Shouldn't we start to use term "Lag-group"?

Elendir2am

We use terms like ball-group, zerg, faction-stack, but I think that we should start to distinguish klasik organized group as ball-group and spamers who are bringing performance og whole server several scale down.

I have experience only from PC-EU locked server. Every time, when lag-group Nova start their AoE layering, performance go to hell. Not only in their vicinity, where they farm kills of lag-stucked or game-crashed players. It is unplayeble lag on oposite side of Cyro in low scale batle of some resource as well.

So? Shouldn't we start to call them according to their playstyle already?

Oakenaxe

People in ball groups are not immune to lag, they suffer just the same. Bad performance is not to blame on the players.

Elendir2am

I don't call out all ball-groups and its members. This is about very specific type of gameplay. My post has nothing against organised groups, which are optimized and coordinated enough to wipe out zerg.

I use Lag-group as term for organised group, which bait number of opponents on keep or scroll. Then they move around and layer AoE after AoE. When you observe them, you se your enemy AoE color, like stroke of brush which coloring whole area. Number of AoE, buffs, cross-healing and other skills, they spam in scale of second is so high, that servers performance is severely crippled.

Whole Cyrro is one big laggy mess, when they are presented and you have problem in combat with few guards. Then they left Cyrro, and performance is enjoyable. You can combat army against army, foght some clasic ball-group and lag is 1 or 2 second at worst moment.

I am hardly only one, who saw this connection between somespecifi group presence, their play style and laggy mess it is accompanied. I've seen so much complaints about PvP server performance, so I'm surprised no one has commented on this correlation yet.

Amottica

Oakenaxe wrote: »

People in ball groups are not immune to lag, they suffer just the same. Bad performance is not to blame on the players.

This is very accurate. It makes no sense to blame players because of the game's performance because of how the game is designed and the equipment it runs on.

I recall seeing an old post commenting that they have never played a game where the performance got worse as the game aged. Even Zenimax has acknowledged that the performance degradation is linked to systems that have been added to the game over the years, which is why they are limiting adding new systems until they fix performance.

None of that is because of any group of players.

xFocused

I'm in a ball group guild and we are absolutely not immune to lag. We voice those frustrations anytime we try to run a group. We can't even run a small 4-6 man group without randomly glitching, freezing, unable to swap bars, etc...I know a lot of players think these ball groups or zergs if you will cause the lag but when I'm lagging as a solo player in the middle of a field...it's a server problem, not a player problem

VaranisArano

Despite anecdotal evidence to the contrary, when ZOS did tests aimed at targeting the layered AOE, DOTs, andHOTs as you describe, ZOS didn't see any noticeable improvement on their end.

It's a code problem, as ZOS showed when they committed to rearchitecturing their code. Its probably also a server problem, as shown when the PC/NA refresh solved some (though not all) performance issues.

Zyva

The only test that I ever saw improve lag, and it did by an exponential amount, was having heals only be in group. But people freaked out about not being able to heal pugs solo, so they scrapped it.

MipMip

Elendir2am wrote: »

My post has nothing against organised groups, which are optimized and coordinated enough to wipe out zerg.

This is exactly what Nova and other ball groups are - optimized builds, optimized group composition, optimized coordination, lots of practice -> we can fight outnumbered and wipe zergs. And using AoEs is part of optimization - or do you think focusing down the zerg one by one with single target skills would be effective?

Concerning lag: we suffer from it like everybody else... can't wait for the new servers on EU!

Elendir2am

MipMip wrote: »

Elendir2am wrote: »

My post has nothing against organised groups, which are optimized and coordinated enough to wipe out zerg.

This is exactly what Nova and other ball groups are - optimized builds, optimized group composition, optimized coordination, lots of practice -> we can fight outnumbered and wipe zergs. And using AoEs is part of optimization - or do you think focusing down the zerg one by one with single target skills would be effective?

Concerning lag: we suffer from it like everybody else... can't wait for the new servers on EU!

Nova don't fight zerg, they fight people, who don't understand, that they are baited to lag-mess farming. Only when there aren't enough people who are easily lured like this, they start chasing people who don't want to play with them.

Thing groups like Nova do is same, like tower monkeys do, but on much bigger scale. And it isn't targeting enemies with AoE. It is layering AoE everywhere + cros-healing, because it is only way to place damage in lag-mess they envoke.

I see big difference between:
1. Ball-group see zerg and start to targeting them with AoEs.
2. Lag-group bait noobs somewhere, where they can fill it with AoEs so noobs cannot survive.

VaranisArano

Zyva wrote: »

The only test that I ever saw improve lag, and it did by an exponential amount, was having heals only be in group. But people freaked out about not being able to heal pugs solo, so they scrapped it.

And also because as far as ZOS saw, it didn't make a difference.

"When this test begins on February 15, we will also be reverting a prior test where abilities cast on allies were restricted to group targets only. This adjustment gave no appreciable gains towards performance improvements, so this restriction will be removed until further notice and abilities which target/can be triggered by players outside of your group will once again function as they do outside of Cyrodiil."
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/561180/feb-15-cyrodiil-test-details/p1

Whatever exponential improvement you saw, ZOS did not.

