ZOS please consider dissolving ball groups

Qbiken

If ballgroups didn't cause the entire server to implode upon itself I reallt wouldn't care about them.

Can witness a 50v50 fight at any given time where no ballgroups are present and the lag is acceptable and playable. The moment a ballgroup shows up and starts a fight the game stops being playable. The ballgroup dies and the previous 50v50 fight continues and lag is down to acceptable levels. This repeat itself over and over and over again. Every single evening.

Even at 1 AM when the primetime is over and the server will burn the moment ballgroups stirs up a fight. The second they wipe/die the rest of Cyrodiil works fine again. I don't even have to be anywhere close to the fight to notice this change in performance.

How Cyrodiil was originally designed with group sizes is irrelevant at this point. When a certain playstyle obviously has such a huge impact on the performance, it's not even debatable that it needs to be adressed.

Seeing people defend this playstyle with

"It's how Cyrodiil was originally designed"

And

"Hurr durr teamwork"

Is just beyond me.....

Ranger209

VaranisArano wrote: »

Thing is, I do think that for players who regard individual fighting skill as the pinnacle of PVP have a point: ball groups are the anti-thesis of individual fighting skill. The whole point of a ball group is that you fight as a team in a small area to maximize everything you've got, which makes them the most effective method available for team fighting. Even when the members might also be very good at solo or small scale or Battlegrounds, when it comes time to get in their ball group raid, they focus on their role in the team instead of acting as individuals fighting.

This is fine as a form of gameplay in PvE. Comping a group to gain as much synergy as possible and unleash it against AI is one thing. But when 5 to maybe 10 percent of your PvP player base do the same and unleash it against 90-95% of your paying customers that PvP I think you have to look at it differently toward the longevity of the game. Is it good for the game? There are different levels to that question whether it is from a performance standpoint, or the enjoyment/frustration balance of those partaking in the gameplay. If 10 are frustrated to every 1 who enjoys it is that good for the game? If it renders skills useless, is that good for the game?

Cliquing off into groups also flies in the face of AvAvA, again very appropriate in end game PvE or actual GvGvG content, but not necessarily here AvAvA. Not that this can be prevented with voice comms at our disposal, but your alliance is your team, your alliance is your group. There are types of organized play that don't require balling up. There are strategies that can be used that don't involve balling up and farming 90% of your paying customers. Maybe ball groups should explore some of those.

Larcomar

Ball groups are awesome. Leave 'em be.

Ok, I didn't always think that. They ruin the game and it's just not worth pvping anymore.

But.... once you accept that basic reality and embrace the suck, they have their uses.

I mean, they hang round forts like forever farming people, never try to actually take them, and eventually get bored and bugger off. Leaving you with a nice defence tick.

Just logged my temp in on DC. She's utterly useless now as Zeni banned healers. But hey. Little ball group action going on at rayles so I thought, why not. Hopped over, repaired a wall and stuck her in sneak while I went to have dinner. Come back and... voila... 57.5k defence tick. Tier 1 done and I don't need to set foot in Cyro for another month .....

You just got to look at the glass and say, "it's half full." Or, um, there's some dregs in the bottom ....

NeillMcAttack

VaranisArano wrote: »

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

I'm not gonna argue semantics on our interpretation of Gina's statement anymore. Is that fair?

Besides that, I mostly agree with you all, seriously, because I understand ZOS sold us out!!!!

But I think we all can come together, as we all just want the same thing. A game like this, that works! But our idea's of what "works" are different, unfortunately.
You think the game needs to be played at a certain capacity to have a lot of value. I think it is more important to have a game that actually works! When I press a skill to save my mate, it better WORK!
You seem content to play in an environment that will never function at the level you want it to, and honestly, I would love that too, but it ain't possible.

I just want us thinking about balance, in a game that actually works, and let's be honest, you can't really balance groups that are too big?! Think about the gameplay first.

I'd love to know the servers the people that disagree with me are on. My guess is PC/NA Greyhost?

I'm on PC/NA Greyhost and when I think about game balance, I think about how dropping the group size down to 12 and making heals group-only wildly unbalanced Cyrodiil in favor of ball group tactics. The changes do nothing to 12 man ball groups who farm back keeps while seriously disadvantaging the PUGs, informal groups, and newer players who fight against them. Without, I note, ZOS claiming there's any significant performance improvement to the player experience because of those changes.

If we want to talk balance, it's less a matter of size than it is of organization. Even if we were to drop the group size down to 6, six players in voice comms coordinating their attacks are going to cut through disorganized players no matter what ZOs does to "raise the floor, lower the ceiling." We already see that in good small scale groups. Ball groups or even the old larger organized raids of 12 to 24 players were as dominant as they were against faction stacks and PUG zergs not because of their size, but because of their organization.

I'm not going to disagree with any of this, because it is all true. But it doesn't change the fact that the game doesn't work. Smaller groups sizes has a chance to improve performance IMO, debatable, sure. And ballgroups are wildly unbalanced against PUGS and and solo players, agreed.
Does it not then make sense to lower the size of groups further? Remember, functionality should be the top priority, regardless of playstyle. And balance makes the game more enjoyable for everyone. It just seems too obvious not to at least try and then get peoples opinions, as long as those opinions revolve around a desire for a playable Cyro, and a realistic expectation.

I'm not sure I can go there. Since dropping the group size to 12 wasn't for performance reasons, it seems like 6-man PVP is your solution to killing ball groups, which you blame for the performance issues. I'm not sure why 6-man PVP is the preferred solution here, when that's going to cause a lot of problems and, IMO, sacrifice a lot of what makes Cyrodiil, well, Cyrodiil.

To be clear, I don't mind testing 6-man PVP but I think its going to have the same exact balance problems we have now, only worse. And while its possible it might be the silver bullet for functionality, its going to create a lot of issues for gameplay in Cyrodiil that we'd have to deal with going forward.

Organized 6 man squads would still cut through disorganized PUGs that outnumber them. Its not a ball group thing. Its an organized group thing. Being able to coordinate your targeting and movement does wonders. Balance still dramatically favors the organized groups. PUG players are generally worse at the self-sufficient small scale gameplay that current 6-man squads favor, so it hurts disorganized groups even more when limiting group size to 6 cuts down on the buffs/heals that PUGs receive from group members.

Other problems:
1. The smaller the group sizes, the harder it is for new, inexperienced and casual players to learn the ropes or join groups. Its also harder for groups who have new, inexperienced, or casual players to succeed, since there's not a lot of room for carrying anyone in a 6-man squad.
2. the smaller the group sizes, the more people are LFG in zone, and its not like the number of players who want to lead PUGs doubled. So we've got longer group wait times and proportionately less experienced PUG leaders.
3. The smaller the group sizes, more PVP guilds have to cut their raids, shedding core members and not accepting new ones. The bigger guilds have already dropped members to reach a 12-man raid, now everyone would have to drop to a 6 man. This results in experienced players playing less, while fewer new players get to play in organized groups who train their members.
4. The smaller the group sizes, the harder it is to be effective at objectives. Cyrodiil is still an objective based game where groups should be aiming to capture objectives like keeps. 6 man is a good size for skirmishing or farming, not really capturing keeps at primetime. I mean, I can only imagine trying to charge into a breach with my five friends, hoping the rest of the zerg behind us follows!
5. It encourages zerging, even among organized groups, because a 6 man who splits off from the main pack to take objectives is much more easily countered without a pack of allies along. This might reduce groups farming at back keeps, but at the cost of making players less likely to spread out. Spreading out is one of the things that ZOS has said helps performance.
6. The smaller the group size, there's much less diversity of builds. Whenever I played 6-man, I always felt like my healer was pretty useless, and I'd be better off playing a generic tanky/DD with a few cross heals. Its not that you can't do dedicated roles, but as in Battlegrounds, its mostly done by organized/pre-made groups. Yet another leg up for the organized groups.
7. The smaller the group, the harder it is to balance tanky builds. CP Battlegrounds turned into a dragged out slugging match between 4v4v4 teams. While Cyrodiil always has the option to call in more players, smaller group sizes makes the tankier builds more problematic in group vs group situations.


