Cyrodiil Performance - Group Size and Heals

HazelRose · September 2019

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

No, I'll just admit that I prefer to zerg-surf through PvP. There really isn't anyone on my campaign and alliance that I want to be stuck following around and listening to. I hate sounding dramatic but limiting heals to your group would be one of the few changes that I would quit the game over.

However, I'm not against AoE heal caps or reducing group size. Also not against increasing line of sight requirements on skills. So if curently mutagen checks all players within say a 30 meter radius of you for lowest health, it only checks players in a cone in front of you for example. Not sure how much that would help though.

lpw · September 2019

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

idk wrote: »

For the most part, yes you are. Further, you are also suggesting that if I see someone on a siege or otherwise in combat against the enemy faction I cannot heal them because we are in different groups.

I am thinking Fengrush did not suggest such a thing though I tend to play the game vs watching others play it.

I am saying that part. However, it could maybe be worked around so if they're hard targeted, they could be healed? That could be one way around it? Please remember this is only an initial suggestion/idea to try and help everyone in PVP have a better experience.. Any change of this size would require serious thought, discussion and testing.

It's not that I don't want to heal my alliance either or have no alliance loyalty. I'm the first guy to help randoms if I see them about to die.

For the Fengrush thing, watch his patch notes stream from Monday if you like. Maybe you should watch a few other people play the game instead of racking up thousands of forum posts.

Lord_Bidr · September 2019

odd111out wrote: »

every Cyrodiil campaign has a third of the population from a year ago.... and yet no drastic improvement in performance.

This comment here hits the problem right on the head, and isn't something that's regularly brought up during performance discussions in cyrodiil. The population over the years has been nothing BUT going downhill, and yet the performance only seems to get worse by the patch.

The problem is not the number of people in group, it's not the smart skills, it is the concentration of more players in one area than ZOS' pathetic servers can handle. At this point you could LITERALLY reduce the cyrodiil population down to 150 people (with each faction having only 50 on their side), and this problem would still persist during events like scroll defenses and emperor throning/dethroning.

idk · September 2019

lpw wrote: »

idk wrote: »

For the most part, yes you are. Further, you are also suggesting that if I see someone on a siege or otherwise in combat against the enemy faction I cannot heal them because we are in different groups.

I am thinking Fengrush did not suggest such a thing though I tend to play the game vs watching others play it.

I am saying that part. However, it could maybe be worked around so if they're hard targeted, they could be healed?

How many heals are hard targeted? You are just supporting the problems that I have pointed out suggesting there could be a work around that does not exist except for one heal.

BTW Healing springs is not the answer for a hard targeted heal as it is still a smart heal, choosing the lowest 6 health bars within it each with each tick.

leepalmer95 · September 2019

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

12 man group size, may not help too much but it'll help some with stacking.

Smart heals only work for group members, have to manually target someone outside the group for direct smart heals to work. Large aoe hot's only work with group. Peole realise they won't be able to survive just be sheer stacking with stupids amount of passive offheals and spread out a bit?

Currently if theres a big zerg of like 40 people and i put something like a templar purge down and it hits like 12-18 people thats like 1.5-2.5k heals per tick of it depends on a few things that people are getting without even really doing anything. This can high more way more people.

This then calculated the heal different for everybody depending on their hp received, passives, debuffs, whether its a crit etc.. per person, per time it ticks (which is 2s i believe).

Thats 1 templar purge, now in a big zerg fight there is usually easily 8 of these just about. If there a ram on a door there can be like 6 in 1 location. No wonder the server gives up. Thats just 1 skill, in you include all the off heals flying about as well...

These changes won't really impact pve either. Maybe in open world people would have to target randoms? But honestly healing in this game with smart heals is stupidly easy, literally press a button and the game will automatically target the person mode in need of the heal in a radius around you? Game basically does it for you, but sadly I doubt smart healing with go its too intwined in the game.

