Ball Groups: A National Concern

DrSlaughtr

Multiple people keep saying just ignore ball groups (a few of which state they run in ball groups conveniently 😆).

Sometimes yes this is the right move but most often this is what occurs.

Either they stay behind and take everything around them, forcing you to come back and defend home/scrolls;

Or they just follow you around the map.

Either way the only way to stop them is to clap back.

I agree that a pug group shouldn't be able to burn through a ball group automatically through some mechanic but even an organized group has trouble because they aren't optimized to run around towers or designating people to just spamming one skill, like purge. Nor do their tactics work as well in high lag where everyone is trying to do an attack or heal rotation while a ball group can push through it with their simple roles.

So the question for me is, should one type of play style have little to no counter other than zerging them down?

I have no issue with ball groups. It's part of the game. It's a play style people enjoy. But both balls and zergs could use something to elevate the competition. That's why I suggested a new siege with a multiplier that increases damage on players hit. This would also be a great counter against hammer and scroll farmers.

I would also like towers to go back to being destructible but I get why they took that away.

TequilaFire

But I thought "ball" groups didn't take keeps, so which is it?

Sandman929

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Multiple people keep saying just ignore ball groups (a few of which state they run in ball groups conveniently 😆).

Sometimes yes this is the right move but most often this is what occurs.

Either they stay behind and take everything around them, forcing you to come back and defend home/scrolls;

Or they just follow you around the map.

Either way the only way to stop them is to clap back.

I agree that a pug group shouldn't be able to burn through a ball group automatically through some mechanic but even an organized group has trouble because they aren't optimized to run around towers or designating people to just spamming one skill, like purge. Nor do their tactics work as well in high lag where everyone is trying to do an attack or heal rotation while a ball group can push through it with their simple roles.

So the question for me is, should one type of play style have little to no counter other than zerging them down?

I have no issue with ball groups. It's part of the game. It's a play style people enjoy. But both balls and zergs could use something to elevate the competition. That's why I suggested a new siege with a multiplier that increases damage on players hit. This would also be a great counter against hammer and scroll farmers.

I would also like towers to go back to being destructible but I get why they took that away.

TequilaFire wrote: »

But I thought "ball" groups didn't take keeps, so which is it?

Exactly. The reason for killing groups with boredom is because they don't want the keep, they want the fight. That's why you're better off ignoring a group you can't beat then constantly dying against them. If you're a member of the disorganized masses, the mechanics of the game are not in your favor and to beat a really good group, you will need for them to experience some very bad lag luck.
You can help that along with a big enough zerg, but an uncoordinated group that's just slightly larger, or even double the groups size. You're better off looking for fun elsewhere, because it's not there.
Let them take all the empty keeps they like...I'm guessing that lasts until keep #2 and they're bored enough to try trolling the other faction.

DrSlaughtr

They absolutely can and will take keeps and scrolls to make you come to them. It's silly to say otherwise.

The one i use to run with did this all the time if the opposition chose to flee to another part of the map.

Kwoung

TheEndBringer wrote: »

They absolutely can and will take keeps and scrolls to make you come to them. It's silly to say otherwise.

The one i use to run with did this all the time if the opposition chose to flee to another part of the map.

They also drop the scrolls and leave the keeps... if no one comes to play, seen it happen. So it is a valid tactic.

CooloutAC

Joy_Division wrote: »

CooloutAC wrote: »

neferpitou73 wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Sanctum74 wrote: »

Makes more sense to just use the many counters already available instead of adding an I win button to the game. Ball groups would just use it against you and then people would be back complaining again.

No one said anything about an I win button. The lack of destructible environments make it difficult to counter certain game play. Their ability to stack spam heals and purges make current siege useless against them.

Like it or not, most players don't want to ball up. It shouldn't take a zerg to kill 12 enemies.

And if they want to use such a siege weapon then more power to them but there's a reason why they usually don't use siege. They aren't usually trying to take keeps.

You did. You want a piece of inventory to place down and kill multiple players that you are incapable of doing so with your actual abilities. That's absolutely an I Win button. It's the equivalent of opening up the console on a game like Civilization and just nuking the crap of all the other civilizations.

You honestly think destroying resource towers is going to stop the pugs that get farmed chasing organized groups and small scalers who wait in there? This is a behavior issue that's not going to go away because players can destroy a resource tower. There are probably 1001 choke points throughout Cyrodiil that will serve just as well.

It doesn't take a zerg to kill 12 enemies. It just takes another 12 players with better players, superior teamwork, and more intelligent tactics. That's it. There isn't any need for ZOS to hand out the equivalent of tactical nukes. If you don;t want to be a part of a group of 10-12, that's fine. Just stop mindlessly chasing groups (of whatever size) of skilled players simply hoping numerical superiority will win the day and you'll stop appearing on the kill counts of organized group players.

Even as a new player in ESO I have to agree with this as it not only makes sense but is completely logic-based. In any MMORPG, PvE or PvP, if I get obliterated I try to figure out how to overcome the obstacle. In PvE I realize others have accomplished or cleared the challenge and in PvP I work to rise to the occasion myself and/or with a group of players.

Heck, from the definition of a "ball group" provided to me in this thread is just makes sense to cease going into the tower and literally stop feeding them. Their tactic works only because players choose to keep feeding them.

First I want to say that your point about not feeding the ball group is perceptive and spot on. Most ball groups are after fights if you don't give them one they'll move on. If they keep trying to pick a fight they'll run into a ball group that can actually beat them.

The fact that this is a behavioral phenomenon is exactly what's been pointed out in previous threads on the subject. Ball groups aren't exploiting anything or doing anything weird aside from coordinating their sets and skills. of course they're going to win against an unorganized mass of players. Any changes made to sets or skills aren't going to help this because it's the coordination that makes ball groups good, they can adapt to these changes, while it's harder for solo and small scale players.

but what do you mean by "win"? getting the most kills on their kill counter? Because for some reason they do not like to take keeps or defend them. They don't do much to help their team "win" imo. And that makes it seem like their only goal is to ragequit players. especially when all most of them do is try to 3rd party the losing faction. They are basically killing the game. And you have to just assume players who play like that will so do other things to ragequit players. Its not sporting or competitive. Thats why imo, grayhost is much more poupular then the unlocked factions. Less deplorables and more people wanting to try and win the campaign for their faction. So more even numbers making ballgroups less effective when there are other groups to counter them. This is more of a problem in ravenwatch imo.

