Worst Cyrodiil of all time right now

EdmondDontes

It just keeps getting worse and worse for those of us that PvP.

We've been watching the population numbers all week, and have been capping at 50-60 players per faction every day this week, during the week, at 8-9am EST. Don't even try to get in during prime time. Que is about 100.

Then there are the new proc sets that are bringing the server to it's knees even with the massively reduced population cap. We are literally running in cyrodiil with 10% the original population cap right now. It's impossible to have faction balance and fair/competitive play with pop caps this low.

Then, we are back to performance being at an all time low with no signs of even trying to improve anything. The multi-threading helps visually, but it did nothing to improve lag. It's like a global warm up has been added to the global cool down trying to play now days. It feels like there is a timer preventing skills from going off too close together most of the time.

This is just awful ZOS. And you just keep making it worse.

Larcomar

The caps are definitely low. Even when its locked, there's often not much happening. It feels like there's enough players for one fight but if blues going at it with yellow the other side of the map, red's twiddling it's fingers or reduced to pvd.

Performance.... it's not great at prime, but it's fine in the shoulder and I think it's better than it has been for a while. Certainly I've not been seeing the routine slow down to slide show you used to see. YMMV.

What I think is clear is that it's not the proc sets. Leaving aside that the no proc tests proved pretty conclusively that procs didn't cause lag, PCEU Raven is noticably laggier than Greyhost, despite having a lower population. This has been pretty widely noted on PCEU.

What clearly does impact performance seems to be ball groups; it's the one consistent factor I find. If one shows up, performance takes a dive. I don't know what they can do about that - they seem to be using the new sets, not dying to them, but we are where we are.

Overall, I certainly agree this patch is a turn for the worse - I enjoyed last patch more - but I don't think it's the worst we've seen. If anything performance has improved marginally. The worry is, if you take that to its logical conclusion, you take more and more players out till cyro is a ghost town.

rbfrgsp

The game will continue to die at the hands of crappy player behaviour until the development team makes one of two choices:

Take the stance that ballgroups are a legitimate part of zone gameplay and invest in a massive amount of server capacity to accommodate this playstyle.

Or

Take the stance that ballgroups are using tactics to deliberately break the fundamentals of the game to achieve a competitive advantage, and begin running zone administrators who can issue official warnings against players and ban those with multiple strikes against their account.

All of the previoustests, limitations, cap increase/decrease, rules changes and sets created prove that there is no solution other than one of these two options that remains.

xylena_lazarow

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Take the stance that ballgroups are using tactics to deliberately break the fundamentals of the game

The game breaks down and the lag intensifies because while 20 pugs can push the ballgroup off the flags, the ballgroup will then stalemate the fight for another hour by running the walls or otherwise avoiding any objective, until eventually 60 pugs zerg through the completely absurd amount of healing an optimized group can stack while staying moving. That rework of Healing Springs and RR was one of the worst changes for large scale PvP balance this game has seen.

Tasvori

"Ball group" that term gets used a lot. Where is the line between organized group and a ball group? If you are suggesting that people should be banned for running in groups, there better be a very clear line between the playstyles.

YandereGirlfriend

rbfrgsp wrote: »

The game will continue to die at the hands of crappy player behaviour until the development team makes one of two choices:

Take the stance that ballgroups are a legitimate part of zone gameplay and invest in a massive amount of server capacity to accommodate this playstyle.

Or

Take the stance that ballgroups are using tactics to deliberately break the fundamentals of the game to achieve a competitive advantage, and begin running zone administrators who can issue official warnings against players and ban those with multiple strikes against their account.

All of the previoustests, limitations, cap increase/decrease, rules changes and sets created prove that there is no solution other than one of these two options that remains.

I like how you're singling out ball groups as uniquely evil while glossing over the fact that the exact same server conditions exist whenever a faction-stack occurs... and that faction-stacking is the preferred playstyle of the zone pugs (due to the principle of quantity over quality).

We already saw this dynamic during the first few weeks of the No-Proc tests and PvP was just faction-stack vs. faction-stack with nothing but ever-larger numbers to combat any given swarm. The PvP was terrible and the servers were still groaning under the load.

So ZOS would be wise to leave ball groups alone while still investing in server capacity. They owe it to the PvP community to improve the quality of their product for all players.

NotTaylorSwift

rbfrgsp wrote: »

The game will continue to die at the hands of crappy player behaviour until the development team makes one of two choices:

Take the stance that ballgroups are a legitimate part of zone gameplay and invest in a massive amount of server capacity to accommodate this playstyle.

Or

Take the stance that ballgroups are using tactics to deliberately break the fundamentals of the game to achieve a competitive advantage, and begin running zone administrators who can issue official warnings against players and ban those with multiple strikes against their account.

All of the previoustests, limitations, cap increase/decrease, rules changes and sets created prove that there is no solution other than one of these two options that remains.

Just no to basically everything you said. Blaming players for game performance is just… lol.

rbfrgsp

Faction stacking doesn't impact performance in the way ballgrouping does. Go read some more threads about the various platforms, populations, servers, and game modes. The one constant everyone reports is "gets worse when ball groups appear".

YandereGirlfriend

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Faction stacking doesn't impact performance in the way ballgrouping does. Go read some more threads about the various platforms, populations, servers, and game modes. The one constant everyone reports is "gets worse when ball groups appear".

Oh I'm very aware that certain groups intentionally spam abilities (usually AoE CC abilities) that they know will lag the server but that does not describe the entire universe of ball groups. Going off of combat logs and the number of casts/second by members of these groups, it also appears as though some of them are using... not exactly legal means to achieve this as well. That's honestly something that ZOS should investigate and ban said players/groups if they are indeed guilty.

But... grouping 100 random zerglings at Chalman or Alessia will achieve the same results. But there's an odd trend on the forum to romanticize the pugs and the faction-stack playstyle. It deserves no such sentimentality.

rbfrgsp

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

Just no to basically everything you said. Blaming players for game performance is just… lol.

I'm not sure you understood my post. Apportioning blame is irrelevant when outcomes are being discussed, and that was not what I was doing. It's not about making people feel sad or their feelings hurt. It's a case of :
"X causes y."
"y is unfavorable to game experience and marketing that product to new players".
"Y can realistically only be resolved by adding solution a or introducing solution b".

I am sincerely very apologetic if you felt personally attacked by my post. If it's any consolation, I have no clue who you are so it can't have been meant personally.

NotTaylorSwift

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Faction stacking doesn't impact performance in the way ballgrouping does. Go read some more threads about the various platforms, populations, servers, and game modes. The one constant everyone reports is "gets worse when ball groups appear".