ChefZero · September 2019

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

- reduce max groupsize to 12 (raids are 12 ppl, drops are capped to 12 ppl and most organized groups already run ≤12x groups)
- 12x AoE cap to every AoE heal (No Damage Abilities)
- targetable heals (single target and AoE) can hit every player in your faction, no NPCs (and capped as mentioned)
- smart heals will only hit players in your group (if you run solo no one can leech your heal/shield)

This isn't about zergstacking but about the amount of calculations. Zergstacking can only be fixed by reworking the map.

Grianasteri · September 2019

fastolfv_ESO wrote: »

destroying healing springs to the point where nobody will ever use it again did nothing to save the servers, they are worse than they were and have ever been without all the springs calculations. At the end of the day they need to roll back the changes that caused the extra delay on everything caused with elsweyr and fix the engine, no amount of changes to group size and healing can help cyro performance

I use healing springs all the time. I use it along with combat prayer & orbs. Havnt really noticed a massive difference in my ability to heal.

But it was better before, yes.

Delparis · September 2019

ZOS can change the heal so everyone is healed instead of only 1 low health dude.
Less computation (less if .. so conditions).

KappaKid83 · September 2019

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

The_Art_of_Paw wrote: »

lpw wrote: »

Surely, doing these changes would lower the required calculations by half or more? Thus improving performance?

I would be betting that the volume of calculations occurring in pvp land is so insane that a few hundred by the heal portion would be insignificantly small to worry about. Computers can do a bazillion more things then our brains can

I would be betting you are off base. Think about it, 80 players in an area, Radiating Regen goes off and the game needs to come up with a table for these 80 players and find out which 3 have the lowest HP. Now add in 20-30 more healers and that is a that many calculations EVERY SECOND that the server needs to make this 80 person table for. Now you limit heals to group sizes 12 or fewer and now the game has to grab 12 players in a table and find the 3 lowest and heal, seems like a lot less computations to me.

idk · September 2019

leepalmer95 wrote: »

12 man group size, may not help too much but it'll help some with stacking.

Smart heals only work for group members, have to manually target someone outside the group for direct smart heals to work. Large aoe hot's only work with group. Peole realise they won't be able to survive just be sheer stacking with stupids amount of passive offheals and spread out a bit?

I would not expect people to read all the posts so I will hit the highlights of why the idea is a poor idea and not well thought out.

1. smaller groups does nothing about stacking. Not only did the largest zerg groups run multiple full 24 man groups back in Cyrodiil's hay day players tend to flock to where the action is. So smaller groups means you just get more groups at the same location.
2. There is no manual targeting of smart heals. There is only one heal that has targeting. So suggesting manual targeting of heals to permit healing outside of a group if healing is restricted to a group is pretty much nonsense. It would not be an easy job to take a smart heal and add a manual targeting plus it is certain to add load to the server to determine if it should apply by targeting or behave as a smart heal. Not such a great idea.
3. The idea force players into group, especially healers since they have to be in a group to receive heals or heal others.
4. The idea also minimized alliance. I find it odd a medic would chose to not heal their ally, their brother or sister in arms. Vey selfish idea that shows a lack of concern for the alliance. It just does not make sense. Ofc, points 1 & 2 are most significant for design reasons, and logic.

leepalmer95 · September 2019

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

idk wrote: »

leepalmer95 wrote: »

12 man group size, may not help too much but it'll help some with stacking.

Smart heals only work for group members, have to manually target someone outside the group for direct smart heals to work. Large aoe hot's only work with group. Peole realise they won't be able to survive just be sheer stacking with stupids amount of passive offheals and spread out a bit?

I would not expect people to read all the posts so I will hit the highlights of why the idea is a poor idea and not well thought out.