Maybe this would all solve itself if 6-man PVP really is the silver bullet to Cyrodiil's performance woes. Maybe players would say "Well, at least my skills work!" and happily adapt to playing 6-man small scale in a zone originally designed for groups of 8 to 24. Maybe Cyrodiil would experience a lasting resurgence in population (unlike the two other small-scale options in ESO: Battlegrounds and Imperial City.)

Personally, after I've sorted through which five of my friends from my PVP guild I'm playing with in raid, retooled my PVP healer playstyle into the generic tanky/damage dealing build with a few cross heals that seem more effective in small scale fights, and resigned myself to not being able to take objectives during primetime unless we've got a horde of PUGs on our coattails, I'm not sure it would feel much like Cyrodiil anymore.

It definitely wouldn't be anything like what attracted me to Cyrodiil in the first place.

Hmmm, if dropping group sizes to 12 wasn't for performance reasons, then removing cross alliance healing most certainly was. Do you disagree? Or do we still believe it was for the mysterious "Behavioral Changes", which in my mind can only mean that they wanted less players with AOE skills on their bars. The only other options is that they wanted everyone to group up, which incentivizes spamming AOE's, so surely that can't be it, seeing was that is exactly the kind of gameplay Rich has promised to change, that Rich has blamed for the performance. Anyway, we can't exactly debate the term "behavioral changes", as it is far too vague a statement. We would be better off referring to players own experiences.

So the changes were made for a reason, I'm fairly certain it was to get Cyro to a playable state, which in my experience it is, as long as the AOE spam is at a minimum. This is debatable sure, and we need to keep in mind you and I play in different Campaign's, I would argue that Ravenwatch EU is a bit more casual than Greyhost NA. As such, I would wager that their are far more ballgroups present at any time on Greyhost NA than Ravenwatch EU. Out of curiosity, how many ball groups on average do you believe play in Greyhost NA during prime time. I would reckon R.EU has about 1-2 balls per faction, often less, sometimes more, (anyone else want to guess). I wonder if ZOS can even access that data....

Quickly on to your points; but to start, claiming 6 players would wipe the floor with the faction stack just as well as 12 is very easy for me to dismiss. You have way more damage, more safety nets/HOT's, more stats, etc the more sets your group has, claiming otherwise is dishonest.

1. Maybe true, if you are a try hard, I all too often invite rando's into group just because there is room. Especially if we are attacking the same objective. So maybe if people didn't feel they were having to "carry" someone they might learn to enjoy themselves. And to assume it is easy to learn the ropes in the current performance almost makes this a moot point. At the end of the day, you are in Cyro to get some transmutes, or to have fun. And if you want to get into it and learn, a rando PUG isn't going to do much for you.
2. This is an assumption, I could just as easily argue that it would incentivize players to fill those empty spots, especially with specific roles being more limited.
3. It looks like you are headed down a path currently where all solo players will give up, or find a raid, which means worse performance as we teach them to spam AOE.... and which side is really making the bigger sacrifice. Currently solo Cyro is unplayable mostly for performance reasons, but just like the reason for this thread and many others that keep popping up, it is also invincible balls.
4. This is subjective, I could easily argue that currently only ball groups can actually surpass the shear amount of AOE's from cold fire's, meat bags, caltrops at a single breach, in fact I'm seeing a lot more stalemates at breaches than I did before. I actually think keeps need more incentives to knock multiple walls, and we could likely need more in the future if they change purge spam. And we can't assume there will only be one 6 man per faction anyway....
5. Zerging is a part of Cyro. When the game works it is really fun. People really love being in big fights. I actually don't know what the problem is here. Splitting up = good, Zerging = Fun. Let's go.

6. Now I like this point, because this is actually a question of balance, but will be difficult to disseminate. To say there were large sacrifices going from 24 to 12 I'd say is a little bit of an over statement when we consider that your strength is only relative to your enemies. With 12 guys you still have 24 5 piece sets, and each and every group monster set, that is pretty much every decent group buff set and still a lotta change spent on the likes of Vicious Death. Going further to 6 is real sacrifice, granted, but relating your experiences in a 6 man, in an environment that hosts more, isn't a fair comparison. Fact is, there is no 6 man group meta. I can see it being a tanky one, but so is all of Cyro, don't ballstacks make sure they have a minimum amount of health? And IMO, it also wouldn't be a proc one, as purge is still too strong in 6. At the end of the day, I would say 6 man groups would actually have to think properly about what is strong, what works best, what they can get away with? Whereas 12 man's still have very little to think about, very little sacrifices to make, especially now that they got buffed beyond what anyone could agree is balanced.

But regardless, how can you 'balance' a game that doesn't work, when you can't say whether or not it was the enemies spells going off and yours not, that caused the wipe? How often do you blame the lag for a wipe? How often do your enemies? I would argue every single time it's one way or the other, and if I am in any way correct in that statement, then you should also be on the side of "performance first, regardless of playstyle" that I have felt the need to call for since Stadiagate.

7. Ah, yea, sure. Current meta is not great, and trust me, it's much worse for solo players. Alessian got buffed to high heaven with the minor resolve and fortitude buffs last patch. Health recovery builds that tick for more than my self heals. It is alessian or bust for solo players right now. And proc's should scale with stats. Surely we agree on this .

I have to say though, whether you believe me or not, that I absolutely understand your point of view. I really do. I know that it is a "more the merrier" game. I have played in Cyro forever. I love the scale, I know what makes Cyrodiil, Cyrodiil!! But that doesn't actually exist right now during prime time. So it simply doesn't exist for the vast majority of players, casual or hardcore. Perhaps it is somewhat bare-able in big groups because you don't rely solely on your own abilities. But most players do, so try to see that side of it.

It's gonna be ZOS' call. We are at their mercy, but I think it's a little sad all this time we are wasting with an unplayable prime time Cyro, where we could be simply testing different group sizes, and then building from what we know works. Perhaps I am too optimistic in what ZOS can actually do, or what is now possible, or that any semblance of the Cyro we fell in love with exists. But I do, and I think you do too, or else you wouldn't be having this discussion with me.
And thanks for the discussion btw, I do like to learn about what peoples thought's are regarding Cyro, how they feel about things, gaining perspective and such. It helps me think about my opinions on the subject too.

Juhasow

Tammany wrote: »

oXI_Viper_IXo wrote: »

I'm sorry, but if 5 of you can't kill 1 player AND he kills you all, that is [snip]

I'am sorry but if 5 of you can't kill 1 player AND he kills you all, that is a massive balance issue.
Because in every competitive mmo your skill is irrelevant when you are outnumbered.