And I've said it before but I left gw2's wvw mode to come play eso's cyrodil because I didn't like the ball group style of play. And cyrodil seems more small scale and less about aoe bombs and heals. But at least the gw2 groups are trying to win map and there is plenty ball groups to go around for some competition.

Well, that's part of the problem. What do you mean by "win"? Are you referring to the AvAvA campaign, in which the majority of points gets decided in off-hours, has a scoring mechanism where literally only 1 second of 3600 counts for anything, and the rewards are so lackluster I'd be better off farming plants in a starter island zone for an hour than 30 days of leading my Alliance to a campaign win? That sounds more to me like waste of time and effort than winning, but hey, we all play for different reasons and everyone is entitled to their own opinion.

At this point, I consider winning when my game doesn't crash, my skills fire off, and at least half of my friends bother showing up so I can have a decent social experience.

In bg's for example i would love to see a W/L and skill rating on the leaderboard. In Cyrodil the leaderboard seems pretty good maybe rework it so rss ap so its much less then keep ap. The people leading the cyrodil leaderboards are usually the people that are the most team oriented and thats a good thing. They are people I always see playing and not peeps running in the middle of the night for the most part.

But I get it, most players just don't care at all... Its not a very competitive community. Like I said, most of these ball groups are not like the ones in gw2. Their goal isn't to "win" its to gank. Again, most of them do not siege or defend keeps. They simply act like tower monkeys at an rss farming ap in a way the devs never intended. Not very sporting at all.

master_vanargand

I think RSS Tower needs to be completely removed in Cyrodiil.
If the Alliance leader is smart, it will destroy facilities that can only be abused by the enemy.

Kartalin

CooloutAC wrote: »

In Cyrodil the leaderboard seems pretty good maybe rework it so rss ap so its much less then keep ap. The people leading the cyrodil leaderboards are usually the people that are the most team oriented and thats a good thing. They are people I always see playing and not peeps running in the middle of the night for the most part.

Oh, I had a great idea reading this. What if your leaderboard score excluded the portion of o-ticks from the capture of keeps/resources/outposts? Not any extra from killing opponents, just the 6k/1.5k/3k portion. Then we could base emperorship on that? The capture ticks would still count towards monthly rewards. D-ticks would still count fully.

DTStormfox

Sandman929 wrote: »

Exactly. The reason for killing groups with boredom is because they don't want the keep, they want the fight. That's why you're better off ignoring a group you can't beat then constantly dying against them. If you're a member of the disorganized masses, the mechanics of the game are not in your favor and to beat a really good group, you will need for them to experience some very bad lag luck.
You can help that along with a big enough zerg, but an uncoordinated group that's just slightly larger, or even double the groups size. You're better off looking for fun elsewhere, because it's not there.
Let them take all the empty keeps they like...I'm guessing that lasts until keep #2 and they're bored enough to try trolling the other faction.

That basically summarizes the whole problem of Ball groups. They exploit game mechanics in their favor and exploit the lag that they cause. Based on that premise, you could argue that they are violating the TOS and COC.

DrSlaughtr

Kwoung wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

They absolutely can and will take keeps and scrolls to make you come to them. It's silly to say otherwise.

The one i use to run with did this all the time if the opposition chose to flee to another part of the map.

They also drop the scrolls and leave the keeps... if no one comes to play, seen it happen. So it is a valid tactic.

That's a generalization and sign of a not so smart crown. Why do that when you can just run the scroll to wherever the battle is?

Also ignoring a rampaging group that will happily gate you shouldn't be the solution.

DTStormfox

On the point that "you can just walk away from ball groups".

Metaphorically that is like seeing that your house is on fire but instead of calling the fire department to extinguish the fire, you just "walk away from the fire (i.e. ignore it)" and hope the fire will extinguish itself.

Just ignoring ball groups or walking away from them is NOT a solution to the problem. The fact that the only way to beat ball groups is by outnumbering them 10:1 or walking away from them (i.e. ignoring them) is key evidence that ball groups have an unfair advantage over other players. It is very hard to believe that they are so much better because they are "better coordinated". The fact is: they can purge ALL damage (except ground-based damage) and debuffs 100% of the time, and have 100% uptime on speed buffs by rotating the ability, and have 100% uptime on all heal over time abilities, and consequently form an area of doom that cannot be contested. Furthermore, they can time their abilities in order to exploit server lag (I made a post about that here) to gain an unfair advantage over other players.

Sandman929

DTStormfox wrote: »

On the point that "you can just walk away from ball groups".

Metaphorically that is like seeing that your house is on fire but instead of calling the fire department to extinguish the fire, you just "walk away from the fire (i.e. ignore it)" and hope the fire will extinguish itself.

Just ignoring ball groups or walking away from them is NOT a solution to the problem. The fact that the only way to beat ball groups is by outnumbering them 10:1 or walking away from them (i.e. ignoring them) is key evidence that ball groups have an unfair advantage over other players. It is very hard to believe that they are so much better because they are "better coordinated". The fact is: they can purge ALL damage (except ground-based damage) and debuffs 100% of the time, and have 100% uptime on speed buffs by rotating the ability, and have 100% uptime on all heal over time abilities, and consequently form an area of doom that cannot be contested. Furthermore, they can time their abilities in order to exploit server lag (I made a post about that here) to gain an unfair advantage over other players.

I'm not saying it's a solution, I'm saying walking away is about as good as you're going to get. I've tried to call attention to the defensive mechanical imbalance created by heal stacking and group purging, but I don't expect ZOS will ever do anything about it. IMO the defensive imbalance is the only real problem with the current group meta.
Offensively, you might get lagged out and be unable to respond at all to an ulti dump, that's true, but that's just the servers. It might seem like groups have an advantage there, but they don't control the servers.
There is no nerf or series of nerfs that will make a disorganized mob play better than an organized group. The disorganized mob doesn't have well-timed, focused damage.
People need to stop asking for ZOS to make disorganized beat organized, you can't flail your arms wildly and expect to beat a professional boxer. So if people want to talk about a "solution" to ball groups, I think they should at least focus on the right thing, and that's the defensive strength of stacked healing and group purging.