1. smaller groups does nothing about stacking. Not only did the largest zerg groups run multiple full 24 man groups back in Cyrodiil's hay day players tend to flock to where the action is. So smaller groups means you just get more groups at the same location.
2. There is no manual targeting of smart heals. There is only one heal that has targeting. So suggesting manual targeting of heals to permit healing outside of a group if healing is restricted to a group is pretty much nonsense. It would not be an easy job to take a smart heal and add a manual targeting plus it is certain to add load to the server to determine if it should apply by targeting or behave as a smart heal. Not such a great idea.
3. The idea force players into group, especially healers since they have to be in a group to receive heals or heal others.
4. The idea also minimized alliance. I find it odd a medic would chose to not heal their ally, their brother or sister in arms. Vey selfish idea that shows a lack of concern for the alliance. It just does not make sense. Ofc, points 1 & 2 are most significant for design reasons, and logic.

1. Maybe it would help a bit now? if people aren't being healed other that there group maybe there wont me 40+ people with a 15m radius of eachother. It's not going to do anything bad though right, at this point its worth a try.

2. Highlight target or even just looking at them which you sort of have to do with breath of life.

3. Group or no group if they're basically running in a zerg its the same anyway, it'll be just harder than mindless bashing heal skills and having the game do everything for you.

4. Rp, alliance etc.. is all irrelevant in the fact that the servers are failing, its not like you wont be able to heal people just how easy it is now.

Theres nothing wrong with trying any of these idea, its been getting progressively worse, what harm could trying to apart from annoying some zerg surfers relying on numbers to do anything.

kargen27 · September 2019

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

Sometimes a player can't find a group that has room and is willing to let them join. Not being in a group they are forced to try and follow a group or go from keep to keep looking for fights. If that player happens to be on a healer they end up not being able to contribute to any fight and will miss out on a lot of AP they could be gaining if allowed to heal all around them.

This idea smacks of elitism.

Sandman929 · September 2019

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

kargen27 wrote: »

Sometimes a player can't find a group that has room and is willing to let them join. Not being in a group they are forced to try and follow a group or go from keep to keep looking for fights. If that player happens to be on a healer they end up not being able to contribute to any fight and will miss out on a lot of AP they could be gaining if allowed to heal all around them.

This idea smacks of elitism.

It might be that this change would make any healer a more valuable commodity in open world, if the smart heals were contained within the group. Right now, if there are healers around everyone is benefiting whether they're in the group or not at the cost of more server strain.
I would hope, perhaps naively, that every (PVP)player has game performance as their primary pain point. This suggestion isn't about eliminating faction stacking, so all the side arguments about that are pointless. Take group size out of it, and what's left is a proposal to reduce server processing drastically in a very simple way. ZOS keeps grasping at the low hanging fruit by hiding animations from allies and everything else that really isn't going to make any difference.
If limiting smart healing to group members won't be tried, I'd love to hear why from ZOS.

peacenote · September 2019

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

odd111out wrote: »

every Cyrodiil campaign has a third of the population from a year ago.... and yet no drastic improvement in performance.

This has been mentioned in a couple of different ways but warrants repeating.

I am not a coder. However I am in IT and I know how basic troubleshooting works.

If it is true that performance has gotten worse and worse every patch, I do not understand why things that have been the same for a very long time are being changed first. Healing Springs behaved the same way for years. We've had large groups in Cyrodiil for years. Why wouldn't they first examine each patch that logged a performance hit and see if THOSE changes could be backed out?

There seem to be an awful lot of assumptions being made about the cause of the performance issues and how to fix them. The servers are the problem, the software is the problem, zergs are the problem, healing is the problem. Maybe nobody actually knows, but troubleshooting 101 would state that pre-existing variables that haven't changed aren't likely to be the cause of new problems when a change has been introduced. Back out the change, examine your code, try again.

Honestly the whole game to me feels... buggy. Not just Cyrodiil. I experience a random loading screen now EVERY TIME I walk over to the woodworking crafting station from the clothing and blacksmithing building in Mournhold. I get failed group joins. I get failed jumps to others. I get random FPS drops in quiet towns for no apparent reason. This all can't be smart healing and group size. We would all be better off if the core underlying issue(s) were identified and addressed.