Nah, people are just biased. It is epic laggy for the entirety of prime time whether there are ballgroups raiding or not. It doesn’t matter if they affect performance or not, it is no excuse for the current state of the game.

Also ballgroups have existed since day 1 and people love to talk about how the performance was so much better years ago. Zos’ last excuse of power creep or players spamming more skills than they used to or w/e it was along those lines that they said was basically just a rephrased version of “we didn’t expect players to get better at our game”. Kinda strange. It is no fault of the players at all.

NotTaylorSwift

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Faction stacking doesn't impact performance in the way ballgrouping does. Go read some more threads about the various platforms, populations, servers, and game modes. The one constant everyone reports is "gets worse when ball groups appear".

Oh I'm very aware that certain groups intentionally spam abilities (usually AoE CC abilities) that they know will lag the server but that does not describe the entire universe of ball groups. Going off of combat logs and the number of casts/second by members of these groups, it also appears as though some of them are using... not exactly legal means to achieve this as well. That's honestly something that ZOS should investigate and ban said players/groups if they are indeed guilty.

But... grouping 100 random zerglings at Chalman or Alessia will achieve the same results. But there's an odd trend on the forum to romanticize the pugs and the faction-stack playstyle. It deserves no such sentimentality.

Just no to this also? Like.. make it make sense. Why would people want to intentionally cause lag? They are also affected by it. Ballgroups are also affected by lag. The group I play with wipes 9/10 now because of bad game performance. No one is going into cyro with the intention to spam aoes to cause lag. It’s not a conspiracy…

And also what are u talking about casts per second being too high and not legal. No one is cheating. Again, it’s not a conspiracy. I bet you have not even seen the combat logs of a real ballgroup to even get that impression…

But I agree with the last point.

rbfrgsp

So, to clarify, I posted the two remaining solutions to poor performance (add server cap or start banning ballgroups that exploit gameplay limitations), and you two are so defensive about ballgroups that you're saying I am wrong? Or right? Because your posts don't make a clear argument either way.

YandereGirlfriend

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Faction stacking doesn't impact performance in the way ballgrouping does. Go read some more threads about the various platforms, populations, servers, and game modes. The one constant everyone reports is "gets worse when ball groups appear".

Oh I'm very aware that certain groups intentionally spam abilities (usually AoE CC abilities) that they know will lag the server but that does not describe the entire universe of ball groups. Going off of combat logs and the number of casts/second by members of these groups, it also appears as though some of them are using... not exactly legal means to achieve this as well. That's honestly something that ZOS should investigate and ban said players/groups if they are indeed guilty.

But... grouping 100 random zerglings at Chalman or Alessia will achieve the same results. But there's an odd trend on the forum to romanticize the pugs and the faction-stack playstyle. It deserves no such sentimentality.

Just no to this also? Like.. make it make sense. Why would people want to intentionally cause lag? They are also affected by it. Ballgroups are also affected by lag. The group I play with wipes 9/10 now because of bad game performance. No one is going into cyro with the intention to spam aoes to cause lag. It’s not a conspiracy…

And also what are u talking about casts per second being too high and not legal. No one is cheating. Again, it’s not a conspiracy. I bet you have not even seen the combat logs of a real ballgroup to even get that impression…

But I agree with the last point.

Relax friend, I'm not accusing you of anything. No need to try to flex on me to make your point. I am alluding to one specific group but I'm also not trying to name names on the forum.

Also, about casts per second, yes, I'm sure that we are all completely shocked and scandalized that there are wares available online that can help you cheat in videogames. And here we all thought that ESO was a pure and exploit-free game....

I agree with you that lag is usually the unseen MVP of a group Death Recap. But it's also true that a ball group is insulated from lag to a degree that a random zone pug is decidedly not due to having many layered HoTs, Barriers, full raid buffs, etc. active during combat. That can and will keep a group alive through several GCDs of severe slowdown whereas the zone pug is a complete sitting duck.

Karm1cOne

rbfrgsp wrote: »

So, to clarify, I posted the two remaining solutions to poor performance (add server cap or start banning ballgroups that exploit gameplay limitations), and you two are so defensive about ballgroups that you're saying I am wrong? Or right? Because your posts don't make a clear argument either way.

Your suggestion is to ban 12 players playing together, in a game mode designed for that, in a group size allowed? Wow.

Vizirith

"Worst Cyrodiil of all time right now" YET. It'll only keep getting worse. In a few months you'll be looking back at these times fondly.

ShortTripToHell

Maybe a little bit of inside view? I lead a kind of a ball in cyro like every evening.
First of all: No we don't spam AOE to lagg out the server, that goes automatic. I have logs which show pugs around us cast more then my best DD's. As an ITér and programmer myself I do believe it is the interactions with other people that causes lagg. FE when we bomb a pug zerg. You also feel a little *** in the server when a bomber blows up 20 ppl at a door or so..

But some things why I believe ( after 5 years of raiding ) the PvP is getting stupid.
- lack of updates / content. A hammer that nobody wanted, a whole city that isn't even reachable from the bridge, the same 15? keeps that need to be conquered. Give me something: A town I can raid ( and not the 4 houses with 3 flags) fe.
- lagg/ rollbacks and everything... Yeah we can keep complaining. Boys/ girls I am sorry but I don't believe it will ever be "fixed"
- guilds. the most simple thing IMO, when it's enough a guild disbands and ppl quit. No guilds -> No groups.
- playstyles, Every playstyle is allowed and should be allowed ( no cheating ofc ). 1vx ? Pug? Ball? Troll group? All are welcome in cyro in my opinion. We are there to kill each other for a nice time or what?
- Last but not least.. balance. Very sensitive but anyway. All of above combined with the *** balance right now. It's just stupid.

We have been spoiled with the PvP mechanics in this game. We truly have been.. it's fast with a very high skill cap and truly amazing. But I do believe now with a certain MMO joining the world in less then a week from me typing this the PvP in ESO is slowly coming to it's end.

Very sensitive for some ppl I guess. Truly sorry for my bad english. I will try to respond to ppl who want to have a real discussion or have real feedback. Knowing this forums I wasted 10 minutes of my time... oh well I am at work anyway

The_Lex

rbfrgsp wrote: »

The game will continue to die at the hands of crappy player behaviour until the development team makes one of two choices:

Take the stance that ballgroups are a legitimate part of zone gameplay and invest in a massive amount of server capacity to accommodate this playstyle.

Unlikely to happen for PvP. They barely dedicate the proper resources to maintain the PvP server even without ball groups.

Take the stance that ballgroups are using tactics to deliberately break the fundamentals of the game to achieve a competitive advantage, and begin running zone administrators who can issue official warnings against players and ban those with multiple strikes against their account.

