The very concept of ball groups is outdated

Kartalin

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Are they outdated? Or are they overpowered? Pick one.

ZOS could nuke the ball meta and it wouldn't change who the strong coordinated groups are, but it might make large scale PvP more fun for pugs/casuals/solos.

You just described no proc pvp in Ravenwatch.

L_Nici

Balls are insanely annoying. They lag the game out and abuse a system that should have been dealt with years ago. Just finally stop limitless Crosshealing.

Gaeliannas

L_Nici wrote: »

Balls are insanely annoying. They lag the game out and abuse a system that should have been dealt with years ago. Just finally stop limitless Crosshealing.

I see zergs doing the same thing, same with Dark Convergence so many claim is only used by ball groups and necro bombers. Unless that zerg we fought last week was 1/2 made up of necro bombers or numerous ball groups in disguise, that set gets abused by everyone. When you can see 15-20 procs of it in the field, that isn't a ball group dropping it like rain. And as I mentioned earlier, I have hit some zergs with cold fire siege that didn't flinch either, they just cross healed right through it there were so many resto staffs popping up and down and vigors a flying.

As for lag, I run with 11 friends and we can feel a zerg approaching from miles away, everything stops working, screen stutters galore and voila... 1 minute later here they all come around a corner sending a bunch of us to loading screen purgatory.

Ball groups aren't the issue, the games performance is. When will players stop blaming each other, and look at where the real problem lies?

EdmondDontes

Kartalin wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

With max pop at 80.

Is this confirmed to be true? Do you have a source? The last confirmed number I've heard is 200. We speculate that it has been lowered over time but as far as I know there hasn't been a definitive answer.

Keep in mind at least 25% of each faction is doing [snip] all at any given time, standing around afk, hanging out at the gates deciding what to do, questing in cities, chasing down dolmens and skyshards for achievements, etc.

We can count. That is how we know the per faction cap is that low. When the raid group I run with logs out the faction loses one bar of population, and we are only 12-20 people. This happens every day. That means the population cap is right there at 80/faction. Nobody is speculating here. We are using observation and super basic math to know what the cap is. It's right about 80/faction. Even the 200/faction number you cited was a 50% reduction in the cap from when the game first went public. They have been reducing the pop caps incrementally since the second year the game became popular.

There are at least two reasons for this. One is to keep the appearance that cyrodiil is just as popular as it always was, even though ESO has bled PvP players like crazy since it's third year. And second, it's a way to give the appearance of improved performance without actually doing anything to improve performance.

Now the pop cap is so low that when a single guild logs out the faction loses one entire bar of population.

We know what is happening because we've played since inception, we pay attention to what is happening, and we can count to 80.

[edited to remove quote]

EdmondDontes

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

With max pop at 80.

Is this confirmed to be true? Do you have a source? The last confirmed number I've heard is 200. We speculate that it has been lowered over time but as far as I know there hasn't been a definitive answer.

Keep in mind at least 25% of each faction is doing [snip] all at any given time, standing around afk, hanging out at the gates deciding what to do, questing in cities, chasing down dolmens and skyshards for achievements, etc.

From what I have seen lately, I am under the impression it has been recently lowered closer to 50 per faction.

On Gray Host, addons often report 100+ players of 1 faction during a siege. If you assume some AFKs and questers, the absolute cap would appear to be ~120.

Miats is counting every player, not just one faction. Miats has not been updated in 4 years now or something like that. Maybe only 2.5 years, but it's been a very long time since ZOS disabled much of the functionality of the add on of which you speak. IMO they should have outright banned the add on since it's effectively cheating in some regards.

[edited to remove quote]

xylena_lazarow

Random player: Hey guys this meta is kinda screwed, these unkillable groups are no fun

Ballgroup player: Git gud

Random player: Meh I think I'll go play something else

Ballgroup player: Why is the game dying???

Gaeliannas

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

Random player: Hey guys this meta is kinda screwed, these unkillable groups are no fun

Ballgroup player: Git gud

Random player: Meh I think I'll go play something else

Ballgroup player: Why is the game dying???

Pretty sure ball groups have very little to nothing to do with why the game (or PVP) is dying. I am pretty sure the 30% drop in logins on Steam charts is actually more players than even PVP, nevermind those that came across a ball group.

Amottica

Lebkuchen wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

Pop cap for each faction is 80, was 600 originally. They don't talk about it much as it doesn't paint their performance "fixes" well.

I have spent thousands of hours in Cyrodiil, and i have seen some situations where you could count almost all players. For example: One alliance with a very long queue has been gated by both enemy aliances, and there was only one scroll left at the temple. Nothing else was under attack, no big fights anywhere else. Everyone was either sitting somewhere in the 2 homebases, or waiting at the scroll. I do not think anyone would wait over an hour in queue to go for master angler achievement or delve bosses. So if you traveled to these 3 places (as a member of the bullied alliance) you could see how many players were actually online. And i feel like it has been way less than 80 for a long time, at least on Playstation EU. I would say maybe 40-60.

It would be really interesting to know the real numbers, and if they changed in some situations, like PvP events or weekends.

I hope they will fix Cyrodiil instead of letting it die, and i hope we can have massive fights again one day. ESO is one of my favourite games but i would have stopped playing it years ago if Cyrodiil did not exist.

I read the post but did not see the situation described where you could count the players, or almost all the players, in the campaign.

Gaeliannas

Amottica wrote: »

Lebkuchen wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

Pop cap for each faction is 80, was 600 originally. They don't talk about it much as it doesn't paint their performance "fixes" well.

I have spent thousands of hours in Cyrodiil, and i have seen some situations where you could count almost all players. For example: One alliance with a very long queue has been gated by both enemy aliances, and there was only one scroll left at the temple. Nothing else was under attack, no big fights anywhere else. Everyone was either sitting somewhere in the 2 homebases, or waiting at the scroll. I do not think anyone would wait over an hour in queue to go for master angler achievement or delve bosses. So if you traveled to these 3 places (as a member of the bullied alliance) you could see how many players were actually online. And i feel like it has been way less than 80 for a long time, at least on Playstation EU. I would say maybe 40-60.

It would be really interesting to know the real numbers, and if they changed in some situations, like PvP events or weekends.

I hope they will fix Cyrodiil instead of letting it die, and i hope we can have massive fights again one day. ESO is one of my favourite games but i would have stopped playing it years ago if Cyrodiil did not exist.

I read the post but did not see the situation described where you could count the players, or almost all the players, in the campaign.

He said when your faction has lost everything and everyone is in one of the two bases for the most part. That is my experience as well, pretty easy to see everyone when you have no keeps and your faction is doing nothing on the map. Yeah, maybe 1 group or some rando's are out riding around, but the bulk of the faction is sitting in the bases trying to figure out what to do. Even moreso when you are literally gated and get killed simply riding off the ledge from your base. It isn't that hard to count the players, and when there is a queue to get in, well you know thats how many are allowed in.

Obviously not an exact number, but it gives you a pretty close approximation, as hiding an extra 40 players would be pretty hard to accomplish and something would show on the map.

Amottica

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Lebkuchen wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

Pop cap for each faction is 80, was 600 originally. They don't talk about it much as it doesn't paint their performance "fixes" well.