Dojohoda · September 2019

No vote because I'm not convinced this would help performance to any noticable degree.

If the company wants to roll out some tests on the live server for a week, I would participate.

Sandman929 · September 2019

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

Dojohoda wrote: »

No vote because I'm not convinced this would help performance to any noticable degree.

If the company wants to roll out some tests on the live server for a week, I would participate.

Agreed. Except the AoE caps part. I'd be down for leaving group size at 24, and restricting smart heals to within the group and testing it out. The heal change alone should be a fairly significant reduction in processing. Let the code check 24 people max rather than everyone in range and let's see some data. If it seems worth it to cut further lower group size, we can try that too.
The point is, these little visual "performance" fixes aren't working.

Sandman929 · September 2019

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

Actually, OP, I'm not really sure why you included AOE caps being brought back, now that I think about it. You're suggesting limiting checks to improve performance, and then re-adding more checks with bringing back AoE caps.

kargen27 · September 2019

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

Sandman929 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Sometimes a player can't find a group that has room and is willing to let them join. Not being in a group they are forced to try and follow a group or go from keep to keep looking for fights. If that player happens to be on a healer they end up not being able to contribute to any fight and will miss out on a lot of AP they could be gaining if allowed to heal all around them.

This idea smacks of elitism.

It might be that this change would make any healer a more valuable commodity in open world, if the smart heals were contained within the group. Right now, if there are healers around everyone is benefiting whether they're in the group or not at the cost of more server strain.
I would hope, perhaps naively, that every (PVP)player has game performance as their primary pain point. This suggestion isn't about eliminating faction stacking, so all the side arguments about that are pointless. Take group size out of it, and what's left is a proposal to reduce server processing drastically in a very simple way. ZOS keeps grasping at the low hanging fruit by hiding animations from allies and everything else that really isn't going to make any difference.
If limiting smart healing to group members won't be tried, I'd love to hear why from ZOS.

Quick question. How does the game know which players you are grouped with. Would the game have to check each player around you to see if they are in group then check again in that group to heal? Seems to me the game has to track not only who is in your group but also who is not. Making the game do it again for each heal would add not subtract from the amount of work the server does. Either way I agree with others. The change in performance would be so low players would not notice.

Back to the solo healer thing. Maybe groups would run with more healers. Still a decent chance some player will find themselves without a group and often the types of players that find themselves in this position will be in support roles.

And being the cynic that I am I still think this is more an attempt to get rid of large groups rather than anything else.

leepalmer95 · September 2019

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

kargen27 wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Sometimes a player can't find a group that has room and is willing to let them join. Not being in a group they are forced to try and follow a group or go from keep to keep looking for fights. If that player happens to be on a healer they end up not being able to contribute to any fight and will miss out on a lot of AP they could be gaining if allowed to heal all around them.

This idea smacks of elitism.

It might be that this change would make any healer a more valuable commodity in open world, if the smart heals were contained within the group. Right now, if there are healers around everyone is benefiting whether they're in the group or not at the cost of more server strain.
I would hope, perhaps naively, that every (PVP)player has game performance as their primary pain point. This suggestion isn't about eliminating faction stacking, so all the side arguments about that are pointless. Take group size out of it, and what's left is a proposal to reduce server processing drastically in a very simple way. ZOS keeps grasping at the low hanging fruit by hiding animations from allies and everything else that really isn't going to make any difference.
If limiting smart healing to group members won't be tried, I'd love to hear why from ZOS.

Quick question. How does the game know which players you are grouped with. Would the game have to check each player around you to see if they are in group then check again in that group to heal? Seems to me the game has to track not only who is in your group but also who is not. Making the game do it again for each heal would add not subtract from the amount of work the server does. Either way I agree with others. The change in performance would be so low players would not notice.

Back to the solo healer thing. Maybe groups would run with more healers. Still a decent chance some player will find themselves without a group and often the types of players that find themselves in this position will be in support roles.

And being the cynic that I am I still think this is more an attempt to get rid of large groups rather than anything else.