CooloutAC

Kartalin wrote: »

CooloutAC wrote: »

In Cyrodil the leaderboard seems pretty good maybe rework it so rss ap so its much less then keep ap. The people leading the cyrodil leaderboards are usually the people that are the most team oriented and thats a good thing. They are people I always see playing and not peeps running in the middle of the night for the most part.

Oh, I had a great idea reading this. What if your leaderboard score excluded the portion of o-ticks from the capture of keeps/resources/outposts? Not any extra from killing opponents, just the 6k/1.5k/3k portion. Then we could base emperorship on that? The capture ticks would still count towards monthly rewards. D-ticks would still count fully.

I think the leaderboards in cyrodil reward the people who deserve it. I think its the BG leaderboards that totally need to be reworked so its not just based on time played.

In cyrodil it is usually the people who are trying to win the campaign by capturing and defending keeps. So maybe I mispoke about the ball group rss tower monkey gankers. Because I don't really think they emp from doing that, nor do they care. Maybe i'm wrong?

I wouldn't want to lessen the ticks from rss because sometimes its the only option for people who can't find a group. In fact maybe change the ticks based on how many people are capping. The more people capping the point the less ap you get for i t and vice versa the less the more you get.

But like I said i'd be afraid to change anything cause I think its usually the people trying to the win the map getting emp'd. And its a team game so i can't see changing personal score without affect the faction score. they should be correlated.

DrSlaughtr

Sandman929 wrote: »

DTStormfox wrote: »

On the point that "you can just walk away from ball groups".

Metaphorically that is like seeing that your house is on fire but instead of calling the fire department to extinguish the fire, you just "walk away from the fire (i.e. ignore it)" and hope the fire will extinguish itself.

Just ignoring ball groups or walking away from them is NOT a solution to the problem. The fact that the only way to beat ball groups is by outnumbering them 10:1 or walking away from them (i.e. ignoring them) is key evidence that ball groups have an unfair advantage over other players. It is very hard to believe that they are so much better because they are "better coordinated". The fact is: they can purge ALL damage (except ground-based damage) and debuffs 100% of the time, and have 100% uptime on speed buffs by rotating the ability, and have 100% uptime on all heal over time abilities, and consequently form an area of doom that cannot be contested. Furthermore, they can time their abilities in order to exploit server lag (I made a post about that here) to gain an unfair advantage over other players.

I'm not saying it's a solution, I'm saying walking away is about as good as you're going to get. I've tried to call attention to the defensive mechanical imbalance created by heal stacking and group purging, but I don't expect ZOS will ever do anything about it. IMO the defensive imbalance is the only real problem with the current group meta.
Offensively, you might get lagged out and be unable to respond at all to an ulti dump, that's true, but that's just the servers. It might seem like groups have an advantage there, but they don't control the servers.
There is no nerf or series of nerfs that will make a disorganized mob play better than an organized group. The disorganized mob doesn't have well-timed, focused damage.
People need to stop asking for ZOS to make disorganized beat organized, you can't flail your arms wildly and expect to beat a professional boxer. So if people want to talk about a "solution" to ball groups, I think they should at least focus on the right thing, and that's the defensive strength of stacked healing and group purging.

I don't think anyone has argued that pugs should get to rampage over ball groups. What most of us are saying is that ball groups are too effective at surviving astronomical odds due to heals and purges. An organized non-ball group of equal size will struggle against a ball group. Why? Because the non ball players don't want to be relegated to hitting rapids and purge over and over again.

There's nothing wrong with ball groups in theory. But they do exploit seams in the mechanics as well as non destructible environments.

Personally I've not suggested a single nerf. I think a siege weapon that punished any group, ball or not, for blatantly stacking or parking in a tower would do wonders.

Kwoung

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

DTStormfox wrote: »

On the point that "you can just walk away from ball groups".

Metaphorically that is like seeing that your house is on fire but instead of calling the fire department to extinguish the fire, you just "walk away from the fire (i.e. ignore it)" and hope the fire will extinguish itself.

Just ignoring ball groups or walking away from them is NOT a solution to the problem. The fact that the only way to beat ball groups is by outnumbering them 10:1 or walking away from them (i.e. ignoring them) is key evidence that ball groups have an unfair advantage over other players. It is very hard to believe that they are so much better because they are "better coordinated". The fact is: they can purge ALL damage (except ground-based damage) and debuffs 100% of the time, and have 100% uptime on speed buffs by rotating the ability, and have 100% uptime on all heal over time abilities, and consequently form an area of doom that cannot be contested. Furthermore, they can time their abilities in order to exploit server lag (I made a post about that here) to gain an unfair advantage over other players.

I'm not saying it's a solution, I'm saying walking away is about as good as you're going to get. I've tried to call attention to the defensive mechanical imbalance created by heal stacking and group purging, but I don't expect ZOS will ever do anything about it. IMO the defensive imbalance is the only real problem with the current group meta.
Offensively, you might get lagged out and be unable to respond at all to an ulti dump, that's true, but that's just the servers. It might seem like groups have an advantage there, but they don't control the servers.
There is no nerf or series of nerfs that will make a disorganized mob play better than an organized group. The disorganized mob doesn't have well-timed, focused damage.
People need to stop asking for ZOS to make disorganized beat organized, you can't flail your arms wildly and expect to beat a professional boxer. So if people want to talk about a "solution" to ball groups, I think they should at least focus on the right thing, and that's the defensive strength of stacked healing and group purging.

I don't think anyone has argued that pugs should get to rampage over ball groups. What most of us are saying is that ball groups are too effective at surviving astronomical odds due to heals and purges. An organized non-ball group of equal size will struggle against a ball group. Why? Because the non ball players don't want to be relegated to hitting rapids and purge over and over again.

There's nothing wrong with ball groups in theory. But they do exploit seams in the mechanics as well as non destructible environments.

Personally I've not suggested a single nerf. I think a siege weapon that punished any group, ball or not, for blatantly stacking or parking in a tower would do wonders.

Not sure I follow the logic. It has been pretty well proven over time to everyone in Cyro that stacking heals and purging bad stuff off yourself and those around you, is what keeps you alive. Yet you seem to be saying that ball groups can go against groups many times their size, simply because a couple of folks in the group sucked it up and are purging, something rando's don't want to do? I didn't mention heals, well because the heal stacking in zergs far outweighs any ball group heal stacking.

