs. The graphics are only illustrative and from own experiences. They should help to get the picture in the right perspective.

Do you have ideas how to reduce the lag?

I'm not really complaining here. I just think your main issue is that you do not want to adapt and others are at fault while the main issue of the game still is the performance (which got worse with their performance update).

Furthermore, every group / player will have to adapt after an update. This holds true for small scale and organized groups / ball groups. Yet, for whatever reason, this should not apply to random zergs and while outnumbering others, they should get more utility while already having an advantage due to numbers. I don't think that's a healthy approach.

To answer your last question:
As players:
- Split fights to multiple locations
As ZOS:
- Fix the performance update performance issues
- Reduce the amount of players per campaign (this should only be a temporary solution)

How? Try to think a bit deeper, and bring a viable idea for ZOS to work on. Actually no one likes to adapt to changes, it is human behaviour. We have been reduced in group size already, and we adapted to that. Now changes that need addaptations should come to others. The group heal, was for ballgroup not a change that required any addaptation, on the contrary.

Tigor

Xzysts wrote: »

Tigor wrote: »

Hello all,

With the change of group size limit to 12 players, I think everyone can agree that the less organised players clearly have a disadvantage over organised groups (e.g. "ball groups"), and such groups are also needed to run a trail. In that respect here is no clear distinction between PVP and PVE.

I have lately been discussing a lot with guild members, since our results (such as AP/hr, K/D ratio, KB 's) were declining. And the most important question was, what could be done by the game makers to increase results back to acceptable? A lot of players have been spewing thoughts lately, and now it is our turn.

During the testing period nothing was done with the synergies. Maybe on purpose. But we think that it could be the key to make a segregation between PVP and PVE.
Why not introducing something like the opposite of synergies, antergies.

In Cyrodiil every synergy would also be an antergy. Synergies could be used by group members, and antergies by opponents to give the opposite effect (quenching).

If we now have a situation were a group is so organised that it takes a lot of players (e.g. "zerg") to elliminate it, and the performance of the game is going down due to the critical mass. Then chances that players could quench synergies are increasing. The idea would then be that a battle would be finished quicker, with less players, resulting better performances.


According KISS-principles such a change would not take much energy to introduce.

Thanks for you attention.

Unfortunately they said they can’t doing anything to fix the lag. Quite frankly I don’t care if people are zerging around as long as it doesn’t make me lag.

They still have to consider what future tests they would like to perform. There is still lag, so this theard is the opportunty to give them some more handles. The excessive lag is not only caused by one thing, and would need a holistic approach to tackle completely. Some days are just better then others to play, and many see a causality when ballgroups are on. The constant introduction of new content and changes made a sand box of Cyrodiil.

Theignson

Soul_Demon wrote: »

Fear has been bugged for many years now and is overused by a number of players, but due to having no immunity to it the ball groups make best use of multiple applications---when that is teamed with CC's that are also malfunctioning and are not properly offering immunity or can be outright bugged.....you will stand for about 6 seconds on average at the front end of a ball-group unable to move or control your char regardless of what you do in 99% of the pushes they make if you are close enough....

Been caught a few times and seem to always see the same pattern of the fight 99% of the time Sub assault, streak, fear, synergized harmonized and VD as you stand there screaming from the fear unable to move or break the multiple applications of it. The pattern holds true for every time its happened to me---could be for you too. So if the developers had responded to player complaints about things not functioning properly we would not really have any issues with the ball-groups besides those who chase them on the tail waiting to provide a VD bomb on anyone else nearby.

[/quote]

You call this "CC lock", I call it "lag stun". It is the worst bug in the game and makes it impossible to fight ball groups as a solo. You get stunned/feared/rooted/snared/ all at once, can use no abilities for 5 seconds, then get killed by VD or ulti dump. Same bug repeatedly, so boring. I don't know if the ball groups know that they have this effect, or whether they are well aware of it.

The best ball groups must spend a lot of time on test server seeing the best way to exploit the new changes each patch. As soon as the patch comes they are ready with their changes. Remember the goliath bash patch? All the ball groups were doing it immediately. Remember the synergy patch? They were all synergizing huge damage. They are students of the game. It isn't their fault if the most effective strategy exploits a bug that causes other players to stand there unable to use any abilities- it is ZOS's fault.

I would love to see how these ball groups did with no group spells and no "lag stun". Yes, let them group up and do their coordination and movements together but make each of them use all their skills and not get carried by the group. Maybe excellent coordination and player skill would still prevail even without "lag stun". Would be interesting. Of course ZOS will never do that!

Tigor

@Aedrion [snip]

Ballgroups have no counter! (december 2020)

You were directly hitting the nail on the head. It was a full and true summary. Thanks for that! Don't let anyone push you around.

THERE IS NO FAILSAFE AGAINST LAG

[Edited for Discussion of Moderation Action]

LannStone

What if group synergies were disabled altogether in Cyrodiil, leaving only individual player skills and teamwork? Just asking for a friend.

Crash427

LannStone wrote: »

What if group synergies were disabled altogether in Cyrodiil, leaving only individual player skills and teamwork? Just asking for a friend.

Ballgroups have existed longer than the harmony meta has been around.

Tigor

So a more comprehensive solution is needed. I'll come up with a more complete plan before Thursday.