I have spent thousands of hours in Cyrodiil, and i have seen some situations where you could count almost all players. For example: One alliance with a very long queue has been gated by both enemy aliances, and there was only one scroll left at the temple. Nothing else was under attack, no big fights anywhere else. Everyone was either sitting somewhere in the 2 homebases, or waiting at the scroll. I do not think anyone would wait over an hour in queue to go for master angler achievement or delve bosses. So if you traveled to these 3 places (as a member of the bullied alliance) you could see how many players were actually online. And i feel like it has been way less than 80 for a long time, at least on Playstation EU. I would say maybe 40-60.

It would be really interesting to know the real numbers, and if they changed in some situations, like PvP events or weekends.

I hope they will fix Cyrodiil instead of letting it die, and i hope we can have massive fights again one day. ESO is one of my favourite games but i would have stopped playing it years ago if Cyrodiil did not exist.

I read the post but did not see the situation described where you could count the players, or almost all the players, in the campaign.

He said when your faction has lost everything and everyone is in one of the two bases for the most part. That is my experience as well, pretty easy to see everyone when you have no keeps and your faction is doing nothing on the map. Yeah, maybe 1 group or some rando's are out riding around, but the bulk of the faction is sitting in the bases trying to figure out what to do. Even moreso when you are literally gated and get killed simply riding off the ledge from your base. It isn't that hard to count the players, and when there is a queue to get in, well you know thats how many are allowed in.

Obviously not an exact number, but it gives you a pretty close approximation, as hiding an extra 40 players would be pretty hard to accomplish and something would show on the map.

They surmised.

Even then without an attempt to count what they could see.

A better guess would be counting players at a keep under attack instead of pondering how many people may have been sitting within the two bases.

Gaeliannas

Amottica wrote: »

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Lebkuchen wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

Pop cap for each faction is 80, was 600 originally. They don't talk about it much as it doesn't paint their performance "fixes" well.

I have spent thousands of hours in Cyrodiil, and i have seen some situations where you could count almost all players. For example: One alliance with a very long queue has been gated by both enemy aliances, and there was only one scroll left at the temple. Nothing else was under attack, no big fights anywhere else. Everyone was either sitting somewhere in the 2 homebases, or waiting at the scroll. I do not think anyone would wait over an hour in queue to go for master angler achievement or delve bosses. So if you traveled to these 3 places (as a member of the bullied alliance) you could see how many players were actually online. And i feel like it has been way less than 80 for a long time, at least on Playstation EU. I would say maybe 40-60.

It would be really interesting to know the real numbers, and if they changed in some situations, like PvP events or weekends.

I hope they will fix Cyrodiil instead of letting it die, and i hope we can have massive fights again one day. ESO is one of my favourite games but i would have stopped playing it years ago if Cyrodiil did not exist.

I read the post but did not see the situation described where you could count the players, or almost all the players, in the campaign.

He said when your faction has lost everything and everyone is in one of the two bases for the most part. That is my experience as well, pretty easy to see everyone when you have no keeps and your faction is doing nothing on the map. Yeah, maybe 1 group or some rando's are out riding around, but the bulk of the faction is sitting in the bases trying to figure out what to do. Even moreso when you are literally gated and get killed simply riding off the ledge from your base. It isn't that hard to count the players, and when there is a queue to get in, well you know thats how many are allowed in.

Obviously not an exact number, but it gives you a pretty close approximation, as hiding an extra 40 players would be pretty hard to accomplish and something would show on the map.

They surmised.

Even then without an attempt to count what they could see.

A better guess would be counting players at a keep under attack instead of pondering how many people may have been sitting within the two bases.

Not in my experience. Once something is under attack, maybe half head there, the other half somewhere else and it becomes neigh impossible to know how many are around. Some small groups go light up another keep, some start taking resources, because they aren't being insta killed trying to ride out, and I know my group generally heads off towards an enemy back keep to draw heat off whatever of ours is being attacked.

Much easier to see how many folks are around, when the only place you have to hang out, is your faction bases. But like I said, it isn't exact, but leads me to believe the pop cap for each faction is much lower than 80. Been a very long time since I have seen 80 of the same faction anywhere in Cyro. Highly doubtful the game could even handle it if there were, as we are getting discoed by a mere 30 of the other faction showing up nowadays.

And0ssus

So much "i think", "i believe" ....

We don't have an confirmation what the Pop Lock actual is per faction, at least i can't remember a Post/Information about this.

Miats btw counts People per faction in a specific Area around you (sometimes takes a Bit to refresh) and the Last Update of this AddOn was 24th August 2021.

Yeah a while ago, but since there was no Major Change that should influence the AddOn.

Highest counter i had was in Whitestrikes Mayham (or however it is called now sorry ) and it showesld 87 for one faction.
Idk if they increased it for the event but i'm pretty sure they just added campaigns or at least i can't remember that they wrote something specific about this.

Maybe @ZOS_GinaBruno could help us out here and could tell us what the actual Population Cap for each faction is atm, would be really nice

Amottica

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Lebkuchen wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

Pop cap for each faction is 80, was 600 originally. They don't talk about it much as it doesn't paint their performance "fixes" well.

I have spent thousands of hours in Cyrodiil, and i have seen some situations where you could count almost all players. For example: One alliance with a very long queue has been gated by both enemy aliances, and there was only one scroll left at the temple. Nothing else was under attack, no big fights anywhere else. Everyone was either sitting somewhere in the 2 homebases, or waiting at the scroll. I do not think anyone would wait over an hour in queue to go for master angler achievement or delve bosses. So if you traveled to these 3 places (as a member of the bullied alliance) you could see how many players were actually online. And i feel like it has been way less than 80 for a long time, at least on Playstation EU. I would say maybe 40-60.

It would be really interesting to know the real numbers, and if they changed in some situations, like PvP events or weekends.

I hope they will fix Cyrodiil instead of letting it die, and i hope we can have massive fights again one day. ESO is one of my favourite games but i would have stopped playing it years ago if Cyrodiil did not exist.

I read the post but did not see the situation described where you could count the players, or almost all the players, in the campaign.

He said when your faction has lost everything and everyone is in one of the two bases for the most part. That is my experience as well, pretty easy to see everyone when you have no keeps and your faction is doing nothing on the map. Yeah, maybe 1 group or some rando's are out riding around, but the bulk of the faction is sitting in the bases trying to figure out what to do. Even moreso when you are literally gated and get killed simply riding off the ledge from your base. It isn't that hard to count the players, and when there is a queue to get in, well you know thats how many are allowed in.

Obviously not an exact number, but it gives you a pretty close approximation, as hiding an extra 40 players would be pretty hard to accomplish and something would show on the map.

They surmised.

Even then without an attempt to count what they could see.

A better guess would be counting players at a keep under attack instead of pondering how many people may have been sitting within the two bases.

Not in my experience. Once something is under attack, maybe half head there, the other half somewhere else and it becomes neigh impossible to know how many are around. Some small groups go light up another keep, some start taking resources, because they aren't being insta killed trying to ride out, and I know my group generally heads off towards an enemy back keep to draw heat off whatever of ours is being attacked.

Much easier to see how many folks are around, when the only place you have to hang out, is your faction bases. But like I said, it isn't exact, but leads me to believe the pop cap for each faction is much lower than 80. Been a very long time since I have seen 80 of the same faction anywhere in Cyro. Highly doubtful the game could even handle it if there were, as we are getting discoed by a mere 30 of the other faction showing up nowadays.

Oh yes. In general, there tend to be two major battles on the map, but not necessarily limited to that and we do not know if everyone is at one of the locations or another.