I'm sorry but even in the most competitive MMO's if multiple unexperienced players faces 1 good player that is simply better then them there is a chance that those unpexerienced players will be defeated.

VaranisArano

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

I'm not gonna argue semantics on our interpretation of Gina's statement anymore. Is that fair?

Besides that, I mostly agree with you all, seriously, because I understand ZOS sold us out!!!!

But I think we all can come together, as we all just want the same thing. A game like this, that works! But our idea's of what "works" are different, unfortunately.
You think the game needs to be played at a certain capacity to have a lot of value. I think it is more important to have a game that actually works! When I press a skill to save my mate, it better WORK!
You seem content to play in an environment that will never function at the level you want it to, and honestly, I would love that too, but it ain't possible.

I just want us thinking about balance, in a game that actually works, and let's be honest, you can't really balance groups that are too big?! Think about the gameplay first.

I'd love to know the servers the people that disagree with me are on. My guess is PC/NA Greyhost?

I'm on PC/NA Greyhost and when I think about game balance, I think about how dropping the group size down to 12 and making heals group-only wildly unbalanced Cyrodiil in favor of ball group tactics. The changes do nothing to 12 man ball groups who farm back keeps while seriously disadvantaging the PUGs, informal groups, and newer players who fight against them. Without, I note, ZOS claiming there's any significant performance improvement to the player experience because of those changes.

If we want to talk balance, it's less a matter of size than it is of organization. Even if we were to drop the group size down to 6, six players in voice comms coordinating their attacks are going to cut through disorganized players no matter what ZOs does to "raise the floor, lower the ceiling." We already see that in good small scale groups. Ball groups or even the old larger organized raids of 12 to 24 players were as dominant as they were against faction stacks and PUG zergs not because of their size, but because of their organization.

I'm not going to disagree with any of this, because it is all true. But it doesn't change the fact that the game doesn't work. Smaller groups sizes has a chance to improve performance IMO, debatable, sure. And ballgroups are wildly unbalanced against PUGS and and solo players, agreed.
Does it not then make sense to lower the size of groups further? Remember, functionality should be the top priority, regardless of playstyle. And balance makes the game more enjoyable for everyone. It just seems too obvious not to at least try and then get peoples opinions, as long as those opinions revolve around a desire for a playable Cyro, and a realistic expectation.

I'm not sure I can go there. Since dropping the group size to 12 wasn't for performance reasons, it seems like 6-man PVP is your solution to killing ball groups, which you blame for the performance issues. I'm not sure why 6-man PVP is the preferred solution here, when that's going to cause a lot of problems and, IMO, sacrifice a lot of what makes Cyrodiil, well, Cyrodiil.

To be clear, I don't mind testing 6-man PVP but I think its going to have the same exact balance problems we have now, only worse. And while its possible it might be the silver bullet for functionality, its going to create a lot of issues for gameplay in Cyrodiil that we'd have to deal with going forward.

Organized 6 man squads would still cut through disorganized PUGs that outnumber them. Its not a ball group thing. Its an organized group thing. Being able to coordinate your targeting and movement does wonders. Balance still dramatically favors the organized groups. PUG players are generally worse at the self-sufficient small scale gameplay that current 6-man squads favor, so it hurts disorganized groups even more when limiting group size to 6 cuts down on the buffs/heals that PUGs receive from group members.

Other problems:
1. The smaller the group sizes, the harder it is for new, inexperienced and casual players to learn the ropes or join groups. Its also harder for groups who have new, inexperienced, or casual players to succeed, since there's not a lot of room for carrying anyone in a 6-man squad.
2. the smaller the group sizes, the more people are LFG in zone, and its not like the number of players who want to lead PUGs doubled. So we've got longer group wait times and proportionately less experienced PUG leaders.
3. The smaller the group sizes, more PVP guilds have to cut their raids, shedding core members and not accepting new ones. The bigger guilds have already dropped members to reach a 12-man raid, now everyone would have to drop to a 6 man. This results in experienced players playing less, while fewer new players get to play in organized groups who train their members.
4. The smaller the group sizes, the harder it is to be effective at objectives. Cyrodiil is still an objective based game where groups should be aiming to capture objectives like keeps. 6 man is a good size for skirmishing or farming, not really capturing keeps at primetime. I mean, I can only imagine trying to charge into a breach with my five friends, hoping the rest of the zerg behind us follows!
5. It encourages zerging, even among organized groups, because a 6 man who splits off from the main pack to take objectives is much more easily countered without a pack of allies along. This might reduce groups farming at back keeps, but at the cost of making players less likely to spread out. Spreading out is one of the things that ZOS has said helps performance.
6. The smaller the group size, there's much less diversity of builds. Whenever I played 6-man, I always felt like my healer was pretty useless, and I'd be better off playing a generic tanky/DD with a few cross heals. Its not that you can't do dedicated roles, but as in Battlegrounds, its mostly done by organized/pre-made groups. Yet another leg up for the organized groups.
7. The smaller the group, the harder it is to balance tanky builds. CP Battlegrounds turned into a dragged out slugging match between 4v4v4 teams. While Cyrodiil always has the option to call in more players, smaller group sizes makes the tankier builds more problematic in group vs group situations.


Maybe this would all solve itself if 6-man PVP really is the silver bullet to Cyrodiil's performance woes. Maybe players would say "Well, at least my skills work!" and happily adapt to playing 6-man small scale in a zone originally designed for groups of 8 to 24. Maybe Cyrodiil would experience a lasting resurgence in population (unlike the two other small-scale options in ESO: Battlegrounds and Imperial City.)

Personally, after I've sorted through which five of my friends from my PVP guild I'm playing with in raid, retooled my PVP healer playstyle into the generic tanky/damage dealing build with a few cross heals that seem more effective in small scale fights, and resigned myself to not being able to take objectives during primetime unless we've got a horde of PUGs on our coattails, I'm not sure it would feel much like Cyrodiil anymore.

It definitely wouldn't be anything like what attracted me to Cyrodiil in the first place.

Hmmm, if dropping group sizes to 12 wasn't for performance reasons, then removing cross alliance healing most certainly was. Do you disagree? Or do we still believe it was for the mysterious "Behavioral Changes", which in my mind can only mean that they wanted less players with AOE skills on their bars. The only other options is that they wanted everyone to group up, which incentivizes spamming AOE's, so surely that can't be it, seeing was that is exactly the kind of gameplay Rich has promised to change, that Rich has blamed for the performance. Anyway, we can't exactly debate the term "behavioral changes", as it is far too vague a statement. We would be better off referring to players own experiences.

So the changes were made for a reason, I'm fairly certain it was to get Cyro to a playable state, which in my experience it is, as long as the AOE spam is at a minimum. This is debatable sure, and we need to keep in mind you and I play in different Campaign's, I would argue that Ravenwatch EU is a bit more casual than Greyhost NA. As such, I would wager that their are far more ballgroups present at any time on Greyhost NA than Ravenwatch EU. Out of curiosity, how many ball groups on average do you believe play in Greyhost NA during prime time. I would reckon R.EU has about 1-2 balls per faction, often less, sometimes more, (anyone else want to guess). I wonder if ZOS can even access that data....