NotTaylorSwift

VaranisArano wrote: »

Zyva wrote: »

The only test that I ever saw improve lag, and it did by an exponential amount, was having heals only be in group. But people freaked out about not being able to heal pugs solo, so they scrapped it.

And also because as far as ZOS saw, it didn't make a difference.

"When this test begins on February 15, we will also be reverting a prior test where abilities cast on allies were restricted to group targets only. This adjustment gave no appreciable gains towards performance improvements, so this restriction will be removed until further notice and abilities which target/can be triggered by players outside of your group will once again function as they do outside of Cyrodiil."
https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/561180/feb-15-cyrodiil-test-details/p1

Whatever exponential improvement you saw, ZOS did not.

Who cares what ZoS said. The majority of non forum warriors agreed that the group only heals had the best result. The tests were just trash in general. The aoe cooldown tests had decent results in the first week of the change and then cyrodiil was back to being laggy af and unplayable. Similar thing after every patch. It's fine for a few days and then its back to being super laggy. Was the same situation for all the tests. But imo the group only heals affected performance the most.

doesurmindglow

To the extent ball groups are responsible for lag, it's usually because a faction stack is required to kill them. Don't zerg them with 60+ players and the lag is markedly reduced.

I know this because ball groups often gvg other ball groups 12v12 and lag is rarely noticeable in those fights. Fighting 12v60, though, there will be substantial performance impact. It's the 60 players that bring the lag, not the 12. Which makes sense: more players in an area = more lag. But for some reason, always the ball group, and never the faction stack zerg, is to blame.

I've talked at some length about how to reduce the viability of ball groups in severely lopsided fights, but I'm generally ignored by both Zenimax and ball group haters alike who both insist on continuing to buff them instead, so I've become fairly content to let the game remain the way it is, with ball groups able to survive and farm fights where they're outnumbered 3-6:1.

Regardless, server performance is still the developers' responsibility, and it should be able to easily accommodate the entire population of any server in Cyrodiil in a single area perfectly weaving all of their abilities on global cooldown at all times. We need to get back to this being our expectation -- that the game performs as designed and advertised -- and quit pointing fingers at other players when it does not.

Elendir2am

Once again, I don't want to rename ball groups. I have nothing against their concept. This is about one very specific play style. I saw only one group play this way. Their play style is very different from play style of other ball-groups.

And for question, if we should blame developers only?
If their playstyle is designed to exploit low performance of servers, than it is fair to connect them with low performance of server.
It don't demand any difficult theorycrafting to see, how they use lags for their harvesting. You can observe them for one lap and see it.

Amottica

Elendir2am wrote: »

MipMip wrote: »

Elendir2am wrote: »

My post has nothing against organised groups, which are optimized and coordinated enough to wipe out zerg.

This is exactly what Nova and other ball groups are - optimized builds, optimized group composition, optimized coordination, lots of practice -> we can fight outnumbered and wipe zergs. And using AoEs is part of optimization - or do you think focusing down the zerg one by one with single target skills would be effective?

Concerning lag: we suffer from it like everybody else... can't wait for the new servers on EU!

Nova don't fight zerg, they fight people, who don't understand, that they are baited to lag-mess farming. Only when there aren't enough people who are easily lured like this, they start chasing people who don't want to play with them.

Thing groups like Nova do is same, like tower monkeys do, but on much bigger scale. And it isn't targeting enemies with AoE. It is layering AoE everywhere + cros-healing, because it is only way to place damage in lag-mess they envoke.

I see big difference between:
1. Ball-group see zerg and start to targeting them with AoEs.
2. Lag-group bait noobs somewhere, where they can fill it with AoEs so noobs cannot survive.

So only noobs deal with such lag?

Great opinion but I do not think that is what is happening. My previous post accurately sums up the real issue.

SPR_of_HA_community

Elendir2am wrote: »

We use terms like ball-group, zerg, faction-stack, but I think that we should start to distinguish klasik organized group as ball-group and spamers who are bringing performance og whole server several scale down.

I have experience only from PC-EU locked server. Every time, when lag-group Nova start their AoE layering, performance go to hell. Not only in their vicinity, where they farm kills of lag-stucked or game-crashed players. It is unplayeble lag on oposite side of Cyro in low scale batle of some resource as well.

So? Shouldn't we start to call them according to their playstyle already?

Our players do posts about this problem, they were just ignored.

Yes lag groups do lags on purpose. You have lags, your skill stop work for 3-5 seconds. The same time they have no such problem. Ally whos players use this bug do not get lug, only enemy ally do have lugs.

We think, that the problem is due to HOTs use with a lot of buff sets and special CP.

But problem is just ignored.

So yes - lag groups. Just abuse of game bugs and server problem, you can not normally play and press skills because of them.

But it do not look like developers care about this problem.

The same as I can not get information about U35 HA bug - where HA of lightning staffs lose 1 hit (was 4 becomes 3).

There is no such change in patch notes - so I am just ignored. Problems appear on start of U35 on PTS, now it is start of U36.

Developers do not even give any answer, problem is just ignored.

This problem do exist for a long time already and is same ignored.

Those people know about this. I ask some of them myself. They like, that your skill stop work due to this bug and they easely kill players whoes skill do not press.

It is bug use and cheating. But looks like ZOS do not care for all this years.