But in the example that was provided where a person said they could almost count all the players they did not count any nor indicate they were seeing any. They merely guessed that most were at one of the bases or another or sitting at the sole scroll the alliance had.

So yes. they did surmise. Yes, it would be nice to actually know what the population cap is but guessing does not bring any light to the actual numbers. That was my point.

Gaeliannas

Amottica wrote: »

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Lebkuchen wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

Pop cap for each faction is 80, was 600 originally. They don't talk about it much as it doesn't paint their performance "fixes" well.

I have spent thousands of hours in Cyrodiil, and i have seen some situations where you could count almost all players. For example: One alliance with a very long queue has been gated by both enemy aliances, and there was only one scroll left at the temple. Nothing else was under attack, no big fights anywhere else. Everyone was either sitting somewhere in the 2 homebases, or waiting at the scroll. I do not think anyone would wait over an hour in queue to go for master angler achievement or delve bosses. So if you traveled to these 3 places (as a member of the bullied alliance) you could see how many players were actually online. And i feel like it has been way less than 80 for a long time, at least on Playstation EU. I would say maybe 40-60.

It would be really interesting to know the real numbers, and if they changed in some situations, like PvP events or weekends.

I hope they will fix Cyrodiil instead of letting it die, and i hope we can have massive fights again one day. ESO is one of my favourite games but i would have stopped playing it years ago if Cyrodiil did not exist.

I read the post but did not see the situation described where you could count the players, or almost all the players, in the campaign.

He said when your faction has lost everything and everyone is in one of the two bases for the most part. That is my experience as well, pretty easy to see everyone when you have no keeps and your faction is doing nothing on the map. Yeah, maybe 1 group or some rando's are out riding around, but the bulk of the faction is sitting in the bases trying to figure out what to do. Even moreso when you are literally gated and get killed simply riding off the ledge from your base. It isn't that hard to count the players, and when there is a queue to get in, well you know thats how many are allowed in.

Obviously not an exact number, but it gives you a pretty close approximation, as hiding an extra 40 players would be pretty hard to accomplish and something would show on the map.

They surmised.

Even then without an attempt to count what they could see.

A better guess would be counting players at a keep under attack instead of pondering how many people may have been sitting within the two bases.

Not in my experience. Once something is under attack, maybe half head there, the other half somewhere else and it becomes neigh impossible to know how many are around. Some small groups go light up another keep, some start taking resources, because they aren't being insta killed trying to ride out, and I know my group generally heads off towards an enemy back keep to draw heat off whatever of ours is being attacked.

Much easier to see how many folks are around, when the only place you have to hang out, is your faction bases. But like I said, it isn't exact, but leads me to believe the pop cap for each faction is much lower than 80. Been a very long time since I have seen 80 of the same faction anywhere in Cyro. Highly doubtful the game could even handle it if there were, as we are getting discoed by a mere 30 of the other faction showing up nowadays.

Oh yes. In general, there tend to be two major battles on the map, but not necessarily limited to that and we do not know if everyone is at one of the locations or another.

But in the example that was provided where a person said they could almost count all the players they did not count any nor indicate they were seeing any. They merely guessed that most were at one of the bases or another or sitting at the sole scroll the alliance had.

So yes. they did surmise. Yes, it would be nice to actually know what the population cap is but guessing does not bring any light to the actual numbers. That was my point.

Ahh okay, I get your point. I have actually counted though when gated, and of late have not seen more than 30-35 at the main quest base, and maybe 5 at the other base. Assuming maybe 5ish folks out stealthing around, harvesting, or whatever and not doing anything that would light up the map (which GH is the worst place to do PVE stuff), that is where I came up with my number.

But you are correct, it is not accurate and never will be, nor will ZOS ever tell us the real number. But I find it hard to believe I missed counting half the faction if the cap is anywhere near 80 still, but I could have.

Kordai

VaranisArano wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

The very concept of ball groups is outdated.
Or...
Ball groups are so dominant in low-pop PVP that it's actively unfun for everyone not in a ball group.

Come on, pick one.

I hate to be the one to break it to you but the original pop cap of 1800 isn't still a thing. Your options literally aren't exclusive so not quite sure what you're talking about. But if you consider max pop to be low pop I can see your confusion.

Again :My argument was that the concept that made them necessary early on when proxy was created is now outdated as happens when this thing called "time" passes and changes are made. When the actual population cap in cyrodiil was 1800, you had massive zergs. Ball groups were made to largely counter those big zergs. And when you have massive numbers ball groups were fine and still didn't have a crazy impact because of the total population size. As population dropped and dropped to the current max cap of 240 total, they power difference simply went up and up. Hypothetically if the pop cap was reduced even further to 40 people, would you still argue that they aren't OP?

The current population cap is absolutely "low pop" compared to what we had even a few years ago. The lower the population gets, the more dominant ball groups get because it's harder and harder to counter them with a faction stack. Drop that to 40, and you can kiss any plans of breaking a properly built, trained 12-player Ball group goodbye.

But you can't go claiming something is dominant and outdated in the same breath.

Organized groups don't purely exist to counter zergs. In fact, it's pretty obvious that current ball groups exist to farm objectives, zergs, hordes of unorganized players for AP. They do that really, really well right now. Ball groups are still dominating the campaigns because they are the opposite of outdated. They are more dominant now because there are less semi-organized players around to oppose them.

Are they outdated?
Or are they overpowered?
Pick one.

(I prefer to run in a "Ball group" style guild. We're overpowered. We're absolutely not "outdated" when you consider that our playstyle has only gotten more powerful as the population gets smaller. The concept of "play in an organized group in voice comms" doesn't become outdated just because our enemies have gotten less powerful/numerous.)

I see the confusion. What I meant was that the concept that made ball groups necessary, massive zergs of 100+ people is no longer valid and is "outdated". The concept that made them necessary not the actual ball group unto itself. They have continued to get more powerful comparatively with the overall pop reduction even if you discount buffs to sets/skills and because the premise of their necessity (and their necessary power) is obsolete they should be looked at. Basically what was once a large fish in a big ocean is now a large fish in a small pond, the fish didn't change size but comparatively it is now much more significant.

Kordai

Amottica wrote: »

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Lebkuchen wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

Pop cap for each faction is 80, was 600 originally. They don't talk about it much as it doesn't paint their performance "fixes" well.

I have spent thousands of hours in Cyrodiil, and i have seen some situations where you could count almost all players. For example: One alliance with a very long queue has been gated by both enemy aliances, and there was only one scroll left at the temple. Nothing else was under attack, no big fights anywhere else. Everyone was either sitting somewhere in the 2 homebases, or waiting at the scroll. I do not think anyone would wait over an hour in queue to go for master angler achievement or delve bosses. So if you traveled to these 3 places (as a member of the bullied alliance) you could see how many players were actually online. And i feel like it has been way less than 80 for a long time, at least on Playstation EU. I would say maybe 40-60.

It would be really interesting to know the real numbers, and if they changed in some situations, like PvP events or weekends.

I hope they will fix Cyrodiil instead of letting it die, and i hope we can have massive fights again one day. ESO is one of my favourite games but i would have stopped playing it years ago if Cyrodiil did not exist.

I read the post but did not see the situation described where you could count the players, or almost all the players, in the campaign.