Quickly on to your points; but to start, claiming 6 players would wipe the floor with the faction stack just as well as 12 is very easy for me to dismiss. You have way more damage, more safety nets/HOT's, more stats, etc the more sets your group has, claiming otherwise is dishonest.

1. Maybe true, if you are a try hard, I all too often invite rando's into group just because there is room. Especially if we are attacking the same objective. So maybe if people didn't feel they were having to "carry" someone they might learn to enjoy themselves. And to assume it is easy to learn the ropes in the current performance almost makes this a moot point. At the end of the day, you are in Cyro to get some transmutes, or to have fun. And if you want to get into it and learn, a rando PUG isn't going to do much for you.
2. This is an assumption, I could just as easily argue that it would incentivize players to fill those empty spots, especially with specific roles being more limited.
3. It looks like you are headed down a path currently where all solo players will give up, or find a raid, which means worse performance as they we teach them to spam AOE.... and which side is really making the bigger sacrifice. Currently solo Cyro is unplayable mostly for performance reasons, but just like the reason for this thread and many others that keep popping up, it is also invincible balls.
4. This is subjective, I could easily argue that currently only ball groups can actually surpass the shear amount of AOE's from cold fire's, meat bags, caltrops at a single breach, in fact I'm seeing a lot more stalemates at breaches than I did before. I actually think keeps need more incentives to knock multiple walls, and we could likely need more in the future if they change purge spam. And we can't assume there will only be one 6 man per faction anyway....
5. Zerging is a part of Cyro. When the game works it is really fun. People really love being in big fights. I actually don't know what the problem is here. Splitting up = good, Zerging = Fun. Let's go.

6. Now I like this point, because this is actually a question of balance, but will be difficult to disseminate. To say there were large sacrifices going from 24 to 12 I'd say is a little bit of an over statement when we consider that your strength is only relative to your enemies. With 12 guys you still have 24 5 piece sets, and each and every group monster set, that is pretty much every decent group buff set and still a lotta change spent on the likes of Vicious Death. Going further to 6 is real sacrifice, granted, but relating your experiences in a 6 man, in an environment that hosts more, isn't a fair comparison. Fact is, there is no 6 man group meta. I can see it being a tanky one, but so is all of Cyro, don't ballstacks make sure they have a minimum amount of health? And IMO, it also wouldn't be a proc one, as purge is still too strong in 6. At the end of the day, I would say 6 man groups would actually have to think properly about what is strong, what works best, what can we get away with? Whereas 12 man still have very little to think about, very little sacrifices to make, especially now.

But regardless, how can you 'balance' a game that doesn't work, when you can't say whether or not it was the enemies spells going off and yours not, that caused the wipe? How often do you blame the lag for a wipe? How often does your enemies? I would argue every single time it's one way or the other, and if I am any way correct in that statement then you should also be on the side of "performance first, regardless of playstyle" that I have felt the need to call for since Stadiagate.

7. Ah, yea, sure. Current meta is not great, and trust me, it's much worse for solo players. Alessian got buffed to high heaven with the minor resolve and fortitude buffs last patch. Health recovery builds that tick for more than my self heals. It is alessian or bust for solo players right now. And proc's should scale with stats. Surely we agree on this .

I have to say though, whether you believe me or not, that I absolutely understand your point of view. I really do. I know that it is a "more the merrier" game. I have played in Cyro forever. I love the scale, I know what makes Cyrodiil, Cyrodiil!! But that doesn't actually exist right now during prime time. So it simply doesn't exist for the vast majority of players, casual or hardcore. Perhaps it is somewhat bare-able in big groups because you don't rely solely on your own abilities. But most players do, so try to see that side of it.

It's gonna be ZOS' call. We are at their mercy, but I think it's a little sad all this time we are wasting with an unplayable prime time Cyro, where we could be simply testing different group sizes, and then building from what we know works. Perhaps I am too optimistic in what ZOS can actually do, or what is now possible, or that any semblance of the Cyro we fell in love with exists. But I do, and I think you do too, or else you wouldn't be having this discussion with me.
And thanks for the discussion btw, I do like to learn about what peoples thought's are regarding Cyro, how they feel about things and such. It helps me think about my opinions on the subject too.

Yeah, its been a good discussion. I think we disagree about a fair bit, obviously, though that's not a bad thing. We could even keep speculating about changing to 6-man groups for testing, but I'm not sure it'd be helpful or a derail. I'd be down for that as a test, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy it as a permanent change.

And I would lean towards "performance first, regardless of playstyle" but with two caveats.

1. I'd like a fixed Cyrodiil, as opposed to a fixed but greatly transformed version of the zone that removes a lot of the reasons I love PVP in Cyrodiil. Its easy to look at performance as "the greater good" that justifies mangling player preferences. I think there's got to be a balance there, and so I won't give up advocating that ZOS should fix Cyrodiil so that it supports the large group, large scale combat that I learned to love and that the zone was designed for.

2. The performance fixes have to actually work for players, not just spreadsheets. ZOS made it clear that their testing didn't result in significant enough improvements in the overall player experience to result in changes. And that's the sad story of ZOS' "fixes" and testing so far. They sound good in the patch notes and don't do much for players. If I must sacrifice my playstyle and even sacrifice the aspects I love most about Cyrodiil for the sake of performance, those fixes better work.

NeillMcAttack

VaranisArano wrote: »

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

NeillMcAttack wrote: »

I'm not gonna argue semantics on our interpretation of Gina's statement anymore. Is that fair?

Besides that, I mostly agree with you all, seriously, because I understand ZOS sold us out!!!!

But I think we all can come together, as we all just want the same thing. A game like this, that works! But our idea's of what "works" are different, unfortunately.
You think the game needs to be played at a certain capacity to have a lot of value. I think it is more important to have a game that actually works! When I press a skill to save my mate, it better WORK!
You seem content to play in an environment that will never function at the level you want it to, and honestly, I would love that too, but it ain't possible.

I just want us thinking about balance, in a game that actually works, and let's be honest, you can't really balance groups that are too big?! Think about the gameplay first.

I'd love to know the servers the people that disagree with me are on. My guess is PC/NA Greyhost?

I'm on PC/NA Greyhost and when I think about game balance, I think about how dropping the group size down to 12 and making heals group-only wildly unbalanced Cyrodiil in favor of ball group tactics. The changes do nothing to 12 man ball groups who farm back keeps while seriously disadvantaging the PUGs, informal groups, and newer players who fight against them. Without, I note, ZOS claiming there's any significant performance improvement to the player experience because of those changes.

If we want to talk balance, it's less a matter of size than it is of organization. Even if we were to drop the group size down to 6, six players in voice comms coordinating their attacks are going to cut through disorganized players no matter what ZOs does to "raise the floor, lower the ceiling." We already see that in good small scale groups. Ball groups or even the old larger organized raids of 12 to 24 players were as dominant as they were against faction stacks and PUG zergs not because of their size, but because of their organization.

I'm not going to disagree with any of this, because it is all true. But it doesn't change the fact that the game doesn't work. Smaller groups sizes has a chance to improve performance IMO, debatable, sure. And ballgroups are wildly unbalanced against PUGS and and solo players, agreed.
Does it not then make sense to lower the size of groups further? Remember, functionality should be the top priority, regardless of playstyle. And balance makes the game more enjoyable for everyone. It just seems too obvious not to at least try and then get peoples opinions, as long as those opinions revolve around a desire for a playable Cyro, and a realistic expectation.