Also unlikely, since this would require hiring people dedicated to PvP. Case in point, as a PvE example (which is where they spend the lion-share of their time and resources), look at how many BOT farmers get booted....yeah, they're still out there despite being reported.

Qrähe

ShortTripToHell wrote: »

But I do believe now with a certain MMO joining the world in less then a week from me typing this the PvP in ESO is slowly coming to it's end.

Another ESO PvP killer MMO? Must be a day that emds with Y.

rbfrgsp

Karm1cOne wrote: »

rbfrgsp wrote: »

So, to clarify, I posted the two remaining solutions to poor performance (add server cap or start banning ballgroups that exploit gameplay limitations), and you two are so defensive about ballgroups that you're saying I am wrong? Or right? Because your posts don't make a clear argument either way.

Your suggestion is to ban 12 players playing together, in a game mode designed for that, in a group size allowed? Wow.

I don't really have the inclination to argue with borderline thinkers.

There is nothing in my post that lends itself to your interpretation of "he's asking for all groups to be banned".

Ball groups have a very specific play style. That play style has a material impact on service delivery of Zos' commercial product.

Therefore, ZOS has to decide if that playstyle is a legitimate part of the game (buy server cap) or not (police and ban).

Please don't respond to this post if you're just going to troll.

NotTaylorSwift

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Faction stacking doesn't impact performance in the way ballgrouping does. Go read some more threads about the various platforms, populations, servers, and game modes. The one constant everyone reports is "gets worse when ball groups appear".

Oh I'm very aware that certain groups intentionally spam abilities (usually AoE CC abilities) that they know will lag the server but that does not describe the entire universe of ball groups. Going off of combat logs and the number of casts/second by members of these groups, it also appears as though some of them are using... not exactly legal means to achieve this as well. That's honestly something that ZOS should investigate and ban said players/groups if they are indeed guilty.

But... grouping 100 random zerglings at Chalman or Alessia will achieve the same results. But there's an odd trend on the forum to romanticize the pugs and the faction-stack playstyle. It deserves no such sentimentality.

Just no to this also? Like.. make it make sense. Why would people want to intentionally cause lag? They are also affected by it. Ballgroups are also affected by lag. The group I play with wipes 9/10 now because of bad game performance. No one is going into cyro with the intention to spam aoes to cause lag. It’s not a conspiracy…

And also what are u talking about casts per second being too high and not legal. No one is cheating. Again, it’s not a conspiracy. I bet you have not even seen the combat logs of a real ballgroup to even get that impression…

But I agree with the last point.

Relax friend, I'm not accusing you of anything. No need to try to flex on me to make your point. I am alluding to one specific group but I'm also not trying to name names on the forum.

Also, about casts per second, yes, I'm sure that we are all completely shocked and scandalized that there are wares available online that can help you cheat in videogames. And here we all thought that ESO was a pure and exploit-free game....

I agree with you that lag is usually the unseen MVP of a group Death Recap. But it's also true that a ball group is insulated from lag to a degree that a random zone pug is decidedly not due to having many layered HoTs, Barriers, full raid buffs, etc. active during combat. That can and will keep a group alive through several GCDs of severe slowdown whereas the zone pug is a complete sitting duck.

I’m not saying you’re accusing anyone. I’m saying it doesn’t make sense what you said. No one is ‘cheating’ and no one is spamming skills with the intention to worsen lag. That is just not happening, it’s crazy to me that people think this is the case.

And yes of course we have more buffs/hots than pugs and there is nothing wrong with the sentiment of this as it only makes sense. But we feel the lag same as everyone else either way. If it takes 5 seconds for a solo player to get a skill out then it also takes 5 seconds for us.

NotTaylorSwift

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Karm1cOne wrote: »

rbfrgsp wrote: »

So, to clarify, I posted the two remaining solutions to poor performance (add server cap or start banning ballgroups that exploit gameplay limitations), and you two are so defensive about ballgroups that you're saying I am wrong? Or right? Because your posts don't make a clear argument either way.

Your suggestion is to ban 12 players playing together, in a game mode designed for that, in a group size allowed? Wow.

I don't really have the inclination to argue with borderline thinkers.

There is nothing in my post that lends itself to your interpretation of "he's asking for all groups to be banned".

Ball groups have a very specific play style. That play style has a material impact on service delivery of Zos' commercial product.

Therefore, ZOS has to decide if that playstyle is a legitimate part of the game (buy server cap) or not (police and ban).

Please don't respond to this post if you're just going to troll.

Zos has stated many times that they endorse all play styles so it’s just a bad question to ask because we already have an answer. But no they will not improve performance because they either just cant or don’t care enough about pvp to invest. Look at MYM. Usually performance increases during the event but this year it didn’t. Either they are struggling or have decided not to invest anything.

Marcus_Aurelius

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

And yes of course we have more buffs/hots than pugs and there is nothing wrong with the sentiment of this as it only makes sense. But we feel the lag same as everyone else either way. If it takes 5 seconds for a solo player to get a skill out then it also takes 5 seconds for us.

One thing is spamming AoE like ball group do (look at death recap and you will see: Sap Essence, Wirlig Blade, Sub Assault, ...) where you are not targetting a specific player but just saturating the space with AoE damage, another is to try to use a single target skill.

Who do you think is affected more by lag? And what do you think affect more lag, a single target skill or a constant spamming of AoEs?

vgastel

Another laggy night in PC EU Cyrodiil. Can AP scale of lag please ?

Jackey

Is the pop-lock 80 on all platforms?
Takes forever to queue now and a pop-locked campaign feels empty and quiet most of the time.

NotTaylorSwift

Marcus_Aurelius wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

And yes of course we have more buffs/hots than pugs and there is nothing wrong with the sentiment of this as it only makes sense. But we feel the lag same as everyone else either way. If it takes 5 seconds for a solo player to get a skill out then it also takes 5 seconds for us.

One thing is spamming AoE like ball group do (look at death recap and you will see: Sap Essence, Wirlig Blade, Sub Assault, ...) where you are not targetting a specific player but just saturating the space with AoE damage, another is to try to use a single target skill.

Who do you think is affected more by lag? And what do you think affect more lag, a single target skill or a constant spamming of AoEs?

Dude it doesn’t really make a difference, all skills are horrible to use 😂 we need to cast aoes to kill pugs because they usually massively outnumber us. Our aoe skills not working is just as bad as a solo player’s single target skills not working. The only consolation is that in group play vs solo play, SOMEONE’s skill will probably work. But quite often that is not enough as 12 people vs 40. The 40 people’s skills are still going out at the same rate as our 12 people’s skills. The reason we are better off than randoms is and always will be because of communication and organisation which has nothing to do with lag. Everyone is in the same boat in terms of lag and game performance.

neferpitou73

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Faction stacking doesn't impact performance in the way ballgrouping does. Go read some more threads about the various platforms, populations, servers, and game modes. The one constant everyone reports is "gets worse when ball groups appear".