He said when your faction has lost everything and everyone is in one of the two bases for the most part. That is my experience as well, pretty easy to see everyone when you have no keeps and your faction is doing nothing on the map. Yeah, maybe 1 group or some rando's are out riding around, but the bulk of the faction is sitting in the bases trying to figure out what to do. Even moreso when you are literally gated and get killed simply riding off the ledge from your base. It isn't that hard to count the players, and when there is a queue to get in, well you know thats how many are allowed in.

Obviously not an exact number, but it gives you a pretty close approximation, as hiding an extra 40 players would be pretty hard to accomplish and something would show on the map.

They surmised.

Even then without an attempt to count what they could see.

A better guess would be counting players at a keep under attack instead of pondering how many people may have been sitting within the two bases.

Not in my experience. Once something is under attack, maybe half head there, the other half somewhere else and it becomes neigh impossible to know how many are around. Some small groups go light up another keep, some start taking resources, because they aren't being insta killed trying to ride out, and I know my group generally heads off towards an enemy back keep to draw heat off whatever of ours is being attacked.

Much easier to see how many folks are around, when the only place you have to hang out, is your faction bases. But like I said, it isn't exact, but leads me to believe the pop cap for each faction is much lower than 80. Been a very long time since I have seen 80 of the same faction anywhere in Cyro. Highly doubtful the game could even handle it if there were, as we are getting discoed by a mere 30 of the other faction showing up nowadays.

Oh yes. In general, there tend to be two major battles on the map, but not necessarily limited to that and we do not know if everyone is at one of the locations or another.

But in the example that was provided where a person said they could almost count all the players they did not count any nor indicate they were seeing any. They merely guessed that most were at one of the bases or another or sitting at the sole scroll the alliance had.

So yes. they did surmise. Yes, it would be nice to actually know what the population cap is but guessing does not bring any light to the actual numbers. That was my point.

The only population ever given by zos was 600 per faction for a total pop of 1800 as per this post from launch. As far as I'm aware there has never been any official word since. The number 80 per faction is mostly general consensus that I've heard. So yes total hearsay.

However there is no way that there are 1800 people playing in cyrodiil when it shows capped populations. I don't even want to know what performance would look like then, you'd have to leave the game running overnight in order to land a dswing. I have never seen anything over ~60 players of the same faction anywhere. So while there is the possibility the other 100+ are taking in the view of the countryside and erping behind gates, it is probably a slim one. So while I'd accept up to 100 per faction and maybe even 120, anything over that is just not plausible.

DrSlaughtr

It is very good point they the lower total players on the stronger ball groups become. You become less able as the opposition to out damage their healing

Odysseus87

Kartalin wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

With max pop at 80.

Is this confirmed to be true? Do you have a source? The last confirmed number I've heard is 200. We speculate that it has been lowered over time but as far as I know there hasn't been a definitive answer.

Keep in mind at least 25% of each faction is doing [snip] all at any given time, standing around afk, hanging out at the gates deciding what to do, questing in cities, chasing down dolmens and skyshards for achievements, etc.

I know it's at least more than 80. I'm not sure how much more, but I have a few screenshots from Miat's showing 87 AD stacked in Raven.

[edited to remove quote]

VaranisArano

Kordai wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

The very concept of ball groups is outdated.
Or...
Ball groups are so dominant in low-pop PVP that it's actively unfun for everyone not in a ball group.

Come on, pick one.

I hate to be the one to break it to you but the original pop cap of 1800 isn't still a thing. Your options literally aren't exclusive so not quite sure what you're talking about. But if you consider max pop to be low pop I can see your confusion.

Again :My argument was that the concept that made them necessary early on when proxy was created is now outdated as happens when this thing called "time" passes and changes are made. When the actual population cap in cyrodiil was 1800, you had massive zergs. Ball groups were made to largely counter those big zergs. And when you have massive numbers ball groups were fine and still didn't have a crazy impact because of the total population size. As population dropped and dropped to the current max cap of 240 total, they power difference simply went up and up. Hypothetically if the pop cap was reduced even further to 40 people, would you still argue that they aren't OP?

The current population cap is absolutely "low pop" compared to what we had even a few years ago. The lower the population gets, the more dominant ball groups get because it's harder and harder to counter them with a faction stack. Drop that to 40, and you can kiss any plans of breaking a properly built, trained 12-player Ball group goodbye.

But you can't go claiming something is dominant and outdated in the same breath.

Organized groups don't purely exist to counter zergs. In fact, it's pretty obvious that current ball groups exist to farm objectives, zergs, hordes of unorganized players for AP. They do that really, really well right now. Ball groups are still dominating the campaigns because they are the opposite of outdated. They are more dominant now because there are less semi-organized players around to oppose them.

Are they outdated?
Or are they overpowered?
Pick one.

(I prefer to run in a "Ball group" style guild. We're overpowered. We're absolutely not "outdated" when you consider that our playstyle has only gotten more powerful as the population gets smaller. The concept of "play in an organized group in voice comms" doesn't become outdated just because our enemies have gotten less powerful/numerous.)

I see the confusion. What I meant was that the concept that made ball groups necessary, massive zergs of 100+ people is no longer valid and is "outdated". The concept that made them necessary not the actual ball group unto itself. They have continued to get more powerful comparatively with the overall pop reduction even if you discount buffs to sets/skills and because the premise of their necessity (and their necessary power) is obsolete they should be looked at. Basically what was once a large fish in a big ocean is now a large fish in a small pond, the fish didn't change size but comparatively it is now much more significant.

See, I have to disagree about the premise of their necessity and necessary power.

The premise is to win. To dominate larger groups of players, capture objectives, and make loads of AP.

Ball groups are still hands down the most effective method of doing so, which is why the zergs have died and ball groups haven't. The premise of a ball group is evergreen: play in a tightly coordinated, trained group to win over all the less coordinated groups.

They do get looked at by ZOS periodically, but it's kinda hard to nerf the power of teamwork in an AvAvA game originally designed for teams of 8 to 24 players. (It absolutely does not help that ZOS keeps developing sets that only a team of tightly coordinated players can benefit from.)

xylena_lazarow

VaranisArano wrote: »

The premise is to win

Is it still "winning" when your group can stall indefinitely but can't flip the flags?

Buff the ability to decisively end fights. Nerf the ability to stalemate them.

Tiphis

Kordai wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Lebkuchen wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

Pop cap for each faction is 80, was 600 originally. They don't talk about it much as it doesn't paint their performance "fixes" well.

I have spent thousands of hours in Cyrodiil, and i have seen some situations where you could count almost all players. For example: One alliance with a very long queue has been gated by both enemy aliances, and there was only one scroll left at the temple. Nothing else was under attack, no big fights anywhere else. Everyone was either sitting somewhere in the 2 homebases, or waiting at the scroll. I do not think anyone would wait over an hour in queue to go for master angler achievement or delve bosses. So if you traveled to these 3 places (as a member of the bullied alliance) you could see how many players were actually online. And i feel like it has been way less than 80 for a long time, at least on Playstation EU. I would say maybe 40-60.

It would be really interesting to know the real numbers, and if they changed in some situations, like PvP events or weekends.

I hope they will fix Cyrodiil instead of letting it die, and i hope we can have massive fights again one day. ESO is one of my favourite games but i would have stopped playing it years ago if Cyrodiil did not exist.

I read the post but did not see the situation described where you could count the players, or almost all the players, in the campaign.