I'm not sure I can go there. Since dropping the group size to 12 wasn't for performance reasons, it seems like 6-man PVP is your solution to killing ball groups, which you blame for the performance issues. I'm not sure why 6-man PVP is the preferred solution here, when that's going to cause a lot of problems and, IMO, sacrifice a lot of what makes Cyrodiil, well, Cyrodiil.

To be clear, I don't mind testing 6-man PVP but I think its going to have the same exact balance problems we have now, only worse. And while its possible it might be the silver bullet for functionality, its going to create a lot of issues for gameplay in Cyrodiil that we'd have to deal with going forward.

Organized 6 man squads would still cut through disorganized PUGs that outnumber them. Its not a ball group thing. Its an organized group thing. Being able to coordinate your targeting and movement does wonders. Balance still dramatically favors the organized groups. PUG players are generally worse at the self-sufficient small scale gameplay that current 6-man squads favor, so it hurts disorganized groups even more when limiting group size to 6 cuts down on the buffs/heals that PUGs receive from group members.

Other problems:
1. The smaller the group sizes, the harder it is for new, inexperienced and casual players to learn the ropes or join groups. Its also harder for groups who have new, inexperienced, or casual players to succeed, since there's not a lot of room for carrying anyone in a 6-man squad.
2. the smaller the group sizes, the more people are LFG in zone, and its not like the number of players who want to lead PUGs doubled. So we've got longer group wait times and proportionately less experienced PUG leaders.
3. The smaller the group sizes, more PVP guilds have to cut their raids, shedding core members and not accepting new ones. The bigger guilds have already dropped members to reach a 12-man raid, now everyone would have to drop to a 6 man. This results in experienced players playing less, while fewer new players get to play in organized groups who train their members.
4. The smaller the group sizes, the harder it is to be effective at objectives. Cyrodiil is still an objective based game where groups should be aiming to capture objectives like keeps. 6 man is a good size for skirmishing or farming, not really capturing keeps at primetime. I mean, I can only imagine trying to charge into a breach with my five friends, hoping the rest of the zerg behind us follows!
5. It encourages zerging, even among organized groups, because a 6 man who splits off from the main pack to take objectives is much more easily countered without a pack of allies along. This might reduce groups farming at back keeps, but at the cost of making players less likely to spread out. Spreading out is one of the things that ZOS has said helps performance.
6. The smaller the group size, there's much less diversity of builds. Whenever I played 6-man, I always felt like my healer was pretty useless, and I'd be better off playing a generic tanky/DD with a few cross heals. Its not that you can't do dedicated roles, but as in Battlegrounds, its mostly done by organized/pre-made groups. Yet another leg up for the organized groups.
7. The smaller the group, the harder it is to balance tanky builds. CP Battlegrounds turned into a dragged out slugging match between 4v4v4 teams. While Cyrodiil always has the option to call in more players, smaller group sizes makes the tankier builds more problematic in group vs group situations.


Maybe this would all solve itself if 6-man PVP really is the silver bullet to Cyrodiil's performance woes. Maybe players would say "Well, at least my skills work!" and happily adapt to playing 6-man small scale in a zone originally designed for groups of 8 to 24. Maybe Cyrodiil would experience a lasting resurgence in population (unlike the two other small-scale options in ESO: Battlegrounds and Imperial City.)

Personally, after I've sorted through which five of my friends from my PVP guild I'm playing with in raid, retooled my PVP healer playstyle into the generic tanky/damage dealing build with a few cross heals that seem more effective in small scale fights, and resigned myself to not being able to take objectives during primetime unless we've got a horde of PUGs on our coattails, I'm not sure it would feel much like Cyrodiil anymore.

It definitely wouldn't be anything like what attracted me to Cyrodiil in the first place.

Hmmm, if dropping group sizes to 12 wasn't for performance reasons, then removing cross alliance healing most certainly was. Do you disagree? Or do we still believe it was for the mysterious "Behavioral Changes", which in my mind can only mean that they wanted less players with AOE skills on their bars. The only other options is that they wanted everyone to group up, which incentivizes spamming AOE's, so surely that can't be it, seeing was that is exactly the kind of gameplay Rich has promised to change, that Rich has blamed for the performance. Anyway, we can't exactly debate the term "behavioral changes", as it is far too vague a statement. We would be better off referring to players own experiences.

So the changes were made for a reason, I'm fairly certain it was to get Cyro to a playable state, which in my experience it is, as long as the AOE spam is at a minimum. This is debatable sure, and we need to keep in mind you and I play in different Campaign's, I would argue that Ravenwatch EU is a bit more casual than Greyhost NA. As such, I would wager that their are far more ballgroups present at any time on Greyhost NA than Ravenwatch EU. Out of curiosity, how many ball groups on average do you believe play in Greyhost NA during prime time. I would reckon R.EU has about 1-2 balls per faction, often less, sometimes more, (anyone else want to guess). I wonder if ZOS can even access that data....

Quickly on to your points; but to start, claiming 6 players would wipe the floor with the faction stack just as well as 12 is very easy for me to dismiss. You have way more damage, more safety nets/HOT's, more stats, etc the more sets your group has, claiming otherwise is dishonest.

1. Maybe true, if you are a try hard, I all too often invite rando's into group just because there is room. Especially if we are attacking the same objective. So maybe if people didn't feel they were having to "carry" someone they might learn to enjoy themselves. And to assume it is easy to learn the ropes in the current performance almost makes this a moot point. At the end of the day, you are in Cyro to get some transmutes, or to have fun. And if you want to get into it and learn, a rando PUG isn't going to do much for you.
2. This is an assumption, I could just as easily argue that it would incentivize players to fill those empty spots, especially with specific roles being more limited.
3. It looks like you are headed down a path currently where all solo players will give up, or find a raid, which means worse performance as they we teach them to spam AOE.... and which side is really making the bigger sacrifice. Currently solo Cyro is unplayable mostly for performance reasons, but just like the reason for this thread and many others that keep popping up, it is also invincible balls.
4. This is subjective, I could easily argue that currently only ball groups can actually surpass the shear amount of AOE's from cold fire's, meat bags, caltrops at a single breach, in fact I'm seeing a lot more stalemates at breaches than I did before. I actually think keeps need more incentives to knock multiple walls, and we could likely need more in the future if they change purge spam. And we can't assume there will only be one 6 man per faction anyway....
5. Zerging is a part of Cyro. When the game works it is really fun. People really love being in big fights. I actually don't know what the problem is here. Splitting up = good, Zerging = Fun. Let's go.

6. Now I like this point, because this is actually a question of balance, but will be difficult to disseminate. To say there were large sacrifices going from 24 to 12 I'd say is a little bit of an over statement when we consider that your strength is only relative to your enemies. With 12 guys you still have 24 5 piece sets, and each and every group monster set, that is pretty much every decent group buff set and still a lotta change spent on the likes of Vicious Death. Going further to 6 is real sacrifice, granted, but relating your experiences in a 6 man, in an environment that hosts more, isn't a fair comparison. Fact is, there is no 6 man group meta. I can see it being a tanky one, but so is all of Cyro, don't ballstacks make sure they have a minimum amount of health? And IMO, it also wouldn't be a proc one, as purge is still too strong in 6. At the end of the day, I would say 6 man groups would actually have to think properly about what is strong, what works best, what can we get away with? Whereas 12 man still have very little to think about, very little sacrifices to make, especially now.