As for using LoS, well pretty much everyone who isn't YOLOing it does that.

That said, it would be rather helpful if you could destroy your own keeps and screw up the few super annoying ball groups that simply run around in circles on towers or keep walls. But then, people would actually exploit that and take down keep walls for the other faction or just to get the AP for repairing them.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

DTStormfox wrote: »

On the point that "you can just walk away from ball groups".

Metaphorically that is like seeing that your house is on fire but instead of calling the fire department to extinguish the fire, you just "walk away from the fire (i.e. ignore it)" and hope the fire will extinguish itself.

Just ignoring ball groups or walking away from them is NOT a solution to the problem. The fact that the only way to beat ball groups is by outnumbering them 10:1 or walking away from them (i.e. ignoring them) is key evidence that ball groups have an unfair advantage over other players. It is very hard to believe that they are so much better because they are "better coordinated". The fact is: they can purge ALL damage (except ground-based damage) and debuffs 100% of the time, and have 100% uptime on speed buffs by rotating the ability, and have 100% uptime on all heal over time abilities, and consequently form an area of doom that cannot be contested. Furthermore, they can time their abilities in order to exploit server lag (I made a post about that here) to gain an unfair advantage over other players.

I'm not saying it's a solution, I'm saying walking away is about as good as you're going to get. I've tried to call attention to the defensive mechanical imbalance created by heal stacking and group purging, but I don't expect ZOS will ever do anything about it. IMO the defensive imbalance is the only real problem with the current group meta.
Offensively, you might get lagged out and be unable to respond at all to an ulti dump, that's true, but that's just the servers. It might seem like groups have an advantage there, but they don't control the servers.
There is no nerf or series of nerfs that will make a disorganized mob play better than an organized group. The disorganized mob doesn't have well-timed, focused damage.
People need to stop asking for ZOS to make disorganized beat organized, you can't flail your arms wildly and expect to beat a professional boxer. So if people want to talk about a "solution" to ball groups, I think they should at least focus on the right thing, and that's the defensive strength of stacked healing and group purging.

An organized non-ball group of equal size will struggle against a ball group. Why? Because the non ball players don't want to be relegated to hitting rapids and purge over and over again.

This is what I disagree with. You don't go to a trial and say "well those high end trial groups are only winning because they bring a tank and no one in my trials group wants to tank"

If you aren't bringing skills which are needed to fight then why should you succeed?

Soul_Demon

Sandman929 wrote: »

DTStormfox wrote: »

On the point that "you can just walk away from ball groups".

Metaphorically that is like seeing that your house is on fire but instead of calling the fire department to extinguish the fire, you just "walk away from the fire (i.e. ignore it)" and hope the fire will extinguish itself.

Just ignoring ball groups or walking away from them is NOT a solution to the problem. The fact that the only way to beat ball groups is by outnumbering them 10:1 or walking away from them (i.e. ignoring them) is key evidence that ball groups have an unfair advantage over other players. It is very hard to believe that they are so much better because they are "better coordinated". The fact is: they can purge ALL damage (except ground-based damage) and debuffs 100% of the time, and have 100% uptime on speed buffs by rotating the ability, and have 100% uptime on all heal over time abilities, and consequently form an area of doom that cannot be contested. Furthermore, they can time their abilities in order to exploit server lag (I made a post about that here) to gain an unfair advantage over other players.

I'm not saying it's a solution, I'm saying walking away is about as good as you're going to get. I've tried to call attention to the defensive mechanical imbalance created by heal stacking and group purging, but I don't expect ZOS will ever do anything about it. IMO the defensive imbalance is the only real problem with the current group meta.
Offensively, you might get lagged out and be unable to respond at all to an ulti dump, that's true, but that's just the servers. It might seem like groups have an advantage there, but they don't control the servers.
There is no nerf or series of nerfs that will make a disorganized mob play better than an organized group. The disorganized mob doesn't have well-timed, focused damage.
People need to stop asking for ZOS to make disorganized beat organized, you can't flail your arms wildly and expect to beat a professional boxer. So if people want to talk about a "solution" to ball groups, I think they should at least focus on the right thing, and that's the defensive strength of stacked healing and group purging.

I do think most are on the same page here with regard to what problems are, seems to me the "CC immunity" not actually functioning and the way heals are stacking on players are the biggest issues that are truly needing attention. As mentioned earlier in thread here, hitting someone who is at 100% health should NOT result in stacked series of heals waiting to be punched through in order to do any damage to players.

Lag seems to be so far removed from ZOS's ability to fix, so you would think if things as important as CC immunity were not functioning properly they could take some serious time fixing it they could make a lot of progress on the things contributing the most to frustration levels with the lag not being fixed. If you could not be 'frozen' in place due to malfunctions in CC immunity and heals were not simply an assembly line of waiting health drawn from for resources and acting like "extra barriers" for players---everyone experience could be much better.

Let people play how they want (ball groups, organized raids, zergs, gankers, 1vx), but there is a certain ignorance to not seeing how those two things impact the enjoyment of the game aside from the biggest issue, the lag. If you cant deal with lag, at LEAST spend some serious time looking at the other two.

CooloutAC

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

DTStormfox wrote: »

On the point that "you can just walk away from ball groups".

Metaphorically that is like seeing that your house is on fire but instead of calling the fire department to extinguish the fire, you just "walk away from the fire (i.e. ignore it)" and hope the fire will extinguish itself.

Just ignoring ball groups or walking away from them is NOT a solution to the problem. The fact that the only way to beat ball groups is by outnumbering them 10:1 or walking away from them (i.e. ignoring them) is key evidence that ball groups have an unfair advantage over other players. It is very hard to believe that they are so much better because they are "better coordinated". The fact is: they can purge ALL damage (except ground-based damage) and debuffs 100% of the time, and have 100% uptime on speed buffs by rotating the ability, and have 100% uptime on all heal over time abilities, and consequently form an area of doom that cannot be contested. Furthermore, they can time their abilities in order to exploit server lag (I made a post about that here) to gain an unfair advantage over other players.