Not would definetly subract. A lot simplier to group check then to test each indivuals, hp, buffs, debuff, healing recieved and whether its a crit heal or not.

SipofMaim · September 2019

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

We tried AOE caps and they sucked, no need to do that again. Hard pass forever on heals and buffs only hitting people in group.

I have some thoughts on ways Fengrush could get better performance in open world, but I doubt I'd be the first to suggest them to him.

p00tx · September 2019

Honestly? I think a cap of 12 players on heals sounds pretty reasonable. If mega groups want more heals, run more healers to cover the whole group and employ tactical positioning to make sure your heals hit the optimum number of players. It might even make PvP healing interesting again, instead of just standing there in heavy armor and desperately spamming out skills in every direction. In fact, make that the standard for all healing/buffing abilities across the board in both PvE and PvP to make things simple.

kargen27 · September 2019

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

leepalmer95 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Sometimes a player can't find a group that has room and is willing to let them join. Not being in a group they are forced to try and follow a group or go from keep to keep looking for fights. If that player happens to be on a healer they end up not being able to contribute to any fight and will miss out on a lot of AP they could be gaining if allowed to heal all around them.

This idea smacks of elitism.

It might be that this change would make any healer a more valuable commodity in open world, if the smart heals were contained within the group. Right now, if there are healers around everyone is benefiting whether they're in the group or not at the cost of more server strain.
I would hope, perhaps naively, that every (PVP)player has game performance as their primary pain point. This suggestion isn't about eliminating faction stacking, so all the side arguments about that are pointless. Take group size out of it, and what's left is a proposal to reduce server processing drastically in a very simple way. ZOS keeps grasping at the low hanging fruit by hiding animations from allies and everything else that really isn't going to make any difference.
If limiting smart healing to group members won't be tried, I'd love to hear why from ZOS.

Quick question. How does the game know which players you are grouped with. Would the game have to check each player around you to see if they are in group then check again in that group to heal? Seems to me the game has to track not only who is in your group but also who is not. Making the game do it again for each heal would add not subtract from the amount of work the server does. Either way I agree with others. The change in performance would be so low players would not notice.

Back to the solo healer thing. Maybe groups would run with more healers. Still a decent chance some player will find themselves without a group and often the types of players that find themselves in this position will be in support roles.

And being the cynic that I am I still think this is more an attempt to get rid of large groups rather than anything else.

Not would definetly subract. A lot simplier to group check then to test each indivuals, hp, buffs, debuff, healing recieved and whether its a crit heal or not.

Again how does the game know which players are in the group and which are not without having to run a check?

Artim_X · September 2019

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

1. I agree that group size should be limited to 12 peeps, but...
2. Ball groups deserve to be bombed.
3. Healers shouldn't have to group up with every rando they meet just to play their role.

lpw · September 2019

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

Artim_X wrote: »

Healers shouldn't have to group up with every rando they meet just to play their role.

I mentioned further up that people would still have to be able to heal anyone if they're solo. Solo healers wouldn't have to group at all, they could just heal everyone.

kargen27 wrote: »

Again how does the game know which players are in the group and which are not without having to run a check?

I couldn't say for sure that the game doesn't check everyone anyway and then see if they're grouped or not and then perform the tasks. Only the devs know how it works. I guess if it did work that way, this wouldn't really help.

However, I can't see it being written in this way as being as efficient as having the group pre-defined? The balance would be heavily weighed toward one side of the decision as you have a possible 23 people vs the rest of the server.

Again, just speculating but it was mentioned that CP would cause way more calculations but a lot of these just add to your flat attributes so might be worked out beforehand.

Sandman929 · September 2019

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

kargen27 wrote: »

leepalmer95 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

kargen27 wrote: »

Sometimes a player can't find a group that has room and is willing to let them join. Not being in a group they are forced to try and follow a group or go from keep to keep looking for fights. If that player happens to be on a healer they end up not being able to contribute to any fight and will miss out on a lot of AP they could be gaining if allowed to heal all around them.