But regardless, how can you 'balance' a game that doesn't work, when you can't say whether or not it was the enemies spells going off and yours not, that caused the wipe? How often do you blame the lag for a wipe? How often does your enemies? I would argue every single time it's one way or the other, and if I am any way correct in that statement then you should also be on the side of "performance first, regardless of playstyle" that I have felt the need to call for since Stadiagate.

7. Ah, yea, sure. Current meta is not great, and trust me, it's much worse for solo players. Alessian got buffed to high heaven with the minor resolve and fortitude buffs last patch. Health recovery builds that tick for more than my self heals. It is alessian or bust for solo players right now. And proc's should scale with stats. Surely we agree on this .

I have to say though, whether you believe me or not, that I absolutely understand your point of view. I really do. I know that it is a "more the merrier" game. I have played in Cyro forever. I love the scale, I know what makes Cyrodiil, Cyrodiil!! But that doesn't actually exist right now during prime time. So it simply doesn't exist for the vast majority of players, casual or hardcore. Perhaps it is somewhat bare-able in big groups because you don't rely solely on your own abilities. But most players do, so try to see that side of it.

It's gonna be ZOS' call. We are at their mercy, but I think it's a little sad all this time we are wasting with an unplayable prime time Cyro, where we could be simply testing different group sizes, and then building from what we know works. Perhaps I am too optimistic in what ZOS can actually do, or what is now possible, or that any semblance of the Cyro we fell in love with exists. But I do, and I think you do too, or else you wouldn't be having this discussion with me.
And thanks for the discussion btw, I do like to learn about what peoples thought's are regarding Cyro, how they feel about things and such. It helps me think about my opinions on the subject too.

Yeah, its been a good discussion. I think we disagree about a fair bit, obviously, though that's not a bad thing. We could even keep speculating about changing to 6-man groups for testing, but I'm not sure it'd be helpful or a derail. I'd be down for that as a test, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy it as a permanent change.

And I would lean towards "performance first, regardless of playstyle" but with two caveats.

1. I'd like a fixed Cyrodiil, as opposed to a fixed but greatly transformed version of the zone that removes a lot of the reasons I love PVP in Cyrodiil. Its easy to look at performance as "the greater good" that justifies mangling player preferences. I think there's got to be a balance there, and so I won't give up advocating that ZOS should fix Cyrodiil so that it supports the large group, large scale combat that I learned to love and that the zone was designed for.

2. The performance fixes have to actually work for players, not just spreadsheets. ZOS made it clear that their testing didn't result in significant enough improvements in the overall player experience to result in changes. And that's the sad story of ZOS' "fixes" and testing so far. They sound good in the patch notes and don't do much for players. If I must sacrifice my playstyle and even sacrifice the aspects I love most about Cyrodiil for the sake of performance, those fixes better work.

I think we have found some common ground here now. Unfortunately though, I honestly don't believe that what you expect Cyro to play like, especially in a campaign like Greyhost NA, where I'm guessing it is VERY competitive, with the highest number of ballgroups out of all the campaigns, is even possible anymore. That doesn't mean I don't want it to be, because I absolutely do. But unless ZOS has some big plans, like moving a number of processes back to the client, or some serious hardware improvements, I can't see a functioning Cyro, that isn't, at least a somewhat, transformed version of what we know.

I also don't feel a transformed version has to be something so different from what we love about it, that we no longer enjoy it. Being completely honest, I think if done right, this could easily remain one of the most unique and exciting PvP gameplay experiences available, even without the necessary hardware upgrades. That is the main reason I feel the need to post here.

Now where we most agree, If serious changes come, they need to work!!! This is honestly the core of my argument.

But what do we think is the best way to achieve that? With any changes ZOS make, it will only be a matter of time before ball groups build around it, for example, it is very likely that sap essence and radiating regen need changing to improve performance, as these are two very popular and effective spells with AOE smart healing components. ZOS change them, then groups adapt sets with AOE damage, and different AOE heals, ZOS change them and so on and on, and I feel like this road is pretty much endless. Until every single AOE spell is completely changed, then possibly every single AOE set is changed, and so on until ballgroups have literally no AOE strategy to adapt, because you can't tell me they won't, and that would feel more like solo play than anything else. Do we really think it's wise for ZOS to challenge the community like this? I do not.
And like many have argued, you can't nerf organization in a game this complex, so how does ZOS create a meta where ballgroups don't use AOE spell. Give them cooldowns? Increase their cost? Or completely change them. That is a pretty scary direction, that I believe ZOS are considering.

So my solution, as I have stated in a number of threads no probably, I don't think it is wise to start from anywhere that isn't an already functioning Cyro, I honestly think starting with groups of 4 is a good point, I think from here, ZOS can explore how to build group strategy that isn't Heal stacking, Harmony bombing, Eye of the storm rushes. But a more refined, strategic, and diverse form of Cyrodiil. They could try leaving 12 man groups, but break them into 4 or 6 man squads. From smaller groups you can make many more heals targeted. Let's be honest, you can not heal a ball with targeted spells, but you could heal a squad member, healer's would have to play reactionary more often, instead of constant spamming. They could allow synergies across group and squad but not outside it. This keeps value in the group numbers, with less smart healing calculations. Maybe when they implement the removal of the same spell stacking they can open up groups further, but if it is too much we have to go back.

The foundation is the start of any build. Allowing ZOS to completely change every AOE damage spell and healing spell, possibly remove any and all smart heals, to end up in a situation nobody signed up for, is not going to end well.

Obviously, all this would take a lot of time, but at least the majority of players would have a functioning Cyro in the short term, more players playing and communicating their experiences that aren't just "FIX CYRO", "NERF BALLGROUPS" can only be valuable IMO. That is way we need to build from the back.

Zoaiy

idk wrote: »

Edit: And this is not about balance. This seems more about making it easier for less organized groups to be able to defeat organized groups by making them smaller. A good leader that organizes their group well can defeat most groups much of the time. This is something that has not changed since April 2014.

It is also irrelevant what servers and platforms we play on as group design is the same on all servers, platforms, and campaigns.

I disagree with this, due to lag caused by ballgroups you cannot kill them anymore.
And everyone who disagrees with this has to play on primetime atleast once

cyro will always be laggy, but in the moment a ballgroup comes close the game turns into sheer unplayable.
3-4 second delay. Skills not firing half the time.
How will you ever reach the coordination to wipe a bigger group.

The only way to fix this is via the introduction of aoe locked subgroups.

Tigor

The trolls are imbedded in ball groups and on this forum. In game they do everything to create lag, and here on the forum they give a lot of false information, when their playstyle is at threat. You can see it clearly in their "like" behaviour. Therefore the forum is not always representative, as long not everybody is writing down their honest ideas and experiences. Hopefully ZOS will recognize and reward this.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Tigor wrote: »

The trolls are imbedded in ball groups and on this forum. In game they do everything to create lag, and here on the forum they give a lot of false information, when their playstyle is at treat. You can see it clearly in their "like" behaviour. Therefore the forum is not always representative, as long not everybody is writing down their honest ideas and experiences. Hopefully ZOS will recognize and reward this.