I'm not saying it's a solution, I'm saying walking away is about as good as you're going to get. I've tried to call attention to the defensive mechanical imbalance created by heal stacking and group purging, but I don't expect ZOS will ever do anything about it. IMO the defensive imbalance is the only real problem with the current group meta.
Offensively, you might get lagged out and be unable to respond at all to an ulti dump, that's true, but that's just the servers. It might seem like groups have an advantage there, but they don't control the servers.
There is no nerf or series of nerfs that will make a disorganized mob play better than an organized group. The disorganized mob doesn't have well-timed, focused damage.
People need to stop asking for ZOS to make disorganized beat organized, you can't flail your arms wildly and expect to beat a professional boxer. So if people want to talk about a "solution" to ball groups, I think they should at least focus on the right thing, and that's the defensive strength of stacked healing and group purging.

An organized non-ball group of equal size will struggle against a ball group. Why? Because the non ball players don't want to be relegated to hitting rapids and purge over and over again.

This is what I disagree with. You don't go to a trial and say "well those high end trial groups are only winning because they bring a tank and no one in my trials group wants to tank"

If you aren't bringing skills which are needed to fight then why should you succeed?

but what is winning? Racking up kills?. Because it seems these ball groups just want to 3rd party and gank players and don't capture or defend any keeps. Am I wrong? Most peoples problems with them is with lag, or the fact they are overpowered. My only problem is that their only goal seems to be to undermine the game mode and ragequit the population. I come from gw2 which is nothing but ballgroups up to 3 times the size. But they play to win and succeed, by the game developers definition of winning.

Kartalin

CooloutAC wrote: »

but what is winning? Racking up kills?. Because it seems these ball groups just want to 3rd party and gank players and don't capture or defend any keeps. Am I wrong? Most peoples problems with them is with lag, or the fact they are overpowered. My only problem is that their only goal seems to be to undermine the game mode and ragequit the population. I come from gw2 which is nothing but ballgroups up to 3 times the size. But they play to win and succeed, by the game developers definition of winning.

But I thought we could play how we want? All of ESO's advertising tells me this.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

CooloutAC wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

DTStormfox wrote: »

On the point that "you can just walk away from ball groups".

Metaphorically that is like seeing that your house is on fire but instead of calling the fire department to extinguish the fire, you just "walk away from the fire (i.e. ignore it)" and hope the fire will extinguish itself.

Just ignoring ball groups or walking away from them is NOT a solution to the problem. The fact that the only way to beat ball groups is by outnumbering them 10:1 or walking away from them (i.e. ignoring them) is key evidence that ball groups have an unfair advantage over other players. It is very hard to believe that they are so much better because they are "better coordinated". The fact is: they can purge ALL damage (except ground-based damage) and debuffs 100% of the time, and have 100% uptime on speed buffs by rotating the ability, and have 100% uptime on all heal over time abilities, and consequently form an area of doom that cannot be contested. Furthermore, they can time their abilities in order to exploit server lag (I made a post about that here) to gain an unfair advantage over other players.

I'm not saying it's a solution, I'm saying walking away is about as good as you're going to get. I've tried to call attention to the defensive mechanical imbalance created by heal stacking and group purging, but I don't expect ZOS will ever do anything about it. IMO the defensive imbalance is the only real problem with the current group meta.
Offensively, you might get lagged out and be unable to respond at all to an ulti dump, that's true, but that's just the servers. It might seem like groups have an advantage there, but they don't control the servers.
There is no nerf or series of nerfs that will make a disorganized mob play better than an organized group. The disorganized mob doesn't have well-timed, focused damage.
People need to stop asking for ZOS to make disorganized beat organized, you can't flail your arms wildly and expect to beat a professional boxer. So if people want to talk about a "solution" to ball groups, I think they should at least focus on the right thing, and that's the defensive strength of stacked healing and group purging.

An organized non-ball group of equal size will struggle against a ball group. Why? Because the non ball players don't want to be relegated to hitting rapids and purge over and over again.

This is what I disagree with. You don't go to a trial and say "well those high end trial groups are only winning because they bring a tank and no one in my trials group wants to tank"

If you aren't bringing skills which are needed to fight then why should you succeed?

but what is winning? Racking up kills?. Because it seems these ball groups just want to 3rd party and gank players and don't capture or defend any keeps. Am I wrong? Most peoples problems with them is with lag, or the fact they are overpowered. My only problem is that their only goal seems to be to undermine the game mode and ragequit the population. I come from gw2 which is nothing but ballgroups up to 3 times the size. But they play to win and succeed, by the game developers definition of winning.

The comment I replied to was specifying winning as an organised non-'ballgroup' vs an organised 'ball group' of equal numbers.

Honestly at this point people call ball groups to basically any group which kills them and is somewhat organised so I don't really know what you specifically refer to.
I can only attest to our main goals in Drac, which would be
1) To have a fun fight where we challenge ourselves to complete some objective. (that might be to wipe as many as possible, or capture the keep, or take the o tick/d tick, survive as long as possible etc)
2) Fight other groups where possible in both equal scenarios and (us) outnumbered scenarios.
3) Improving how we play as a group For example allowing players in the raid to improve upon performances of their roles, having players make more of an impact or clutch performance of their role etc.

I'm not really interested in ganking, especially not with a group, or particularly in the campaign score (stopped caring about this in like late 2014/early15 :P) aside from the fact that it's a good way to trigger the type of fights we like to happen.
AP is also a very low priority, Sure it's nice because it normally lets you measure some form of success in the above fights. Securing an o-tick/d-tick in outnumbered fights is the end goal but not because of the AP it gives particularly.

Joy_Division

CooloutAC wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

DTStormfox wrote: »

On the point that "you can just walk away from ball groups".

Metaphorically that is like seeing that your house is on fire but instead of calling the fire department to extinguish the fire, you just "walk away from the fire (i.e. ignore it)" and hope the fire will extinguish itself.

Just ignoring ball groups or walking away from them is NOT a solution to the problem. The fact that the only way to beat ball groups is by outnumbering them 10:1 or walking away from them (i.e. ignoring them) is key evidence that ball groups have an unfair advantage over other players. It is very hard to believe that they are so much better because they are "better coordinated". The fact is: they can purge ALL damage (except ground-based damage) and debuffs 100% of the time, and have 100% uptime on speed buffs by rotating the ability, and have 100% uptime on all heal over time abilities, and consequently form an area of doom that cannot be contested. Furthermore, they can time their abilities in order to exploit server lag (I made a post about that here) to gain an unfair advantage over other players.