Oh I'm very aware that certain groups intentionally spam abilities (usually AoE CC abilities) that they know will lag the server but that does not describe the entire universe of ball groups. Going off of combat logs and the number of casts/second by members of these groups, it also appears as though some of them are using... not exactly legal means to achieve this as well. That's honestly something that ZOS should investigate and ban said players/groups if they are indeed guilty.

But... grouping 100 random zerglings at Chalman or Alessia will achieve the same results. But there's an odd trend on the forum to romanticize the pugs and the faction-stack playstyle. It deserves no such sentimentality.

Just no to this also? Like.. make it make sense. Why would people want to intentionally cause lag? They are also affected by it. Ballgroups are also affected by lag. The group I play with wipes 9/10 now because of bad game performance. No one is going into cyro with the intention to spam aoes to cause lag. It’s not a conspiracy…

And also what are u talking about casts per second being too high and not legal. No one is cheating. Again, it’s not a conspiracy. I bet you have not even seen the combat logs of a real ballgroup to even get that impression…

But I agree with the last point.

Relax friend, I'm not accusing you of anything. No need to try to flex on me to make your point. I am alluding to one specific group but I'm also not trying to name names on the forum.

Also, about casts per second, yes, I'm sure that we are all completely shocked and scandalized that there are wares available online that can help you cheat in videogames. And here we all thought that ESO was a pure and exploit-free game....

I agree with you that lag is usually the unseen MVP of a group Death Recap. But it's also true that a ball group is insulated from lag to a degree that a random zone pug is decidedly not due to having many layered HoTs, Barriers, full raid buffs, etc. active during combat. That can and will keep a group alive through several GCDs of severe slowdown whereas the zone pug is a complete sitting duck.

I’m not saying you’re accusing anyone. I’m saying it doesn’t make sense what you said. No one is ‘cheating’ and no one is spamming skills with the intention to worsen lag. That is just not happening, it’s crazy to me that people think this is the case.

And yes of course we have more buffs/hots than pugs and there is nothing wrong with the sentiment of this as it only makes sense. But we feel the lag same as everyone else either way. If it takes 5 seconds for a solo player to get a skill out then it also takes 5 seconds for us.

There is software that allows palyers to auto-block, break-free etc. And around people I know who run such stuff the game behaves very funny. In agreement with everything else.

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Karm1cOne wrote: »

rbfrgsp wrote: »

So, to clarify, I posted the two remaining solutions to poor performance (add server cap or start banning ballgroups that exploit gameplay limitations), and you two are so defensive about ballgroups that you're saying I am wrong? Or right? Because your posts don't make a clear argument either way.

Your suggestion is to ban 12 players playing together, in a game mode designed for that, in a group size allowed? Wow.

I don't really have the inclination to argue with borderline thinkers.

There is nothing in my post that lends itself to your interpretation of "he's asking for all groups to be banned".

Ball groups have a very specific play style. That play style has a material impact on service delivery of Zos' commercial product.

Therefore, ZOS has to decide if that playstyle is a legitimate part of the game (buy server cap) or not (police and ban).

Please don't respond to this post if you're just going to troll.

You said:

" begin running zone administrators who can issue official warnings against players and ban those with multiple strikes against their account."

and in this very post you said:

"police and ban"

Which clearly sounds like you want some administrative action against groups. Any distinction between ball groups and "regular" groups is tenuous at best and isn't something an administrator should be touching with a 10-foot pole. How are they supposed to tell the difference between a ball group and a "regular" group. What distinguishes a less skilled ball group from a "regular" group? Is it the skills, the sets? I see nothing wrong with a group running builds that support each other in PvP.

Marcus_Aurelius wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

And yes of course we have more buffs/hots than pugs and there is nothing wrong with the sentiment of this as it only makes sense. But we feel the lag same as everyone else either way. If it takes 5 seconds for a solo player to get a skill out then it also takes 5 seconds for us.

One thing is spamming AoE like ball group do (look at death recap and you will see: Sap Essence, Wirlig Blade, Sub Assault, ...) where you are not targetting a specific player but just saturating the space with AoE damage, another is to try to use a single target skill.

Who do you think is affected more by lag? And what do you think affect more lag, a single target skill or a constant spamming of AoEs?

ZOS tested AOE skills last fall. Didn't have an effect (granted I don't know how many people were playing during those tests)

Vizirith

neferpitou73 wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Faction stacking doesn't impact performance in the way ballgrouping does. Go read some more threads about the various platforms, populations, servers, and game modes. The one constant everyone reports is "gets worse when ball groups appear".

Oh I'm very aware that certain groups intentionally spam abilities (usually AoE CC abilities) that they know will lag the server but that does not describe the entire universe of ball groups. Going off of combat logs and the number of casts/second by members of these groups, it also appears as though some of them are using... not exactly legal means to achieve this as well. That's honestly something that ZOS should investigate and ban said players/groups if they are indeed guilty.

But... grouping 100 random zerglings at Chalman or Alessia will achieve the same results. But there's an odd trend on the forum to romanticize the pugs and the faction-stack playstyle. It deserves no such sentimentality.

Just no to this also? Like.. make it make sense. Why would people want to intentionally cause lag? They are also affected by it. Ballgroups are also affected by lag. The group I play with wipes 9/10 now because of bad game performance. No one is going into cyro with the intention to spam aoes to cause lag. It’s not a conspiracy…

And also what are u talking about casts per second being too high and not legal. No one is cheating. Again, it’s not a conspiracy. I bet you have not even seen the combat logs of a real ballgroup to even get that impression…

But I agree with the last point.

Relax friend, I'm not accusing you of anything. No need to try to flex on me to make your point. I am alluding to one specific group but I'm also not trying to name names on the forum.

Also, about casts per second, yes, I'm sure that we are all completely shocked and scandalized that there are wares available online that can help you cheat in videogames. And here we all thought that ESO was a pure and exploit-free game....

I agree with you that lag is usually the unseen MVP of a group Death Recap. But it's also true that a ball group is insulated from lag to a degree that a random zone pug is decidedly not due to having many layered HoTs, Barriers, full raid buffs, etc. active during combat. That can and will keep a group alive through several GCDs of severe slowdown whereas the zone pug is a complete sitting duck.

I’m not saying you’re accusing anyone. I’m saying it doesn’t make sense what you said. No one is ‘cheating’ and no one is spamming skills with the intention to worsen lag. That is just not happening, it’s crazy to me that people think this is the case.