A good group does what it can to minimise lag (spreading fights away from front lines, actually killing enemies and ending fights) the trouble is there are a lot of poor groups out there who just faction stack and run multiple groups on top of eachother then think they are doing something good. Ultimately the issue is the players who only know to W to the next keep in the line.

90% of the time it's either lag or crashing that kills us trust me we hate it as much as you.

Tigor

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Tigor wrote: »

The trolls are imbedded in ball groups and on this forum. In game they do everything to create lag, and here on the forum they give a lot of false information, when their playstyle is at treat. You can see it clearly in their "like" behaviour. Therefore the forum is not always representative, as long not everybody is writing down their honest ideas and experiences. Hopefully ZOS will recognize and reward this.

A good group does what it can to minimise lag (spreading fights away from front lines, actually killing enemies and ending fights) the trouble is there are a lot of poor groups out there who just faction stack and run multiple groups on top of eachother then think they are doing something good. Ultimately the issue is the players who only know to W to the next keep in the line.

90% of the time it's either lag or crashing that kills us trust me we hate it as much as you.

And what do you think about the statement: A group that is almost unkillable (without mentioning reasons), will attract more players, because it needs to be destroyed? Bears smelling honey.

VaranisArano

Zoaiy wrote: »

idk wrote: »

Edit: And this is not about balance. This seems more about making it easier for less organized groups to be able to defeat organized groups by making them smaller. A good leader that organizes their group well can defeat most groups much of the time. This is something that has not changed since April 2014.

It is also irrelevant what servers and platforms we play on as group design is the same on all servers, platforms, and campaigns.

I disagree with this, due to lag caused by ballgroups you cannot kill them anymore.
And everyone who disagrees with this has to play on primetime atleast once

cyro will always be laggy, but in the moment a ballgroup comes close the game turns into sheer unplayable.
3-4 second delay. Skills not firing half the time.
How will you ever reach the coordination to wipe a bigger group.

The only way to fix this is via the introduction of aoe locked subgroups.

I'm not sure I understand. What are "aoe locked subgroups"?

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

Tigor wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Tigor wrote: »

The trolls are imbedded in ball groups and on this forum. In game they do everything to create lag, and here on the forum they give a lot of false information, when their playstyle is at treat. You can see it clearly in their "like" behaviour. Therefore the forum is not always representative, as long not everybody is writing down their honest ideas and experiences. Hopefully ZOS will recognize and reward this.

A good group does what it can to minimise lag (spreading fights away from front lines, actually killing enemies and ending fights) the trouble is there are a lot of poor groups out there who just faction stack and run multiple groups on top of eachother then think they are doing something good. Ultimately the issue is the players who only know to W to the next keep in the line.

90% of the time it's either lag or crashing that kills us trust me we hate it as much as you.

And what do you think about the statement: A group that is almost unkillable (without mentioning reasons), will attract more players, because it needs to be destroyed? Bears smelling honey.

These players would stack regardless. You think when other groups aren't online zergs don't just W to the next keep? At least this way groups who actually bring fights to backlines cause there to be 2 fights on the map not just 1

techyeshic

Been reasonable points made. I feel like organized play should be fine; I just think the synergy of some things like hot stacking and purge auto target is too strong. Organizing is already beneficial and then they took the most unevenly powerful team tools and made them exclusive to organized groups.

Sandman929

End stacking identical heals, rework purge. This is all that's needed to significantly impact organized groups. It doesn't end organized beating disorganized, but it significantly impacts the overhealing meta.

ErMurazor

Sandman929 wrote: »

End stacking identical heals, rework purge. This is all that's needed to significantly impact organized groups. It doesn't end organized beating disorganized, but it significantly impacts the overhealing meta.

Meta?!?! LoL u where here when springs stacked and rapid maneuver bots where in every ballgroup and Earthgore healed everyone?

Sandman929

ErMurazor wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

End stacking identical heals, rework purge. This is all that's needed to significantly impact organized groups. It doesn't end organized beating disorganized, but it significantly impacts the overhealing meta.

Meta?!?! LoL u where here when springs stacked and rapid maneuver bots where in every ballgroup and Earthgore healed everyone?

I was doing those things. The skill names have changed, but the meta hasn't. Stack heals, purge debuffs, coordinate ultis. Springs just got traded for Radiating. Coordinated ultimates should beat uncoordinated ultimates, but that's not an issue really. The part that doesn't change from update to update that makes ball groups so strong is: stacked heals and group purging.

Playnice

A couple of radiating regen spamming 12 person groups get to ruin the fun for everyone by making the game so ******* laggy that no one can play.

Joy_Division

Playnice wrote: »

A couple of radiating regen spamming 12 person groups get to ruin the fun for everyone by making the game so ******* laggy that no one can play.

Got to give credit to ZOS for one thing; their lack of communication and vague finger pointing to calculations has the player base blaming each other for ruining the game and being responsible for the lag.

Who needs bread and circuses?

Faded

Joy_Division wrote: »

Playnice wrote: »

A couple of radiating regen spamming 12 person groups get to ruin the fun for everyone by making the game so ******* laggy that no one can play.

Got to give credit to ZOS for one thing; their lack of communication and vague finger pointing to calculations has the player base blaming each other for ruining the game and being responsible for the lag.

Who needs bread and circuses?

Yeah. Not much left to cannibalize, but I guess that's how it's going out.

People playing the game stresses the servers. Don't you want better performance?

Theignson

It's called "player vs. developer", it is the ultimate game.

It's been going on since MMOs were developed.

The players find possibilities in the game that the developers never imagined. You could call them "exploits"-- ways of using game abilities/functions in ways the developers did not intend. The developers, in the next move of this game, then alter the game. The players then find new ways.

This game has been going on in ESO, but for the last year or so the developers have been losing. Exploits have not been corrected. Players 1, Developers 0.

The best ball groups discover the best ways to win. It isn't their fault if this exploits aspects of the game that make it unbalanced. The developers need to recognize what's going on-- often via forum posts -- and adjust things. Then the best ball groups will find the new optimal blend of abilities/sets. It is a never ending process and the meta-game.

James-Wayne

All they need to do is add a collision system with friendly fire turned on so that skills potentially backfire if people overlap one another.

Ball groups solved.

biminirwb17_ESO

Ballgroups are a playstyle I really don't care one way or another, but they have their downsides, they have to move and they have to stay in their buff range, this leads to a similar way of playing.

They cannot take a heavily defended keep unless someone has created a hole for them to run into. This leads to them "back-dooring" fights or trying for an undefended keep.

Once inside a keep it is difficult to take both flags as they all have to stay together, an organized defense just waits for them to run to the other flag and flip the other back. This forces them to run upstairs and the ring around the keep dance begins.

So their limitations forces their playstyle.

There are other organized groups who build to buff each other but not to stay close together, I find these much more challenging to play against.

So ball away if you like to.

dcmgti

Its hard for me to criticize people people wanting to play in ball groups. They look like a ton of fun honestly. On the other side of that I play ungrouped 90% of the time in Cyrodiil. Or if I am in a group its 2-3 people that are just out there looking for some fun. I will say fighting against these groups sucks. The only counters I've seen are other ball groups, siege or a couple of good bombers. 1-3 regular players in a group have no chance against a ball group.