I'm not saying it's a solution, I'm saying walking away is about as good as you're going to get. I've tried to call attention to the defensive mechanical imbalance created by heal stacking and group purging, but I don't expect ZOS will ever do anything about it. IMO the defensive imbalance is the only real problem with the current group meta.
Offensively, you might get lagged out and be unable to respond at all to an ulti dump, that's true, but that's just the servers. It might seem like groups have an advantage there, but they don't control the servers.
There is no nerf or series of nerfs that will make a disorganized mob play better than an organized group. The disorganized mob doesn't have well-timed, focused damage.
People need to stop asking for ZOS to make disorganized beat organized, you can't flail your arms wildly and expect to beat a professional boxer. So if people want to talk about a "solution" to ball groups, I think they should at least focus on the right thing, and that's the defensive strength of stacked healing and group purging.

An organized non-ball group of equal size will struggle against a ball group. Why? Because the non ball players don't want to be relegated to hitting rapids and purge over and over again.

This is what I disagree with. You don't go to a trial and say "well those high end trial groups are only winning because they bring a tank and no one in my trials group wants to tank"

If you aren't bringing skills which are needed to fight then why should you succeed?

but what is winning? Racking up kills?. Because it seems these ball groups just want to 3rd party and gank players and don't capture or defend any keeps. Am I wrong? Most peoples problems with them is with lag, or the fact they are overpowered. My only problem is that their only goal seems to be to undermine the game mode and ragequit the population. I come from gw2 which is nothing but ballgroups up to 3 times the size. But they play to win and succeed, by the game developers definition of winning.

Yes.

We all play the game for different reasons. I have a more enjoyable experience losing a closely contested fight in which I am on paper at a disadvantage (especially so if I dispatch some individual opponents) than wiping the floor with say two inexperienced players. In fact, I will often just ride my horse in circles a few times around players that I don;t think are worth the effort to fight and then just ride away.

Even within a "ball group," there is quite the diversity of goals and desires between the members. Just last night I played in a group a 9, which I guess comprises of a "ball group" nowadays, and over the course of the 2 and one half hours we ran, our group set out on numerous objectives that included:

• Defending Faregyl Keep that AD was pleading to defend.
• Intercepting a Blue guild+PuGs running around with the Hammer
• Recovering a captured AD scroll
• Taking Blue Road Keep from both EP and DC who were fighting over it.
• Scouting, then pursuing, and then fighting a DC guild that was in AD territory.
• Harassing EP around Arrius keep.
• Intercepting a DC captured scroll.
• Capturing Nickel to cut off DC transit to Roe Castle.

So, no, the only goal isn't to ragequit the population.

I will admit that organized groups tend not to wear 7 pieces of mismatched white gear, they tend to use abilities and skills that complement and augment the group as opposed to drawing numbers out of a hat, and do try to play the game to the best of their capabilities instead of say a gracious father who allows their seven year old to win. All those pesky things people do to succeed in a video game that encourages its customers to theory-craft and rewards them for successfully defeating opponents with AP.

TequilaFire

There are many times when our "ball" group are the only ones taking keeps and defending them.
And when it comes to scrolls we will always get ours back, then take yours. lol

Soul_Demon

TequilaFire wrote: »

There are many times when our "ball" group are the only ones taking keeps and defending them.
And when it comes to scrolls we will always get ours back, then take yours. lol

From earlier in thread-
"I think a definition for most is ball groups tend to focus effort on play specifically designed to kill players where the group holds advantageous ground (choke points) or through excess in movement. If you want to break that into more easily stated goals they try to 'farm players' Organized groups on the other hand tend to focus on taking objectives on the map correlating to alliance score and faction advantage.

Both tend to run tightly packed to maximize the damage/healing/buffs/debuffs available to them and are highly organized in the nature of how they move......the biggest difference is in the choice they make in where to fight and how they either move or stay based on the previously mentioned goals each has. Of course some may use other criteria, but that has been my understanding of the differences for a very long time now. If you come across either groups you will notice they tend to select very different terrain to fight in as well due to the nature of the choices in play-styles the groups make."

Sounds more like you are an organized group, not a ball group.

DrSlaughtr

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

DTStormfox wrote: »

On the point that "you can just walk away from ball groups".

Metaphorically that is like seeing that your house is on fire but instead of calling the fire department to extinguish the fire, you just "walk away from the fire (i.e. ignore it)" and hope the fire will extinguish itself.

Just ignoring ball groups or walking away from them is NOT a solution to the problem. The fact that the only way to beat ball groups is by outnumbering them 10:1 or walking away from them (i.e. ignoring them) is key evidence that ball groups have an unfair advantage over other players. It is very hard to believe that they are so much better because they are "better coordinated". The fact is: they can purge ALL damage (except ground-based damage) and debuffs 100% of the time, and have 100% uptime on speed buffs by rotating the ability, and have 100% uptime on all heal over time abilities, and consequently form an area of doom that cannot be contested. Furthermore, they can time their abilities in order to exploit server lag (I made a post about that here) to gain an unfair advantage over other players.

I'm not saying it's a solution, I'm saying walking away is about as good as you're going to get. I've tried to call attention to the defensive mechanical imbalance created by heal stacking and group purging, but I don't expect ZOS will ever do anything about it. IMO the defensive imbalance is the only real problem with the current group meta.
Offensively, you might get lagged out and be unable to respond at all to an ulti dump, that's true, but that's just the servers. It might seem like groups have an advantage there, but they don't control the servers.
There is no nerf or series of nerfs that will make a disorganized mob play better than an organized group. The disorganized mob doesn't have well-timed, focused damage.
People need to stop asking for ZOS to make disorganized beat organized, you can't flail your arms wildly and expect to beat a professional boxer. So if people want to talk about a "solution" to ball groups, I think they should at least focus on the right thing, and that's the defensive strength of stacked healing and group purging.

An organized non-ball group of equal size will struggle against a ball group. Why? Because the non ball players don't want to be relegated to hitting rapids and purge over and over again.