He said when your faction has lost everything and everyone is in one of the two bases for the most part. That is my experience as well, pretty easy to see everyone when you have no keeps and your faction is doing nothing on the map. Yeah, maybe 1 group or some rando's are out riding around, but the bulk of the faction is sitting in the bases trying to figure out what to do. Even moreso when you are literally gated and get killed simply riding off the ledge from your base. It isn't that hard to count the players, and when there is a queue to get in, well you know thats how many are allowed in.

Obviously not an exact number, but it gives you a pretty close approximation, as hiding an extra 40 players would be pretty hard to accomplish and something would show on the map.

They surmised.

Even then without an attempt to count what they could see.

A better guess would be counting players at a keep under attack instead of pondering how many people may have been sitting within the two bases.

Not in my experience. Once something is under attack, maybe half head there, the other half somewhere else and it becomes neigh impossible to know how many are around. Some small groups go light up another keep, some start taking resources, because they aren't being insta killed trying to ride out, and I know my group generally heads off towards an enemy back keep to draw heat off whatever of ours is being attacked.

Much easier to see how many folks are around, when the only place you have to hang out, is your faction bases. But like I said, it isn't exact, but leads me to believe the pop cap for each faction is much lower than 80. Been a very long time since I have seen 80 of the same faction anywhere in Cyro. Highly doubtful the game could even handle it if there were, as we are getting discoed by a mere 30 of the other faction showing up nowadays.

Oh yes. In general, there tend to be two major battles on the map, but not necessarily limited to that and we do not know if everyone is at one of the locations or another.

But in the example that was provided where a person said they could almost count all the players they did not count any nor indicate they were seeing any. They merely guessed that most were at one of the bases or another or sitting at the sole scroll the alliance had.

So yes. they did surmise. Yes, it would be nice to actually know what the population cap is but guessing does not bring any light to the actual numbers. That was my point.

The only population ever given by zos was 600 per faction for a total pop of 1800 as per this post from launch. As far as I'm aware there has never been any official word since. The number 80 per faction is mostly general consensus that I've heard. So yes total hearsay.

However there is no way that there are 1800 people playing in cyrodiil when it shows capped populations. I don't even want to know what performance would look like then, you'd have to leave the game running overnight in order to land a dswing. I have never seen anything over ~60 players of the same faction anywhere. So while there is the possibility the other 100+ are taking in the view of the countryside and erping behind gates, it is probably a slim one. So while I'd accept up to 100 per faction and maybe even 120, anything over that is just not plausible.

Maybe with the coding changes cyrodil cap will go back up and more people will play and it will resolve by itself. Might take awhile for people to get back into/ start pvping though. Maybe they add more pvp content to try to rejuvenate it?

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

The premise is to win

Is it still "winning" when your group can stall indefinitely but can't flip the flags?

Buff the ability to decisively end fights. Nerf the ability to stalemate them.

Add player collision so we can body block and push them off keeps XD

We'd also be able to make human pyramids to climb over walls. Allow us to fling dead enemies in catapults off the keep so they cant get rezzed.

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO

The harder its made for groups to survive / force them to be smaller and more efficient the stronger you make groups which can achieve that.

The OP is kind of right but I would consider the terminology wrong. Originally 'Ball group' was used to describe the zergs which would all run together spamming healing springs stacked on crown and you had 'Bomb groups' which were designed to counter those by running smaller numbers (started as 6-8 and grew each patch due to a number of reasons which isn't really worth getting into here) eventually it came to things where 12-16m were optimal for these 'Bomb groups' to take out 24m+ groups + the pugs which always followed them.
Now everyone basically uses the term 'Ball group' for both these groups. Especially with group size down to 12m and basically everyone running at 12 on top of the completely changed mechanics (no springs spam forcing groups to stack, loads of HoTs etc).

Note: The playstyles of each group also were very similar simply due to game healing and damage mechanics the main difference was that the large groups were generally campaign focused and often tried to outnumber their opponents whereas the bomb groups were specifically focused on taking down these large groups and of fighting outnumbered.

Each patch when things are added to 'hurt groups' it actually just removes more casual groups and lowers the chance that anyone can actually combat the already strong groups which are able to adapt to the changes more easily as they have more experienced players. At the same time sets and abilities are then added / changed to make the advantage they have even stronger.

Kordai

VaranisArano wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

The very concept of ball groups is outdated.
Or...
Ball groups are so dominant in low-pop PVP that it's actively unfun for everyone not in a ball group.

Come on, pick one.

I hate to be the one to break it to you but the original pop cap of 1800 isn't still a thing. Your options literally aren't exclusive so not quite sure what you're talking about. But if you consider max pop to be low pop I can see your confusion.

Again :My argument was that the concept that made them necessary early on when proxy was created is now outdated as happens when this thing called "time" passes and changes are made. When the actual population cap in cyrodiil was 1800, you had massive zergs. Ball groups were made to largely counter those big zergs. And when you have massive numbers ball groups were fine and still didn't have a crazy impact because of the total population size. As population dropped and dropped to the current max cap of 240 total, they power difference simply went up and up. Hypothetically if the pop cap was reduced even further to 40 people, would you still argue that they aren't OP?

The current population cap is absolutely "low pop" compared to what we had even a few years ago. The lower the population gets, the more dominant ball groups get because it's harder and harder to counter them with a faction stack. Drop that to 40, and you can kiss any plans of breaking a properly built, trained 12-player Ball group goodbye.

But you can't go claiming something is dominant and outdated in the same breath.

Organized groups don't purely exist to counter zergs. In fact, it's pretty obvious that current ball groups exist to farm objectives, zergs, hordes of unorganized players for AP. They do that really, really well right now. Ball groups are still dominating the campaigns because they are the opposite of outdated. They are more dominant now because there are less semi-organized players around to oppose them.

Are they outdated?
Or are they overpowered?
Pick one.

(I prefer to run in a "Ball group" style guild. We're overpowered. We're absolutely not "outdated" when you consider that our playstyle has only gotten more powerful as the population gets smaller. The concept of "play in an organized group in voice comms" doesn't become outdated just because our enemies have gotten less powerful/numerous.)

I see the confusion. What I meant was that the concept that made ball groups necessary, massive zergs of 100+ people is no longer valid and is "outdated". The concept that made them necessary not the actual ball group unto itself. They have continued to get more powerful comparatively with the overall pop reduction even if you discount buffs to sets/skills and because the premise of their necessity (and their necessary power) is obsolete they should be looked at. Basically what was once a large fish in a big ocean is now a large fish in a small pond, the fish didn't change size but comparatively it is now much more significant.

See, I have to disagree about the premise of their necessity and necessary power.

The premise is to win. To dominate larger groups of players, capture objectives, and make loads of AP.

Ball groups are still hands down the most effective method of doing so, which is why the zergs have died and ball groups haven't. The premise of a ball group is evergreen: play in a tightly coordinated, trained group to win over all the less coordinated groups.

They do get looked at by ZOS periodically, but it's kinda hard to nerf the power of teamwork in an AvAvA game originally designed for teams of 8 to 24 players. (It absolutely does not help that ZOS keeps developing sets that only a team of tightly coordinated players can benefit from.)

Sure the premise is to win... like it has in every pvp environment for at least as long as life has existed. Not sure what that has to do with anything. Unless your argument is that ball groups should win and therefore the game should be balanced around having them win every scenario.