Last night was the worst performance in pcna GH that I've seen. AD was running 2-3 ball groups, DC had 1 and EP had 1. Can't bar swap, can't mount, can't heal. The thing that gets me is that while I and others lag out so bad that we are just standing there like a training dummy, the ball groups seem to be moving fine, casting skills fine. Every time a certain AD group got close several people in DC would just crash to desktop. 4 crashes in 20 minutes for me always around the same group.

I won't advocate for getting rid of groups because in reality the game is the issue and Cyrodiil is supposed to be "large scale pvp" with huge fights. Yes it lags anytime more that 30 players are in 1 spot which is a problem. Especially when a lot of those people are not in ball groups or even grouped.

techyeshic

dcmgti wrote: »

Its hard for me to criticize people people wanting to play in ball groups. They look like a ton of fun honestly. On the other side of that I play ungrouped 90% of the time in Cyrodiil. Or if I am in a group its 2-3 people that are just out there looking for some fun. I will say fighting against these groups sucks. The only counters I've seen are other ball groups, siege or a couple of good bombers. 1-3 regular players in a group have no chance against a ball group.

Last night was the worst performance in pcna GH that I've seen. AD was running 2-3 ball groups, DC had 1 and EP had 1. Can't bar swap, can't mount, can't heal. The thing that gets me is that while I and others lag out so bad that we are just standing there like a training dummy, the ball groups seem to be moving fine, casting skills fine. Every time a certain AD group got close several people in DC would just crash to desktop. 4 crashes in 20 minutes for me always around the same group.

I won't advocate for getting rid of groups because in reality the game is the issue and Cyrodiil is supposed to be "large scale pvp" with huge fights. Yes it lags anytime more that 30 players are in 1 spot which is a problem. Especially when a lot of those people are not in ball groups or even grouped.

Yeah was bad last night. Someone in my guild brought up a good point. When you come across these ball groups, if you heal someone fighting them or if you briefly get into combat with 1 and see the futility of fighting them and walk away; you are in combat whenever whoever you healed or damaged is in combat no matter where you go on the map until one of you dies.

Wonder if the server tracking everyone being in combat across the entire map causes server strain. Would make sense why these ball groups increase it as they just sit there farming for long periods of time.

Crash427

dcmgti wrote: »

Its hard for me to criticize people people wanting to play in ball groups. They look like a ton of fun honestly. On the other side of that I play ungrouped 90% of the time in Cyrodiil. Or if I am in a group its 2-3 people that are just out there looking for some fun. I will say fighting against these groups sucks. The only counters I've seen are other ball groups, siege or a couple of good bombers. 1-3 regular players in a group have no chance against a ball group.

Last night was the worst performance in pcna GH that I've seen. AD was running 2-3 ball groups, DC had 1 and EP had 1. Can't bar swap, can't mount, can't heal. The thing that gets me is that while I and others lag out so bad that we are just standing there like a training dummy, the ball groups seem to be moving fine, casting skills fine. Every time a certain AD group got close several people in DC would just crash to desktop. 4 crashes in 20 minutes for me always around the same group.

I won't advocate for getting rid of groups because in reality the game is the issue and Cyrodiil is supposed to be "large scale pvp" with huge fights. Yes it lags anytime more that 30 players are in 1 spot which is a problem. Especially when a lot of those people are not in ball groups or even grouped.

I play in one of those AD ballgroups and believe me, we suffer from the lag as bad as anyone. I dont think we had a single fight last night where we didn't have people crashing to desktop. It makes it nearly impossible to do much as an organized group when you never know who will still be in your group by the time you get to a fight.

We rode up to Bleakers at one point and had a damage dealer and a healer crash instantly. Ok, 10 people, we've built some redundancy into our group maybe we'll be ok. Then all of DC came pouring out. My counter add on said it was 64 DC. We couldn't hardly cast anything, people were getting stuck in knockbacks, people got the streak/stam loss bug, there wasn't much we could do at that point.

Might as well just load up on proc sets, stack health, and follow the zerg because at least the procs go off. What's the point of actually trying to press buttons and play the game?

dcmgti

Crash427 wrote: »

dcmgti wrote: »

Its hard for me to criticize people people wanting to play in ball groups. They look like a ton of fun honestly. On the other side of that I play ungrouped 90% of the time in Cyrodiil. Or if I am in a group its 2-3 people that are just out there looking for some fun. I will say fighting against these groups sucks. The only counters I've seen are other ball groups, siege or a couple of good bombers. 1-3 regular players in a group have no chance against a ball group.

Last night was the worst performance in pcna GH that I've seen. AD was running 2-3 ball groups, DC had 1 and EP had 1. Can't bar swap, can't mount, can't heal. The thing that gets me is that while I and others lag out so bad that we are just standing there like a training dummy, the ball groups seem to be moving fine, casting skills fine. Every time a certain AD group got close several people in DC would just crash to desktop. 4 crashes in 20 minutes for me always around the same group.

I won't advocate for getting rid of groups because in reality the game is the issue and Cyrodiil is supposed to be "large scale pvp" with huge fights. Yes it lags anytime more that 30 players are in 1 spot which is a problem. Especially when a lot of those people are not in ball groups or even grouped.

I play in one of those AD ballgroups and believe me, we suffer from the lag as bad as anyone. I dont think we had a single fight last night where we didn't have people crashing to desktop. It makes it nearly impossible to do much as an organized group when you never know who will still be in your group by the time you get to a fight.

We rode up to Bleakers at one point and had a damage dealer and a healer crash instantly. Ok, 10 people, we've built some redundancy into our group maybe we'll be ok. Then all of DC came pouring out. My counter add on said it was 64 DC. We couldn't hardly cast anything, people were getting stuck in knockbacks, people got the streak/stam loss bug, there wasn't much we could do at that point.

Might as well just load up on proc sets, stack health, and follow the zerg because at least the procs go off. What's the point of actually trying to press buttons and play the game?

And I wasn't trying to accuse anyone of intentionally causing lag or anything like that. Last night was just rough. If you say yall were lagging and crashing too then I have to take your word on that. I guess in game even when you lag really bad everyone else still looks like theyre fine. I still have the opinion that the game should be able to handle groups, large pop and large scale pvp. I would honestly like to play in an organized ball group a few times just to check it out, seems like it could be fun.

Crash427

No worries.

It is a lot of fun in the right context and when the game works. During midyear mayhem pug stomping honestly gets really boring really fast. GvG fights can be fun once in a while but mostly they're just tedious. The meta has been more or less the same too long. Ballgroups really only have one move so it's a lot of circling and trying to catch each other in harmony bombs/negates.

The funnest fights to me are the big ones. I remember one night months ago AD had emp and we were defending our last keep on the ring along with whoever else showed up. EP came knocking and Drac was leading the charge with the hammer. We eventually lost emp but that fight was what I love about Cyro. Groups inside of armies mixing it up with chaos all around. In all the years I've been gaming nothing else comes close.

It's a real shame the game can't support those types of fights anymore. If i wanted small fights like BGs or duels I'd play a better balanced game with reliable performance.

heng14rwb17_ESO

GO BALL OR GO CRY !

NekoN3ko

Put a cap on how many heal stacks you can have on you....7 of the same HoT on 1 person is reeeee