And yes of course we have more buffs/hots than pugs and there is nothing wrong with the sentiment of this as it only makes sense. But we feel the lag same as everyone else either way. If it takes 5 seconds for a solo player to get a skill out then it also takes 5 seconds for us.

There is software that allows palyers to auto-block, break-free etc. And around people I know who run such stuff the game behaves very funny. In agreement with everything else.

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Karm1cOne wrote: »

rbfrgsp wrote: »

So, to clarify, I posted the two remaining solutions to poor performance (add server cap or start banning ballgroups that exploit gameplay limitations), and you two are so defensive about ballgroups that you're saying I am wrong? Or right? Because your posts don't make a clear argument either way.

Your suggestion is to ban 12 players playing together, in a game mode designed for that, in a group size allowed? Wow.

I don't really have the inclination to argue with borderline thinkers.

There is nothing in my post that lends itself to your interpretation of "he's asking for all groups to be banned".

Ball groups have a very specific play style. That play style has a material impact on service delivery of Zos' commercial product.

Therefore, ZOS has to decide if that playstyle is a legitimate part of the game (buy server cap) or not (police and ban).

Please don't respond to this post if you're just going to troll.

You said:

" begin running zone administrators who can issue official warnings against players and ban those with multiple strikes against their account."

and in this very post you said:

"police and ban"

Which clearly sounds like you want some administrative action against groups. Any distinction between ball groups and "regular" groups is tenuous at best and isn't something an administrator should be touching with a 10-foot pole. How are they supposed to tell the difference between a ball group and a "regular" group. What distinguishes a less skilled ball group from a "regular" group? Is it the skills, the sets? I see nothing wrong with a group running builds that support each other in PvP.

Marcus_Aurelius wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

And yes of course we have more buffs/hots than pugs and there is nothing wrong with the sentiment of this as it only makes sense. But we feel the lag same as everyone else either way. If it takes 5 seconds for a solo player to get a skill out then it also takes 5 seconds for us.

One thing is spamming AoE like ball group do (look at death recap and you will see: Sap Essence, Wirlig Blade, Sub Assault, ...) where you are not targetting a specific player but just saturating the space with AoE damage, another is to try to use a single target skill.

Who do you think is affected more by lag? And what do you think affect more lag, a single target skill or a constant spamming of AoEs?

ZOS tested AOE skills last fall. Didn't have an effect (granted I don't know how many people were playing during those tests)

They definitely did have an effect, it just wasn't as much as they wanted. It was way too drastic to be realistically implemented and so they were hoping for just as drastic a difference in performance, they didn't get it. Fundamentally the use of aoe effects has to have more of an effect on server performance than single target abilities. There really is no way around that.

Most of the arguments against ball groups for their server performance is not that without them everything will be perfect without issue. Rather that minimizing their impact would arguably have the greatest effect for the littlest overall gameplay impact.

For example if they reduce server pop to 20, would performance get better? Of course but it would have a major impact on the average player's experience. So while it would have a great positive, it has a bigger negative. Same with the global aoe cooldown. They tried to make less impactful changes like reducing group size to 6 with no outside healing, and again while it did have a decent impact it did not have the "significant impact on performance" they wanted. It's all perspective. If lag can sit at 300 in a fight, but you do something with very little player experience impact and reduce the lag from 300 to 250, is it good? Yes it is, but they want something small to have a much better performance impact and it just isn't there.

So when people rail against ball groups it's usually hoping for a decent reduction in lag not a perfect fix. A ball group does tend to have a large performance impact for what amounts to 12 people. If a change can be made that inconveniences 12 people while making it better for the other 80? Or should it be what can be made that inconveniences the other 80 while making it better for the other 12?

neferpitou73

Vizirith wrote: »

neferpitou73 wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Faction stacking doesn't impact performance in the way ballgrouping does. Go read some more threads about the various platforms, populations, servers, and game modes. The one constant everyone reports is "gets worse when ball groups appear".

Oh I'm very aware that certain groups intentionally spam abilities (usually AoE CC abilities) that they know will lag the server but that does not describe the entire universe of ball groups. Going off of combat logs and the number of casts/second by members of these groups, it also appears as though some of them are using... not exactly legal means to achieve this as well. That's honestly something that ZOS should investigate and ban said players/groups if they are indeed guilty.

But... grouping 100 random zerglings at Chalman or Alessia will achieve the same results. But there's an odd trend on the forum to romanticize the pugs and the faction-stack playstyle. It deserves no such sentimentality.

Just no to this also? Like.. make it make sense. Why would people want to intentionally cause lag? They are also affected by it. Ballgroups are also affected by lag. The group I play with wipes 9/10 now because of bad game performance. No one is going into cyro with the intention to spam aoes to cause lag. It’s not a conspiracy…

And also what are u talking about casts per second being too high and not legal. No one is cheating. Again, it’s not a conspiracy. I bet you have not even seen the combat logs of a real ballgroup to even get that impression…

But I agree with the last point.

Relax friend, I'm not accusing you of anything. No need to try to flex on me to make your point. I am alluding to one specific group but I'm also not trying to name names on the forum.

Also, about casts per second, yes, I'm sure that we are all completely shocked and scandalized that there are wares available online that can help you cheat in videogames. And here we all thought that ESO was a pure and exploit-free game....

I agree with you that lag is usually the unseen MVP of a group Death Recap. But it's also true that a ball group is insulated from lag to a degree that a random zone pug is decidedly not due to having many layered HoTs, Barriers, full raid buffs, etc. active during combat. That can and will keep a group alive through several GCDs of severe slowdown whereas the zone pug is a complete sitting duck.

I’m not saying you’re accusing anyone. I’m saying it doesn’t make sense what you said. No one is ‘cheating’ and no one is spamming skills with the intention to worsen lag. That is just not happening, it’s crazy to me that people think this is the case.

And yes of course we have more buffs/hots than pugs and there is nothing wrong with the sentiment of this as it only makes sense. But we feel the lag same as everyone else either way. If it takes 5 seconds for a solo player to get a skill out then it also takes 5 seconds for us.

There is software that allows palyers to auto-block, break-free etc. And around people I know who run such stuff the game behaves very funny. In agreement with everything else.

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Karm1cOne wrote: »

rbfrgsp wrote: »

So, to clarify, I posted the two remaining solutions to poor performance (add server cap or start banning ballgroups that exploit gameplay limitations), and you two are so defensive about ballgroups that you're saying I am wrong? Or right? Because your posts don't make a clear argument either way.

Your suggestion is to ban 12 players playing together, in a game mode designed for that, in a group size allowed? Wow.

I don't really have the inclination to argue with borderline thinkers.

There is nothing in my post that lends itself to your interpretation of "he's asking for all groups to be banned".