"I feel like people keep missing the point, I never said that ball groups shouldn't be good just HOW good they should be. Just reread my OP again I guess I don't feel like rewording it all." I'll just keep quoting myself ad nauseam.

Kordai

Tiphis wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Amottica wrote: »

Lebkuchen wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

Pop cap for each faction is 80, was 600 originally. They don't talk about it much as it doesn't paint their performance "fixes" well.

I have spent thousands of hours in Cyrodiil, and i have seen some situations where you could count almost all players. For example: One alliance with a very long queue has been gated by both enemy aliances, and there was only one scroll left at the temple. Nothing else was under attack, no big fights anywhere else. Everyone was either sitting somewhere in the 2 homebases, or waiting at the scroll. I do not think anyone would wait over an hour in queue to go for master angler achievement or delve bosses. So if you traveled to these 3 places (as a member of the bullied alliance) you could see how many players were actually online. And i feel like it has been way less than 80 for a long time, at least on Playstation EU. I would say maybe 40-60.

It would be really interesting to know the real numbers, and if they changed in some situations, like PvP events or weekends.

I hope they will fix Cyrodiil instead of letting it die, and i hope we can have massive fights again one day. ESO is one of my favourite games but i would have stopped playing it years ago if Cyrodiil did not exist.

I read the post but did not see the situation described where you could count the players, or almost all the players, in the campaign.

He said when your faction has lost everything and everyone is in one of the two bases for the most part. That is my experience as well, pretty easy to see everyone when you have no keeps and your faction is doing nothing on the map. Yeah, maybe 1 group or some rando's are out riding around, but the bulk of the faction is sitting in the bases trying to figure out what to do. Even moreso when you are literally gated and get killed simply riding off the ledge from your base. It isn't that hard to count the players, and when there is a queue to get in, well you know thats how many are allowed in.

Obviously not an exact number, but it gives you a pretty close approximation, as hiding an extra 40 players would be pretty hard to accomplish and something would show on the map.

They surmised.

Even then without an attempt to count what they could see.

A better guess would be counting players at a keep under attack instead of pondering how many people may have been sitting within the two bases.

Not in my experience. Once something is under attack, maybe half head there, the other half somewhere else and it becomes neigh impossible to know how many are around. Some small groups go light up another keep, some start taking resources, because they aren't being insta killed trying to ride out, and I know my group generally heads off towards an enemy back keep to draw heat off whatever of ours is being attacked.

Much easier to see how many folks are around, when the only place you have to hang out, is your faction bases. But like I said, it isn't exact, but leads me to believe the pop cap for each faction is much lower than 80. Been a very long time since I have seen 80 of the same faction anywhere in Cyro. Highly doubtful the game could even handle it if there were, as we are getting discoed by a mere 30 of the other faction showing up nowadays.

Oh yes. In general, there tend to be two major battles on the map, but not necessarily limited to that and we do not know if everyone is at one of the locations or another.

But in the example that was provided where a person said they could almost count all the players they did not count any nor indicate they were seeing any. They merely guessed that most were at one of the bases or another or sitting at the sole scroll the alliance had.

So yes. they did surmise. Yes, it would be nice to actually know what the population cap is but guessing does not bring any light to the actual numbers. That was my point.

The only population ever given by zos was 600 per faction for a total pop of 1800 as per this post from launch. As far as I'm aware there has never been any official word since. The number 80 per faction is mostly general consensus that I've heard. So yes total hearsay.

However there is no way that there are 1800 people playing in cyrodiil when it shows capped populations. I don't even want to know what performance would look like then, you'd have to leave the game running overnight in order to land a dswing. I have never seen anything over ~60 players of the same faction anywhere. So while there is the possibility the other 100+ are taking in the view of the countryside and erping behind gates, it is probably a slim one. So while I'd accept up to 100 per faction and maybe even 120, anything over that is just not plausible.

Maybe with the coding changes cyrodil cap will go back up and more people will play and it will resolve by itself. Might take awhile for people to get back into/ start pvping though. Maybe they add more pvp content to try to rejuvenate it?

Kordai

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

The harder its made for groups to survive / force them to be smaller and more efficient the stronger you make groups which can achieve that.

The OP is kind of right but I would consider the terminology wrong. Originally 'Ball group' was used to describe the zergs which would all run together spamming healing springs stacked on crown and you had 'Bomb groups' which were designed to counter those by running smaller numbers (started as 6-8 and grew each patch due to a number of reasons which isn't really worth getting into here) eventually it came to things where 12-16m were optimal for these 'Bomb groups' to take out 24m+ groups + the pugs which always followed them.
Now everyone basically uses the term 'Ball group' for both these groups. Especially with group size down to 12m and basically everyone running at 12 on top of the completely changed mechanics (no springs spam forcing groups to stack, loads of HoTs etc).

Note: The playstyles of each group also were very similar simply due to game healing and damage mechanics the main difference was that the large groups were generally campaign focused and often tried to outnumber their opponents whereas the bomb groups were specifically focused on taking down these large groups and of fighting outnumbered.

Each patch when things are added to 'hurt groups' it actually just removes more casual groups and lowers the chance that anyone can actually combat the already strong groups which are able to adapt to the changes more easily as they have more experienced players. At the same time sets and abilities are then added / changed to make the advantage they have even stronger.

But as most groups regardless of specificity share some of the same aspects as the fairly OP ones I'm talking about, so felt no need to specify.

There are plenty of things that if reworked would only effect coordinated groups and less so the uncoordinated groups. If done poorly yes it would end up making things worse. However fundamentally there have been more buffs than nerfs.

Group sets should not be better than solo sets on an individual. Aoe heals are worse, aoe damage abilities are worse...

alberichtano

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

sinnereso wrote: »

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Cuddlypuff wrote: »

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

With max pop at 80.

Is this confirmed to be true? Do you have a source? The last confirmed number I've heard is 200. We speculate that it has been lowered over time but as far as I know there hasn't been a definitive answer.

Keep in mind at least 25% of each faction is doing [snip] all at any given time, standing around afk, hanging out at the gates deciding what to do, questing in cities, chasing down dolmens and skyshards for achievements, etc.

From what I have seen lately, I am under the impression it has been recently lowered closer to 50 per faction.

On Gray Host, addons often report 100+ players of 1 faction during a siege. If you assume some AFKs and questers, the absolute cap would appear to be ~120.

Which addon does that, or what function of the addon? I am absolutely interested in knowing.

Amottica wrote: »

Gaeliannas wrote: »

Kartalin wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

With max pop at 80.

Is this confirmed to be true? Do you have a source? The last confirmed number I've heard is 200. We speculate that it has been lowered over time but as far as I know there hasn't been a definitive answer.

Keep in mind at least 25% of each faction is doing [snip] all at any given time, standing around afk, hanging out at the gates deciding what to do, questing in cities, chasing down dolmens and skyshards for achievements, etc.

From what I have seen lately, I am under the impression it has been recently lowered closer to 50 per faction.

How do you gauge that? None of us can actually see how many players are in the campaign. We can only see how many are where we are. Guessing, shots in the dark, tend to lack actual basis.

As I said, just my impression, mostly based on losing everything on the map and our entire pop locked faction being in one or two places and nothing at all going on on the map from us. Which of course there could be a few stay folks riding around somewhere, but just seemed like there are never more than 40 of us in one place, even when we are apparently all (or close to all) there. No basis in fact at all, just an impression that compared to a few months ago, there are a lot less folks around and in fights... and almost never more than one fight on the map anymore.