This is what I disagree with. You don't go to a trial and say "well those high end trial groups are only winning because they bring a tank and no one in my trials group wants to tank"

If you aren't bringing skills which are needed to fight then why should you succeed?

This isn't really a fair comparison.

A trial is designed for 12 players in specific roles to go against NPCs that don't care about losing. It's just about completing the content.

Cyrodiil isn't designed for ball groups. They exist because the system allows them to thrive. It's no more a valid playstyle than a regular comp group or a pug group for that matter.

All I keep hearing is how ball groups want a fight. Give people a reason to fight them and you'll get it.

I stopped running in ball groups specifically because I got bored being relegated to hitting 2 to 3 skills over and over. I still run comp groups where we have designated roles, just like a trial group.

If the community would prefer to nerf purge and heal stacking then go for it, but my suggestions wouldn't nerf anything.

CooloutAC

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

CooloutAC wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

DTStormfox wrote: »

On the point that "you can just walk away from ball groups".

Metaphorically that is like seeing that your house is on fire but instead of calling the fire department to extinguish the fire, you just "walk away from the fire (i.e. ignore it)" and hope the fire will extinguish itself.

Just ignoring ball groups or walking away from them is NOT a solution to the problem. The fact that the only way to beat ball groups is by outnumbering them 10:1 or walking away from them (i.e. ignoring them) is key evidence that ball groups have an unfair advantage over other players. It is very hard to believe that they are so much better because they are "better coordinated". The fact is: they can purge ALL damage (except ground-based damage) and debuffs 100% of the time, and have 100% uptime on speed buffs by rotating the ability, and have 100% uptime on all heal over time abilities, and consequently form an area of doom that cannot be contested. Furthermore, they can time their abilities in order to exploit server lag (I made a post about that here) to gain an unfair advantage over other players.

I'm not saying it's a solution, I'm saying walking away is about as good as you're going to get. I've tried to call attention to the defensive mechanical imbalance created by heal stacking and group purging, but I don't expect ZOS will ever do anything about it. IMO the defensive imbalance is the only real problem with the current group meta.
Offensively, you might get lagged out and be unable to respond at all to an ulti dump, that's true, but that's just the servers. It might seem like groups have an advantage there, but they don't control the servers.
There is no nerf or series of nerfs that will make a disorganized mob play better than an organized group. The disorganized mob doesn't have well-timed, focused damage.
People need to stop asking for ZOS to make disorganized beat organized, you can't flail your arms wildly and expect to beat a professional boxer. So if people want to talk about a "solution" to ball groups, I think they should at least focus on the right thing, and that's the defensive strength of stacked healing and group purging.

An organized non-ball group of equal size will struggle against a ball group. Why? Because the non ball players don't want to be relegated to hitting rapids and purge over and over again.

This is what I disagree with. You don't go to a trial and say "well those high end trial groups are only winning because they bring a tank and no one in my trials group wants to tank"

If you aren't bringing skills which are needed to fight then why should you succeed?

but what is winning? Racking up kills?. Because it seems these ball groups just want to 3rd party and gank players and don't capture or defend any keeps. Am I wrong? Most peoples problems with them is with lag, or the fact they are overpowered. My only problem is that their only goal seems to be to undermine the game mode and ragequit the population. I come from gw2 which is nothing but ballgroups up to 3 times the size. But they play to win and succeed, by the game developers definition of winning.

The comment I replied to was specifying winning as an organised non-'ballgroup' vs an organised 'ball group' of equal numbers.

Honestly at this point people call ball groups to basically any group which kills them and is somewhat organised so I don't really know what you specifically refer to.
I can only attest to our main goals in Drac, which would be
1) To have a fun fight where we challenge ourselves to complete some objective. (that might be to wipe as many as possible, or capture the keep, or take the o tick/d tick, survive as long as possible etc)
2) Fight other groups where possible in both equal scenarios and (us) outnumbered scenarios.
3) Improving how we play as a group For example allowing players in the raid to improve upon performances of their roles, having players make more of an impact or clutch performance of their role etc.

I'm not really interested in ganking, especially not with a group, or particularly in the campaign score (stopped caring about this in like late 2014/early15 :P) aside from the fact that it's a good way to trigger the type of fights we like to happen.
AP is also a very low priority, Sure it's nice because it normally lets you measure some form of success in the above fights. Securing an o-tick/d-tick in outnumbered fights is the end goal but not because of the AP it gives particularly.

Honestly, I think we all know what ballgroups are because this is a long thread about them. They are large groups that move with the crown like an insect hive and spam aoe and ult bombs, its hard to miss lol. Maybe its hard to differentiate on grayhost since there is a lot more players there and seems to be less of a problem imo. I don't want to name names. But we know which guilds in PC NA run ball groups on the NO CP campaign on DC. Who will never ever, take a keep or defend one. They simply farm kills at rss or 3rd party late on the low pop team at a keep for kills only. Its pretty unsportlike imo an makes me question their motives.

It seems contradictory to list everything you stated you do in a campaign, but then at the same time say its not in the interest of helping your faction win the campaign. That again, makes me question your motives.

CooloutAC

Soul_Demon wrote: »

TequilaFire wrote: »

There are many times when our "ball" group are the only ones taking keeps and defending them.
And when it comes to scrolls we will always get ours back, then take yours. lol

From earlier in thread-
"I think a definition for most is ball groups tend to focus effort on play specifically designed to kill players where the group holds advantageous ground (choke points) or through excess in movement. If you want to break that into more easily stated goals they try to 'farm players' Organized groups on the other hand tend to focus on taking objectives on the map correlating to alliance score and faction advantage.

Both tend to run tightly packed to maximize the damage/healing/buffs/debuffs available to them and are highly organized in the nature of how they move......the biggest difference is in the choice they make in where to fight and how they either move or stay based on the previously mentioned goals each has. Of course some may use other criteria, but that has been my understanding of the differences for a very long time now. If you come across either groups you will notice they tend to select very different terrain to fight in as well due to the nature of the choices in play-styles the groups make."

Sounds more like you are an organized group, not a ball group.

This is an interesting definition and I think its something unique to eso. Ballgroup seems to have become a derogatory term for that type of behavior. I have to agree with you that is a big difference. well said.