This idea smacks of elitism.

It might be that this change would make any healer a more valuable commodity in open world, if the smart heals were contained within the group. Right now, if there are healers around everyone is benefiting whether they're in the group or not at the cost of more server strain.
I would hope, perhaps naively, that every (PVP)player has game performance as their primary pain point. This suggestion isn't about eliminating faction stacking, so all the side arguments about that are pointless. Take group size out of it, and what's left is a proposal to reduce server processing drastically in a very simple way. ZOS keeps grasping at the low hanging fruit by hiding animations from allies and everything else that really isn't going to make any difference.
If limiting smart healing to group members won't be tried, I'd love to hear why from ZOS.

Quick question. How does the game know which players you are grouped with. Would the game have to check each player around you to see if they are in group then check again in that group to heal? Seems to me the game has to track not only who is in your group but also who is not. Making the game do it again for each heal would add not subtract from the amount of work the server does. Either way I agree with others. The change in performance would be so low players would not notice.

Back to the solo healer thing. Maybe groups would run with more healers. Still a decent chance some player will find themselves without a group and often the types of players that find themselves in this position will be in support roles.

And being the cynic that I am I still think this is more an attempt to get rid of large groups rather than anything else.

Not would definetly subract. A lot simplier to group check then to test each indivuals, hp, buffs, debuff, healing recieved and whether its a crit heal or not.

Again how does the game know which players are in the group and which are not without having to run a check?

It does have to check, but it's doing that already since some skills only apply to group members like Purge and Rapid Maneuvers.

asneakybanana · September 2019

I wouldn't be happy with these changes (please explain why)

The problem with limiting AoE heals to group only is that it would greatly hurt the effectiveness of the solo and duo more casual players that don't want to join a group but still want to feel like they are making an impact. Imagine going into cyro just to want to help siege and run around the map helping to flip keeps, if you make AoE heals group only that player is basically going to be forced to join up with the zone LFG group which may be too serious and not fun for them and that would make them not want to play.

I think limiting group size to 12 or 16 vs 24 would be a decent start, there are already many buffs that only go to group such as rapids and purge so this would make it less efficient to stack 80 people on top of each other because they would need more people purging and things of that nature. Look at groups like Drac and AoE Rats over on EU, they show that you don't need 24 to be successful and really all adding those extra 12 or so people to the group is doing is increasing lag by allowing players to ball up easier.

I think another good option could be removing fight swords from the map or, making it so there is just one size sword whether its 4 people fighting or 80. This will help to spread people out a bit because they wont just be drawn to wherever the large fight is since it will be harder to tell.

Also removing/lowering offense ticks to support defending rather than PVDoor could also be good because it will stop people from being as prone to just riding the zerg as they pvdoor keeps and get their 9k AP per keep since this is likely far easier for them to make AP this way than properly fighting.

There is also adding back dynamic ultimate to the game which was a proper mechanic for smaller groups to deal with large ones, obviously there were some issues with this system (Healing springs spam to build ult and things like that) but with all the changes they've made to the ultimate building system I think this could be a good mechanic at aiding smaller groups in taking on much much larger ones.

Joy_Division · September 2019

AOE caps were terrible and I find it hard to believe that Fengrush, who was a loud advocate for removing them, thought that putting them back in was even something worthy of considering.

Fengrush is also someone who for years has hated and despised when other players heal people he is attacking. I know it's inconvenient for DPS types and 1vXers that the other pesky players in the game use their skills they way they want to and the developers intended them to be used, but that's how open world Alliance Vs Alliance format works.

Group size probably should have been reduced a long time ago considering pop caps are a mere fraction of what they used to be, but that's not going to make a difference because ESO's mechanics, scoring system, and the way cyrodiil is structured encourage faction stacking.

ChefZero · September 2019

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

@lpw , I think your poll is kinda misleading if I read some answers here. So I will leave this link here for everyone who doesn't know what @FENGRUSH was talking about.