The addon is called Miat's PVP alerts. The headcount feature is nice but I think it needs to remove the ability to alert when specific enemies are within the area. It's the reason I don't play nightblade or bother to use invis pots for initiation anymore.

You dont really need an addon to know if theres enemies nearby, the music changes

If you are a bomber or ganker main, people literally add your name to the list for a more pronounced visual/audio cue. That's why sometimes people act super suss on a resource flag or door, running around magelighting / flaring corners etc.

[edited to remove quote]

Not really... I can of course only speak for myself, but when it comes to taking resources I ALWAYS use magelight. I have no idea how to do that you mentioned, and I am not really interested to either. I magelight so that I can avoid being ganked. Sometimes it works, often not so much.

Kartalin

Kordai wrote: »

Group sets should not be better than solo sets on an individual. Aoe heals are worse, aoe damage abilities are worse...

With the success and popularity of Rallying Cry as a set concept -- modifying the buffs it provides according to group size -- we may see the same approach taken with new sets in upcoming releases, and perhaps even older sets updated to a similar concept.
.

DrSlaughtr

VaranisArano wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

The very concept of ball groups is outdated.
Or...
Ball groups are so dominant in low-pop PVP that it's actively unfun for everyone not in a ball group.

Come on, pick one.

I hate to be the one to break it to you but the original pop cap of 1800 isn't still a thing. Your options literally aren't exclusive so not quite sure what you're talking about. But if you consider max pop to be low pop I can see your confusion.

Again :My argument was that the concept that made them necessary early on when proxy was created is now outdated as happens when this thing called "time" passes and changes are made. When the actual population cap in cyrodiil was 1800, you had massive zergs. Ball groups were made to largely counter those big zergs. And when you have massive numbers ball groups were fine and still didn't have a crazy impact because of the total population size. As population dropped and dropped to the current max cap of 240 total, they power difference simply went up and up. Hypothetically if the pop cap was reduced even further to 40 people, would you still argue that they aren't OP?

The current population cap is absolutely "low pop" compared to what we had even a few years ago. The lower the population gets, the more dominant ball groups get because it's harder and harder to counter them with a faction stack. Drop that to 40, and you can kiss any plans of breaking a properly built, trained 12-player Ball group goodbye.

But you can't go claiming something is dominant and outdated in the same breath.

Organized groups don't purely exist to counter zergs. In fact, it's pretty obvious that current ball groups exist to farm objectives, zergs, hordes of unorganized players for AP. They do that really, really well right now. Ball groups are still dominating the campaigns because they are the opposite of outdated. They are more dominant now because there are less semi-organized players around to oppose them.

Are they outdated?
Or are they overpowered?
Pick one.

(I prefer to run in a "Ball group" style guild. We're overpowered. We're absolutely not "outdated" when you consider that our playstyle has only gotten more powerful as the population gets smaller. The concept of "play in an organized group in voice comms" doesn't become outdated just because our enemies have gotten less powerful/numerous.)

I see the confusion. What I meant was that the concept that made ball groups necessary, massive zergs of 100+ people is no longer valid and is "outdated". The concept that made them necessary not the actual ball group unto itself. They have continued to get more powerful comparatively with the overall pop reduction even if you discount buffs to sets/skills and because the premise of their necessity (and their necessary power) is obsolete they should be looked at. Basically what was once a large fish in a big ocean is now a large fish in a small pond, the fish didn't change size but comparatively it is now much more significant.

See, I have to disagree about the premise of their necessity and necessary power.

The premise is to win. To dominate larger groups of players, capture objectives, and make loads of AP.

Ball groups are still hands down the most effective method of doing so, which is why the zergs have died and ball groups haven't. The premise of a ball group is evergreen: play in a tightly coordinated, trained group to win over all the less coordinated groups.

They do get looked at by ZOS periodically, but it's kinda hard to nerf the power of teamwork in an AvAvA game originally designed for teams of 8 to 24 players. (It absolutely does not help that ZOS keeps developing sets that only a team of tightly coordinated players can benefit from.)

Zergs haven't died because of ball groups. They've died because population is lower than it's ever been.

The current way to kill a ball group is to overwhelm them because they take advantage of poor balance. In the past, the only way to eject a troll ball group was with overwhelming forces. Because there are no longer enough players to do so oftentimes, that's another thing ball groups don't have to worry about.

From a ball group's perspective, spending 30 minutes running up and down the stairs at Sej is fun. For everyone else? It's boring at best and infuriating at worst. A ball group needs other players to fight so maybe driving them offline isn't the wisest strategy. It's also funny how ball groups usually end up fighting non ball groups all across the map rather than engage one another.

VaranisArano

TheEndBringer wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

The very concept of ball groups is outdated.
Or...
Ball groups are so dominant in low-pop PVP that it's actively unfun for everyone not in a ball group.

Come on, pick one.

I hate to be the one to break it to you but the original pop cap of 1800 isn't still a thing. Your options literally aren't exclusive so not quite sure what you're talking about. But if you consider max pop to be low pop I can see your confusion.

Again :My argument was that the concept that made them necessary early on when proxy was created is now outdated as happens when this thing called "time" passes and changes are made. When the actual population cap in cyrodiil was 1800, you had massive zergs. Ball groups were made to largely counter those big zergs. And when you have massive numbers ball groups were fine and still didn't have a crazy impact because of the total population size. As population dropped and dropped to the current max cap of 240 total, they power difference simply went up and up. Hypothetically if the pop cap was reduced even further to 40 people, would you still argue that they aren't OP?

The current population cap is absolutely "low pop" compared to what we had even a few years ago. The lower the population gets, the more dominant ball groups get because it's harder and harder to counter them with a faction stack. Drop that to 40, and you can kiss any plans of breaking a properly built, trained 12-player Ball group goodbye.

But you can't go claiming something is dominant and outdated in the same breath.

Organized groups don't purely exist to counter zergs. In fact, it's pretty obvious that current ball groups exist to farm objectives, zergs, hordes of unorganized players for AP. They do that really, really well right now. Ball groups are still dominating the campaigns because they are the opposite of outdated. They are more dominant now because there are less semi-organized players around to oppose them.

Are they outdated?
Or are they overpowered?
Pick one.

(I prefer to run in a "Ball group" style guild. We're overpowered. We're absolutely not "outdated" when you consider that our playstyle has only gotten more powerful as the population gets smaller. The concept of "play in an organized group in voice comms" doesn't become outdated just because our enemies have gotten less powerful/numerous.)

I see the confusion. What I meant was that the concept that made ball groups necessary, massive zergs of 100+ people is no longer valid and is "outdated". The concept that made them necessary not the actual ball group unto itself. They have continued to get more powerful comparatively with the overall pop reduction even if you discount buffs to sets/skills and because the premise of their necessity (and their necessary power) is obsolete they should be looked at. Basically what was once a large fish in a big ocean is now a large fish in a small pond, the fish didn't change size but comparatively it is now much more significant.

See, I have to disagree about the premise of their necessity and necessary power.

The premise is to win. To dominate larger groups of players, capture objectives, and make loads of AP.

Ball groups are still hands down the most effective method of doing so, which is why the zergs have died and ball groups haven't. The premise of a ball group is evergreen: play in a tightly coordinated, trained group to win over all the less coordinated groups.