CooloutAC

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

DTStormfox wrote: »

On the point that "you can just walk away from ball groups".

Metaphorically that is like seeing that your house is on fire but instead of calling the fire department to extinguish the fire, you just "walk away from the fire (i.e. ignore it)" and hope the fire will extinguish itself.

Just ignoring ball groups or walking away from them is NOT a solution to the problem. The fact that the only way to beat ball groups is by outnumbering them 10:1 or walking away from them (i.e. ignoring them) is key evidence that ball groups have an unfair advantage over other players. It is very hard to believe that they are so much better because they are "better coordinated". The fact is: they can purge ALL damage (except ground-based damage) and debuffs 100% of the time, and have 100% uptime on speed buffs by rotating the ability, and have 100% uptime on all heal over time abilities, and consequently form an area of doom that cannot be contested. Furthermore, they can time their abilities in order to exploit server lag (I made a post about that here) to gain an unfair advantage over other players.

I'm not saying it's a solution, I'm saying walking away is about as good as you're going to get. I've tried to call attention to the defensive mechanical imbalance created by heal stacking and group purging, but I don't expect ZOS will ever do anything about it. IMO the defensive imbalance is the only real problem with the current group meta.
Offensively, you might get lagged out and be unable to respond at all to an ulti dump, that's true, but that's just the servers. It might seem like groups have an advantage there, but they don't control the servers.
There is no nerf or series of nerfs that will make a disorganized mob play better than an organized group. The disorganized mob doesn't have well-timed, focused damage.
People need to stop asking for ZOS to make disorganized beat organized, you can't flail your arms wildly and expect to beat a professional boxer. So if people want to talk about a "solution" to ball groups, I think they should at least focus on the right thing, and that's the defensive strength of stacked healing and group purging.

An organized non-ball group of equal size will struggle against a ball group. Why? Because the non ball players don't want to be relegated to hitting rapids and purge over and over again.

This is what I disagree with. You don't go to a trial and say "well those high end trial groups are only winning because they bring a tank and no one in my trials group wants to tank"

If you aren't bringing skills which are needed to fight then why should you succeed?

This isn't really a fair comparison.

A trial is designed for 12 players in specific roles to go against NPCs that don't care about losing. It's just about completing the content.

Cyrodiil isn't designed for ball groups. They exist because the system allows them to thrive. It's no more a valid playstyle than a regular comp group or a pug group for that matter.

All I keep hearing is how ball groups want a fight. Give people a reason to fight them and you'll get it.

I stopped running in ball groups specifically because I got bored being relegated to hitting 2 to 3 skills over and over. I still run comp groups where we have designated roles, just like a trial group.

If the community would prefer to nerf purge and heal stacking then go for it, but my suggestions wouldn't nerf anything.

I agree, I really don't think there is anything ZOS can do about it without ruining it for others.

Kartalin

CooloutAC wrote: »

I don't want to name names. But we know which guilds in PC NA run ball groups on the NO CP campaign on DC. Who will never ever, take a keep or defend one..

Well, actually I don't know which guilds you're talking about, and I main AD on Ravenwatch PC/NA. All the regular DC guilds will take keeps, defend them, etc. Granted there's two guilds in particular that spend more time running around enemy lines
trying to get fights than playing the map but the guilds I play with enjoy taking them on even when they run more than a full group and have twice our number. And they still capture and defend keeps and other objectives. Very rarely will a guild guest over and just farm.

CooloutAC

Kartalin wrote: »

CooloutAC wrote: »

I don't want to name names. But we know which guilds in PC NA run ball groups on the NO CP campaign on DC. Who will never ever, take a keep or defend one..

Well, actually I don't know which guilds you're talking about, and I main AD on Ravenwatch PC/NA. All the regular DC guilds will take keeps, defend them, etc. Granted there's two guilds in particular that spend more time running around enemy lines
trying to get fights than playing the map but the guilds I play with enjoy taking them on even when they run more than a full group and have twice our number. And they still capture and defend keeps and other objectives. Very rarely will a guild guest over and just farm.

well you can read the other posts in this thread if you think i'm alone in this thinking. I don't want to start naming guilds and violating TOS. But I disagree that its rare. Its almost every single engagement the DC ballgroup will 3rd party behind ad on an ep keep. Won't even bother capping it if they wipe everyone. I quit the guild and stopped playing the faction on that campaign.

But when you say regular guilds, I guess you mean the non ganking zerg ones, aka ballgroups? In that case I agree lol.

Earthewen

CooloutAC wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

CooloutAC wrote: »

I don't want to name names. But we know which guilds in PC NA run ball groups on the NO CP campaign on DC. Who will never ever, take a keep or defend one..

Well, actually I don't know which guilds you're talking about, and I main AD on Ravenwatch PC/NA. All the regular DC guilds will take keeps, defend them, etc. Granted there's two guilds in particular that spend more time running around enemy lines
trying to get fights than playing the map but the guilds I play with enjoy taking them on even when they run more than a full group and have twice our number. And they still capture and defend keeps and other objectives. Very rarely will a guild guest over and just farm.

well you can read the other posts in this thread if you think i'm alone in this thinking. I don't want to start naming guilds and violating TOS. But I disagree that its rare. Its almost every single engagement the DC ballgroup will 3rd party behind ad on an ep keep. Won't even bother capping it if they wipe everyone. I quit the guild and stopped playing the faction on that campaign.

But when you say regular guilds, I guess you mean the non ganking zerg ones, aka ballgroups? In that case I agree lol.

You are not alone in your thinking at all. I think everyone who is being honest will tell you that our player experience in Cyro right now is less than what is desired. Your comments have been very accurate. I also used to be a two skill bot at one time and found it to be ... dare I say? ... boring at the very least. Spamming one or two skills isn't my idea of fun at all.

And while spamming skills isn't the sole reason for the decline in playability, I can tell you that we are now in a CC fest that was promised to NOT be a problem by ZOS devs. It is a problem. I still maintain that the constant spamming of skills that are known by everyone who is honest to be buggy and coupling those skills with other buggy skills because they "help you win a fight" ... could possibly be a large factor in the decline in both fun and playability.

I challenge all of the people who deliberately spam the buggy skills to stop doing so for just three days and see if they are truly crutching on them and/or furthering the poor condition of the player experience.