Ball groups have a very specific play style. That play style has a material impact on service delivery of Zos' commercial product.

Therefore, ZOS has to decide if that playstyle is a legitimate part of the game (buy server cap) or not (police and ban).

Please don't respond to this post if you're just going to troll.

You said:

" begin running zone administrators who can issue official warnings against players and ban those with multiple strikes against their account."

and in this very post you said:

"police and ban"

Which clearly sounds like you want some administrative action against groups. Any distinction between ball groups and "regular" groups is tenuous at best and isn't something an administrator should be touching with a 10-foot pole. How are they supposed to tell the difference between a ball group and a "regular" group. What distinguishes a less skilled ball group from a "regular" group? Is it the skills, the sets? I see nothing wrong with a group running builds that support each other in PvP.

Marcus_Aurelius wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

And yes of course we have more buffs/hots than pugs and there is nothing wrong with the sentiment of this as it only makes sense. But we feel the lag same as everyone else either way. If it takes 5 seconds for a solo player to get a skill out then it also takes 5 seconds for us.

One thing is spamming AoE like ball group do (look at death recap and you will see: Sap Essence, Wirlig Blade, Sub Assault, ...) where you are not targetting a specific player but just saturating the space with AoE damage, another is to try to use a single target skill.

Who do you think is affected more by lag? And what do you think affect more lag, a single target skill or a constant spamming of AoEs?

ZOS tested AOE skills last fall. Didn't have an effect (granted I don't know how many people were playing during those tests)

They definitely did have an effect, it just wasn't as much as they wanted. It was way too drastic to be realistically implemented and so they were hoping for just as drastic a difference in performance, they didn't get it. Fundamentally the use of aoe effects has to have more of an effect on server performance than single target abilities. There really is no way around that.

Most of the arguments against ball groups for their server performance is not that without them everything will be perfect without issue. Rather that minimizing their impact would arguably have the greatest effect for the littlest overall gameplay impact.

For example if they reduce server pop to 20, would performance get better? Of course but it would have a major impact on the average player's experience. So while it would have a great positive, it has a bigger negative. Same with the global aoe cooldown. They tried to make less impactful changes like reducing group size to 6 with no outside healing, and again while it did have a decent impact it did not have the "significant impact on performance" they wanted. It's all perspective. If lag can sit at 300 in a fight, but you do something with very little player experience impact and reduce the lag from 300 to 250, is it good? Yes it is, but they want something small to have a much better performance impact and it just isn't there.

So when people rail against ball groups it's usually hoping for a decent reduction in lag not a perfect fix. A ball group does tend to have a large performance impact for what amounts to 12 people. If a change can be made that inconveniences 12 people while making it better for the other 80? Or should it be what can be made that inconveniences the other 80 while making it better for the other 12?

I dismiss the idea that ball groups cause more lag than zergs. But we're likely not going to agree on that so I'll drop it.

My general point though is that this is a ZOS problem, not a player problem. ZOS could fix this problem today by allocating more servers to Cyrodiil, which they do every MYM, which generally results in higher (or at least similar) performance despite the fact that there are generally more people in Cyrodiil.

I cringe when I see people proposing heavy-handed solutions to what are really game mechanics issues. It's far easier, and more fun for players to adapt mechanics to incentivize the kind of gameplay you want and de-incentivize the kind of gameplay you don't want. Instead of implementing some ban-happy system that seeks to punish players for using viable tactics.



For instance, placing a lot of area of effect abilities in a small area? That's just the most optimal way to eliminate enemies. If you don't want people spamming abilities like that you need to find provide them with a more efficient way to eliminate groups of enemies. Because if there's a more optimal way to do so, the ball groups are going to adopt that.

I'd argue that there current approach to dealing with ball groups (providing sets that deal massive AOE damage) actually works against what they want to achieve. Since the ball groups just take those sets and stack that massive AOE damage set on every person in their group (which is what people warned them would happen with DC and indeed is exactly what happened) a far better way to deal with this issue would paradoxically be to make AOE damage less effective against groups, because then the ball group would be forced to use single-target abilities to take down enemies which (again if we concede that AOE abilities are the problem) would put less strain on the server. This would also give pugs a bit of a better shot, since the game's no longer about stacking AOE, but stacking single target.

In fact, my group has actually adopted this single target strategy because we're dealing more with zergs than ball groups lately, and single target damage is a better way to deal with enemies that are not stacked.

TLDR; If they want to change people's behavior they should provide incentives for people to play a different way. This way to problem fixes itself instead of relying on some new administrative system they'd have to work out.

EdmondDontes

neferpitou73 wrote: »

Vizirith wrote: »

neferpitou73 wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Faction stacking doesn't impact performance in the way ballgrouping does. Go read some more threads about the various platforms, populations, servers, and game modes. The one constant everyone reports is "gets worse when ball groups appear".

Oh I'm very aware that certain groups intentionally spam abilities (usually AoE CC abilities) that they know will lag the server but that does not describe the entire universe of ball groups. Going off of combat logs and the number of casts/second by members of these groups, it also appears as though some of them are using... not exactly legal means to achieve this as well. That's honestly something that ZOS should investigate and ban said players/groups if they are indeed guilty.

But... grouping 100 random zerglings at Chalman or Alessia will achieve the same results. But there's an odd trend on the forum to romanticize the pugs and the faction-stack playstyle. It deserves no such sentimentality.

Just no to this also? Like.. make it make sense. Why would people want to intentionally cause lag? They are also affected by it. Ballgroups are also affected by lag. The group I play with wipes 9/10 now because of bad game performance. No one is going into cyro with the intention to spam aoes to cause lag. It’s not a conspiracy…

And also what are u talking about casts per second being too high and not legal. No one is cheating. Again, it’s not a conspiracy. I bet you have not even seen the combat logs of a real ballgroup to even get that impression…

But I agree with the last point.

Relax friend, I'm not accusing you of anything. No need to try to flex on me to make your point. I am alluding to one specific group but I'm also not trying to name names on the forum.

Also, about casts per second, yes, I'm sure that we are all completely shocked and scandalized that there are wares available online that can help you cheat in videogames. And here we all thought that ESO was a pure and exploit-free game....

I agree with you that lag is usually the unseen MVP of a group Death Recap. But it's also true that a ball group is insulated from lag to a degree that a random zone pug is decidedly not due to having many layered HoTs, Barriers, full raid buffs, etc. active during combat. That can and will keep a group alive through several GCDs of severe slowdown whereas the zone pug is a complete sitting duck.

I’m not saying you’re accusing anyone. I’m saying it doesn’t make sense what you said. No one is ‘cheating’ and no one is spamming skills with the intention to worsen lag. That is just not happening, it’s crazy to me that people think this is the case.