He starts talking about it at 1:40:31.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hs9dgPapNOQ

idk · September 2019

leepalmer95 wrote: »

idk wrote: »

leepalmer95 wrote: »

12 man group size, may not help too much but it'll help some with stacking.

Smart heals only work for group members, have to manually target someone outside the group for direct smart heals to work. Large aoe hot's only work with group. Peole realise they won't be able to survive just be sheer stacking with stupids amount of passive offheals and spread out a bit?

I would not expect people to read all the posts so I will hit the highlights of why the idea is a poor idea and not well thought out.

1. smaller groups does nothing about stacking. Not only did the largest zerg groups run multiple full 24 man groups back in Cyrodiil's hay day players tend to flock to where the action is. So smaller groups means you just get more groups at the same location.
2. There is no manual targeting of smart heals. There is only one heal that has targeting. So suggesting manual targeting of heals to permit healing outside of a group if healing is restricted to a group is pretty much nonsense. It would not be an easy job to take a smart heal and add a manual targeting plus it is certain to add load to the server to determine if it should apply by targeting or behave as a smart heal. Not such a great idea.
3. The idea force players into group, especially healers since they have to be in a group to receive heals or heal others.
4. The idea also minimized alliance. I find it odd a medic would chose to not heal their ally, their brother or sister in arms. Vey selfish idea that shows a lack of concern for the alliance. It just does not make sense. Ofc, points 1 & 2 are most significant for design reasons, and logic.

1. Maybe it would help a bit now? if people aren't being healed other that there group maybe there wont me 40+ people with a 15m radius of eachother. It's not going to do anything bad though right, at this point its worth a try.

2. Highlight target or even just looking at them which you sort of have to do with breath of life.

3. Group or no group if they're basically running in a zerg its the same anyway, it'll be just harder than mindless bashing heal skills and having the game do everything for you.

4. Rp, alliance etc.. is all irrelevant in the fact that the servers are failing, its not like you wont be able to heal people just how easy it is now.

Theres nothing wrong with trying any of these idea, its been getting progressively worse, what harm could trying to apart from annoying some zerg surfers relying on numbers to do anything.

1. Group size is pretty irrelevant to how many player are at a keep being attacked or defended now. So it is a false premise that smaller group size would lead to fewer people at a given location. We flock to where the action is so no point in giving it a try. We already know.

2. Again there smart heals already have a targeting system. You now only want heals to have two different but you also want the server to determine which targeting system should be used by somehow this is supposed to reduce server strain. Logic fails.

3. False premise that everyone in a keep is in a zerg. Case in point, when I run solo I still work to defend and attack keeps. However, I am generally hunting snipers/gankers or whatever is needed. For the most part I am self sufficient but it is not so bright to suggest I should not count.

4. Makes no sense so not going to burn brain cells trying to figure it out.

There is everything wrong with trying this. It is not a very smart idea. I easily poked holes in it and you are just coming up with excuses that are wrong based on what we already know or make no sense because they would clearly add to the server load, not take away.

ChefZero · September 2019

YES! I'd be happy to reduce group size, bring back AOE caps and heal only those in my group

@asneakybanana , You didn't understand it exactly, because there are two things. 1) is about smart casting heals and buff only hit group members 2) is about AoE caps on heals. That's why I suggested this more detailed:

ChefZero wrote: »

- reduce max groupsize to 12 (raids are 12 ppl, drops are capped to 12 ppl and most organized groups already run ≤12x groups)
- 12x AoE cap to every AoE heal (No Damage Abilities)
- targetable heals (single target and AoE) can hit every player in your faction, no NPCs (and capped as mentioned)
- smart heals will only hit players in your group (if you run solo no one can leech your heal/shield)

This isn't about zergstacking but about the amount of calculations. Zergstacking can only be fixed by reworking the map.

So solo players would get a tool to control exactly if they want to heal themselves or random allies by picking smart cast heals or AoE/targetable heals.