They do get looked at by ZOS periodically, but it's kinda hard to nerf the power of teamwork in an AvAvA game originally designed for teams of 8 to 24 players. (It absolutely does not help that ZOS keeps developing sets that only a team of tightly coordinated players can benefit from.)

Zergs haven't died because of ball groups. They've died because population is lower than it's ever been. Faction stacks are a sad vestige of their former selves.

The current way to kill a ball group is to overwhelm them because they take advantage of poor balance. In the past, the only way to eject a troll ball group was with overwhelming forces. Because there are no longer enough players to do so oftentimes, that's another thing ball groups don't have to worry about.

From a ball group's perspective, spending 30 minutes running up and down the stairs at Sej is fun. For everyone else? It's boring at best and infuriating at worst. A ball group needs other players to fight so maybe driving them offline isn't the wisest strategy. It's also funny how ball groups usually end up fighting non ball groups all across the map rather than engage one another.

Yeah, I agree the zergs died largely due to low pop and bad performance.

I don't think it's strange that ball groups don't fight ball groups when there's a lot more AP to be made now fighting everyone else. Ball group vs ball group fights tend to be a long stalemate where there's really not a lot of AP to be made, especially in the open field.

There are guilds that fight other guilds, but those are typically the faction focused guilds who fight at objectives rather than running the top floors at back keeps or the Sej stairs.


And while I understand your point about "hey, ball groups, in the longterm, maybe don't drive players away with boring gameplay", but I don't expect it to appeal to anyone who's in or runs a ball group. In the short-term, this is what their guild mates like to do. This is why they play PVP. It's a choice between having fun now in their preferred way vs maybe having a healthier PVP population a few years down the line (when that guild or those players maybe moved on). Guild leaders are going to prioritize what's best for their guild now.

It's real easy to tell someone else to play differently for "the greater good." It should come as no surprise when ball group guilds don't listen to people who aren't in their guild.

Frankly, the only way we get healthier PVP gameplay and population is for ZOS to fix the performance issues so they can raise the population cap. If they can't do that, then Cyrodiil is going to die whether the ball groups listen to you or not.

DrSlaughtr

VaranisArano wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Kordai wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

The very concept of ball groups is outdated.
Or...
Ball groups are so dominant in low-pop PVP that it's actively unfun for everyone not in a ball group.

Come on, pick one.

I hate to be the one to break it to you but the original pop cap of 1800 isn't still a thing. Your options literally aren't exclusive so not quite sure what you're talking about. But if you consider max pop to be low pop I can see your confusion.

Again :My argument was that the concept that made them necessary early on when proxy was created is now outdated as happens when this thing called "time" passes and changes are made. When the actual population cap in cyrodiil was 1800, you had massive zergs. Ball groups were made to largely counter those big zergs. And when you have massive numbers ball groups were fine and still didn't have a crazy impact because of the total population size. As population dropped and dropped to the current max cap of 240 total, they power difference simply went up and up. Hypothetically if the pop cap was reduced even further to 40 people, would you still argue that they aren't OP?

The current population cap is absolutely "low pop" compared to what we had even a few years ago. The lower the population gets, the more dominant ball groups get because it's harder and harder to counter them with a faction stack. Drop that to 40, and you can kiss any plans of breaking a properly built, trained 12-player Ball group goodbye.

But you can't go claiming something is dominant and outdated in the same breath.

Organized groups don't purely exist to counter zergs. In fact, it's pretty obvious that current ball groups exist to farm objectives, zergs, hordes of unorganized players for AP. They do that really, really well right now. Ball groups are still dominating the campaigns because they are the opposite of outdated. They are more dominant now because there are less semi-organized players around to oppose them.

Are they outdated?
Or are they overpowered?
Pick one.

(I prefer to run in a "Ball group" style guild. We're overpowered. We're absolutely not "outdated" when you consider that our playstyle has only gotten more powerful as the population gets smaller. The concept of "play in an organized group in voice comms" doesn't become outdated just because our enemies have gotten less powerful/numerous.)

I see the confusion. What I meant was that the concept that made ball groups necessary, massive zergs of 100+ people is no longer valid and is "outdated". The concept that made them necessary not the actual ball group unto itself. They have continued to get more powerful comparatively with the overall pop reduction even if you discount buffs to sets/skills and because the premise of their necessity (and their necessary power) is obsolete they should be looked at. Basically what was once a large fish in a big ocean is now a large fish in a small pond, the fish didn't change size but comparatively it is now much more significant.

See, I have to disagree about the premise of their necessity and necessary power.

The premise is to win. To dominate larger groups of players, capture objectives, and make loads of AP.

Ball groups are still hands down the most effective method of doing so, which is why the zergs have died and ball groups haven't. The premise of a ball group is evergreen: play in a tightly coordinated, trained group to win over all the less coordinated groups.

They do get looked at by ZOS periodically, but it's kinda hard to nerf the power of teamwork in an AvAvA game originally designed for teams of 8 to 24 players. (It absolutely does not help that ZOS keeps developing sets that only a team of tightly coordinated players can benefit from.)

Zergs haven't died because of ball groups. They've died because population is lower than it's ever been. Faction stacks are a sad vestige of their former selves.

The current way to kill a ball group is to overwhelm them because they take advantage of poor balance. In the past, the only way to eject a troll ball group was with overwhelming forces. Because there are no longer enough players to do so oftentimes, that's another thing ball groups don't have to worry about.

From a ball group's perspective, spending 30 minutes running up and down the stairs at Sej is fun. For everyone else? It's boring at best and infuriating at worst. A ball group needs other players to fight so maybe driving them offline isn't the wisest strategy. It's also funny how ball groups usually end up fighting non ball groups all across the map rather than engage one another.

Yeah, I agree the zergs died largely due to low pop and bad performance.

I don't think it's strange that ball groups don't fight ball groups when there's a lot more AP to be made now fighting everyone else. Ball group vs ball group fights tend to be a long stalemate where there's really not a lot of AP to be made, especially in the open field.

There are guilds that fight other guilds, but those are typically the faction focused guilds who fight at objectives rather than running the top floors at back keeps or the Sej stairs.


And while I understand your point about "hey, ball groups, in the longterm, maybe don't drive players away with boring gameplay", but I don't expect it to appeal to anyone who's in or runs a ball group. In the short-term, this is what their guild mates like to do. This is why they play PVP. It's a choice between having fun now in their preferred way vs maybe having a healthier PVP population a few years down the line (when that guild or those players maybe moved on). Guild leaders are going to prioritize what's best for their guild now.

It's real easy to tell someone else to play differently for "the greater good." It should come as no surprise when ball group guilds don't listen to people who aren't in their guild.

Frankly, the only way we get healthier PVP gameplay and population is for ZOS to fix the performance issues so they can raise the population cap. If they can't do that, then Cyrodiil is going to die whether the ball groups listen to you or not.

I'm not telling anyone to play differently but the fact is most (not all) will follow the weakest groups around the map for, as you said, easy AP. There point is, if 99% of the population doesn't find that playstyle enjoyable but they're constantly having to spend ridiculous amounts of time chasing the 1% around and getting picked on by 12 players cheesing the system, then maybe the 99% needs and actual tool for fighting them.

Importantly not a tool the ball groups themselves will use.

24 good players shouldn't take 20 minutes to eject a 12 man group only surviving due to min maxing and indestructible obstacles.