And yes of course we have more buffs/hots than pugs and there is nothing wrong with the sentiment of this as it only makes sense. But we feel the lag same as everyone else either way. If it takes 5 seconds for a solo player to get a skill out then it also takes 5 seconds for us.

There is software that allows palyers to auto-block, break-free etc. And around people I know who run such stuff the game behaves very funny. In agreement with everything else.

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Karm1cOne wrote: »

rbfrgsp wrote: »

So, to clarify, I posted the two remaining solutions to poor performance (add server cap or start banning ballgroups that exploit gameplay limitations), and you two are so defensive about ballgroups that you're saying I am wrong? Or right? Because your posts don't make a clear argument either way.

Your suggestion is to ban 12 players playing together, in a game mode designed for that, in a group size allowed? Wow.

I don't really have the inclination to argue with borderline thinkers.

There is nothing in my post that lends itself to your interpretation of "he's asking for all groups to be banned".

Ball groups have a very specific play style. That play style has a material impact on service delivery of Zos' commercial product.

Therefore, ZOS has to decide if that playstyle is a legitimate part of the game (buy server cap) or not (police and ban).

Please don't respond to this post if you're just going to troll.

You said:

" begin running zone administrators who can issue official warnings against players and ban those with multiple strikes against their account."

and in this very post you said:

"police and ban"

Which clearly sounds like you want some administrative action against groups. Any distinction between ball groups and "regular" groups is tenuous at best and isn't something an administrator should be touching with a 10-foot pole. How are they supposed to tell the difference between a ball group and a "regular" group. What distinguishes a less skilled ball group from a "regular" group? Is it the skills, the sets? I see nothing wrong with a group running builds that support each other in PvP.

Marcus_Aurelius wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

And yes of course we have more buffs/hots than pugs and there is nothing wrong with the sentiment of this as it only makes sense. But we feel the lag same as everyone else either way. If it takes 5 seconds for a solo player to get a skill out then it also takes 5 seconds for us.

One thing is spamming AoE like ball group do (look at death recap and you will see: Sap Essence, Wirlig Blade, Sub Assault, ...) where you are not targetting a specific player but just saturating the space with AoE damage, another is to try to use a single target skill.

Who do you think is affected more by lag? And what do you think affect more lag, a single target skill or a constant spamming of AoEs?

ZOS tested AOE skills last fall. Didn't have an effect (granted I don't know how many people were playing during those tests)

They definitely did have an effect, it just wasn't as much as they wanted. It was way too drastic to be realistically implemented and so they were hoping for just as drastic a difference in performance, they didn't get it. Fundamentally the use of aoe effects has to have more of an effect on server performance than single target abilities. There really is no way around that.

Most of the arguments against ball groups for their server performance is not that without them everything will be perfect without issue. Rather that minimizing their impact would arguably have the greatest effect for the littlest overall gameplay impact.

For example if they reduce server pop to 20, would performance get better? Of course but it would have a major impact on the average player's experience. So while it would have a great positive, it has a bigger negative. Same with the global aoe cooldown. They tried to make less impactful changes like reducing group size to 6 with no outside healing, and again while it did have a decent impact it did not have the "significant impact on performance" they wanted. It's all perspective. If lag can sit at 300 in a fight, but you do something with very little player experience impact and reduce the lag from 300 to 250, is it good? Yes it is, but they want something small to have a much better performance impact and it just isn't there.

So when people rail against ball groups it's usually hoping for a decent reduction in lag not a perfect fix. A ball group does tend to have a large performance impact for what amounts to 12 people. If a change can be made that inconveniences 12 people while making it better for the other 80? Or should it be what can be made that inconveniences the other 80 while making it better for the other 12?

I dismiss the idea that ball groups cause more lag than zergs. But we're likely not going to agree on that so I'll drop it.

My general point though is that this is a ZOS problem, not a player problem. ZOS could fix this problem today by allocating more servers to Cyrodiil, which they do every MYM, which generally results in higher (or at least similar) performance despite the fact that there are generally more people in Cyrodiil.

I cringe when I see people proposing heavy-handed solutions to what are really game mechanics issues. It's far easier, and more fun for players to adapt mechanics to incentivize the kind of gameplay you want and de-incentivize the kind of gameplay you don't want. Instead of implementing some ban-happy system that seeks to punish players for using viable tactics.



For instance, placing a lot of area of effect abilities in a small area? That's just the most optimal way to eliminate enemies. If you don't want people spamming abilities like that you need to find provide them with a more efficient way to eliminate groups of enemies. Because if there's a more optimal way to do so, the ball groups are going to adopt that.

I'd argue that there current approach to dealing with ball groups (providing sets that deal massive AOE damage) actually works against what they want to achieve. Since the ball groups just take those sets and stack that massive AOE damage set on every person in their group (which is what people warned them would happen with DC and indeed is exactly what happened) a far better way to deal with this issue would paradoxically be to make AOE damage less effective against groups, because then the ball group would be forced to use single-target abilities to take down enemies which (again if we concede that AOE abilities are the problem) would put less strain on the server. This would also give pugs a bit of a better shot, since the game's no longer about stacking AOE, but stacking single target.

In fact, my group has actually adopted this single target strategy because we're dealing more with zergs than ball groups lately, and single target damage is a better way to deal with enemies that are not stacked.

TLDR; If they want to change people's behavior they should provide incentives for people to play a different way. This way to problem fixes itself instead of relying on some new administrative system they'd have to work out.

Great post!


Limiting cross healing in some way would help too I think.

YandereGirlfriend

EdmondDontes wrote: »

neferpitou73 wrote: »

Vizirith wrote: »

neferpitou73 wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Faction stacking doesn't impact performance in the way ballgrouping does. Go read some more threads about the various platforms, populations, servers, and game modes. The one constant everyone reports is "gets worse when ball groups appear".

Oh I'm very aware that certain groups intentionally spam abilities (usually AoE CC abilities) that they know will lag the server but that does not describe the entire universe of ball groups. Going off of combat logs and the number of casts/second by members of these groups, it also appears as though some of them are using... not exactly legal means to achieve this as well. That's honestly something that ZOS should investigate and ban said players/groups if they are indeed guilty.

But... grouping 100 random zerglings at Chalman or Alessia will achieve the same results. But there's an odd trend on the forum to romanticize the pugs and the faction-stack playstyle. It deserves no such sentimentality.

Just no to this also? Like.. make it make sense. Why would people want to intentionally cause lag? They are also affected by it. Ballgroups are also affected by lag. The group I play with wipes 9/10 now because of bad game performance. No one is going into cyro with the intention to spam aoes to cause lag. It’s not a conspiracy…

And also what are u talking about casts per second being too high and not legal. No one is cheating. Again, it’s not a conspiracy. I bet you have not even seen the combat logs of a real ballgroup to even get that impression…

But I agree with the last point.

Relax friend, I'm not accusing you of anything. No need to try to flex on me to make your point. I am alluding to one specific group but I'm also not trying to name names on the forum.

Also, about casts per second, yes, I'm sure that we are all completely shocked and scandalized that there are wares available online that can help you cheat in videogames. And here we all thought that ESO was a pure and exploit-free game....

I agree with you that lag is usually the unseen MVP of a group Death Recap. But it's also true that a ball group is insulated from lag to a degree that a random zone pug is decidedly not due to having many layered HoTs, Barriers, full raid buffs, etc. active during combat. That can and will keep a group alive through several GCDs of severe slowdown whereas the zone pug is a complete sitting duck.

I’m not saying you’re accusing anyone. I’m saying it doesn’t make sense what you said. No one is ‘cheating’ and no one is spamming skills with the intention to worsen lag. That is just not happening, it’s crazy to me that people think this is the case.

And yes of course we have more buffs/hots than pugs and there is nothing wrong with the sentiment of this as it only makes sense. But we feel the lag same as everyone else either way. If it takes 5 seconds for a solo player to get a skill out then it also takes 5 seconds for us.

There is software that allows palyers to auto-block, break-free etc. And around people I know who run such stuff the game behaves very funny. In agreement with everything else.

rbfrgsp wrote: »

Karm1cOne wrote: »

rbfrgsp wrote: »

So, to clarify, I posted the two remaining solutions to poor performance (add server cap or start banning ballgroups that exploit gameplay limitations), and you two are so defensive about ballgroups that you're saying I am wrong? Or right? Because your posts don't make a clear argument either way.

Your suggestion is to ban 12 players playing together, in a game mode designed for that, in a group size allowed? Wow.

I don't really have the inclination to argue with borderline thinkers.

There is nothing in my post that lends itself to your interpretation of "he's asking for all groups to be banned".

Ball groups have a very specific play style. That play style has a material impact on service delivery of Zos' commercial product.

Therefore, ZOS has to decide if that playstyle is a legitimate part of the game (buy server cap) or not (police and ban).

Please don't respond to this post if you're just going to troll.

You said:

" begin running zone administrators who can issue official warnings against players and ban those with multiple strikes against their account."

and in this very post you said:

"police and ban"

Which clearly sounds like you want some administrative action against groups. Any distinction between ball groups and "regular" groups is tenuous at best and isn't something an administrator should be touching with a 10-foot pole. How are they supposed to tell the difference between a ball group and a "regular" group. What distinguishes a less skilled ball group from a "regular" group? Is it the skills, the sets? I see nothing wrong with a group running builds that support each other in PvP.

Marcus_Aurelius wrote: »

NotTaylorSwift wrote: »

And yes of course we have more buffs/hots than pugs and there is nothing wrong with the sentiment of this as it only makes sense. But we feel the lag same as everyone else either way. If it takes 5 seconds for a solo player to get a skill out then it also takes 5 seconds for us.

One thing is spamming AoE like ball group do (look at death recap and you will see: Sap Essence, Wirlig Blade, Sub Assault, ...) where you are not targetting a specific player but just saturating the space with AoE damage, another is to try to use a single target skill.

Who do you think is affected more by lag? And what do you think affect more lag, a single target skill or a constant spamming of AoEs?

ZOS tested AOE skills last fall. Didn't have an effect (granted I don't know how many people were playing during those tests)

They definitely did have an effect, it just wasn't as much as they wanted. It was way too drastic to be realistically implemented and so they were hoping for just as drastic a difference in performance, they didn't get it. Fundamentally the use of aoe effects has to have more of an effect on server performance than single target abilities. There really is no way around that.

Most of the arguments against ball groups for their server performance is not that without them everything will be perfect without issue. Rather that minimizing their impact would arguably have the greatest effect for the littlest overall gameplay impact.

For example if they reduce server pop to 20, would performance get better? Of course but it would have a major impact on the average player's experience. So while it would have a great positive, it has a bigger negative. Same with the global aoe cooldown. They tried to make less impactful changes like reducing group size to 6 with no outside healing, and again while it did have a decent impact it did not have the "significant impact on performance" they wanted. It's all perspective. If lag can sit at 300 in a fight, but you do something with very little player experience impact and reduce the lag from 300 to 250, is it good? Yes it is, but they want something small to have a much better performance impact and it just isn't there.

So when people rail against ball groups it's usually hoping for a decent reduction in lag not a perfect fix. A ball group does tend to have a large performance impact for what amounts to 12 people. If a change can be made that inconveniences 12 people while making it better for the other 80? Or should it be what can be made that inconveniences the other 80 while making it better for the other 12?

I dismiss the idea that ball groups cause more lag than zergs. But we're likely not going to agree on that so I'll drop it.

My general point though is that this is a ZOS problem, not a player problem. ZOS could fix this problem today by allocating more servers to Cyrodiil, which they do every MYM, which generally results in higher (or at least similar) performance despite the fact that there are generally more people in Cyrodiil.

I cringe when I see people proposing heavy-handed solutions to what are really game mechanics issues. It's far easier, and more fun for players to adapt mechanics to incentivize the kind of gameplay you want and de-incentivize the kind of gameplay you don't want. Instead of implementing some ban-happy system that seeks to punish players for using viable tactics.



For instance, placing a lot of area of effect abilities in a small area? That's just the most optimal way to eliminate enemies. If you don't want people spamming abilities like that you need to find provide them with a more efficient way to eliminate groups of enemies. Because if there's a more optimal way to do so, the ball groups are going to adopt that.

I'd argue that there current approach to dealing with ball groups (providing sets that deal massive AOE damage) actually works against what they want to achieve. Since the ball groups just take those sets and stack that massive AOE damage set on every person in their group (which is what people warned them would happen with DC and indeed is exactly what happened) a far better way to deal with this issue would paradoxically be to make AOE damage less effective against groups, because then the ball group would be forced to use single-target abilities to take down enemies which (again if we concede that AOE abilities are the problem) would put less strain on the server. This would also give pugs a bit of a better shot, since the game's no longer about stacking AOE, but stacking single target.

In fact, my group has actually adopted this single target strategy because we're dealing more with zergs than ball groups lately, and single target damage is a better way to deal with enemies that are not stacked.

TLDR; If they want to change people's behavior they should provide incentives for people to play a different way. This way to problem fixes itself instead of relying on some new administrative system they'd have to work out.

Great post!


Limiting cross healing in some way would help too I think.

I was a big fan of the group-only healing changes but then all of the faction-stackers swooped in to bully ZOS into rescinding it.