Crash427 wrote: »

Groups inside of armies mixing it up with chaos all around. In all the years I've been gaming nothing else comes close.

It's a real shame the game can't support those types of fights anymore. If i wanted small fights like BGs or duels I'd play a better balanced game with reliable performance.

Agreed. The only game that still provides this is Planetside 2, and I hate shooter games unfortunately.... But still, once a week, when the lag is particularly bad, I play it just to remember how much of its original epicness ESO PvP has lost due to the lag and the ever- shrinking amount of players the server can cope with.

I think we should have to sign a form when making a group 'Are you a ball group?' if you tick yes then you can't be healed by anyone and you can only use light attacks. If you tick no then you get 10k extra health, magicka and stamina and you get shown a marker any time there are more than 10 of your faction in an area so you can go stack there with them.

James-Wayne wrote: »

Ball groups solved.

Tigor wrote: »

Pauwer wrote: »

But playing in this kind of organized group is fun. I know it's not fun to get run over by one when you play solo or in a random group. It's a conundrum. I would not call this kind of pvp balanced. I think we need the old skills back, you know, before everything was nerfed and homogenized. Which update was it? When necro came out was it? I bet if we still had better skills, fighting these balls groups would be easier.

Is there a way back? In a good business plan it would be a good moment to refurbish Cyrodiil or bring it back to a "classic" state.

But what's "classic" Cyrodiil?

Some people in my PVP guild were PVPing when Cyrodiil was Vet 14. Is that "classic" or can we agree that One Tamriel is a pretty good base line?

Do we throw out the Wardens and Necros and go back to the 4 base game classes only?
Eliminate all new gear since One Tamriel?
Lower the max CP again?
Revert the many siege changes?
Remove the extra outposts, goat paths, collapsible mile gates and bridges, and the hammer?
Go back to older forms of scoring, like 7-day campaign where the score was for how many resources you captured?

Do we revert the patch where ZOS tanked performance by moving a lot of PVP calculations from client side to server side, and thus reopen Cyrodiil to a lot more manipulation by Cheat Engine? Meteor spam, anyone?


And then what to players do when they realize that PVP guild raids and ball groups dominated the campaigns before the Morrowind Chapter?

I played on Haderus and Trueflame - I can't pretend that removing the new classes or going back to "classic" Cyrodiil is going to make disorganized PUGs perform any better compared to organized raids with voice comms, dedicated roles, stacked support sets, and coordinated attacks. At a certain point, you can't put that genie back in the bottle.

VaranisArano wrote: »

But what's "classic" Cyrodiil?

Some people in my PVP guild were PVPing when Cyrodiil was Vet 14. Is that "classic" or can we agree that One Tamriel is a pretty good base line?

Do we throw out the Wardens and Necros and go back to the 4 base game classes only?
Eliminate all new gear since One Tamriel?
Lower the max CP again?
Revert the many siege changes?
Remove the extra outposts, goat paths, collapsible mile gates and bridges, and the hammer?
Go back to older forms of scoring, like 7-day campaign where the score was for how many resources you captured?

Do we revert the patch where ZOS tanked performance by moving a lot of PVP calculations from client side to server side, and thus reopen Cyrodiil to a lot more manipulation by Cheat Engine? Meteor spam, anyone?

And still, that might be the last best hope to combat lag (of course, it would not do a thing to ball groups - this problem can be easily solved by a new Cyro tutorial which explains skills like Detonation and Borrowed Time).

Planetside 2 is basically Cyro as a shooter game. It is even a year older, and still the performance is soooooo much better when you see hundreds of players on the screen.

Why? Probably because

a) it has not PvE part and
b) there is only very limited itemization.

Putting Cyro on a different server where basically only the vanilla game + 3 PvP sets per armor type exist might save it. The theory crafters might be unhappy with that, and Zenimax' revenue might go down a bit (as there won't be any paywall-of-the-month proc sets), but it is still better than the negativity the lag creates.

Of course, the healing changes and the group size changes would be reverted in that case, so that the casuals and the PuGs have a chance again.

James-Wayne wrote: »

All they need to do is add a collision system with friendly fire turned on so that skills potentially backfire if people overlap one another.

Ball groups solved.

that would help Greatly!
i love your idea, and i hope the devs give it a try.

techyeshic wrote: »

Crash427 wrote: »

Can you imagine collision in a game with this much desync? It'd be hilarious.

Maybe you could at least find where your target is if there was enemy collision detection.

"I ran into an invisible wall. Lets see who it is when I attack."

“I attack the darkness!”

manny254 wrote: »

As someone who only plays solo and small scale right now, the only big change I would want is heal stacking. The biggest offender being mutagen.

It is probably the most oppressive part of fighting a large group right now. Seeing a players health being unmoved due to having 10 or more mutagens is just not fun. If this was active healing on the part of healers I would be fine with it, but in reality it is because majority of an organized groups consists of people spamming mutagen while moving.

I want to make sure I understand this correctly.

Active healing on the part of 1 or more dedicated healers in the group is okay, but everyone in the group making mutagen a part of their active rotation is not?

I understand the logic of wanting to limit healstacking in general, but I'm a little confused about why its acceptable when coming from healers and not from non-healers.

Just make ball groups explode after they have done 30 laps of a keep, problem solved.

Its not the group its the way many chose to play. They are chasing players away and killing the game they profess to like, time to start thinking about the health of pvp not the ap you can farm.

Sandman929 wrote: »

Stacking heals and group purging. That's all that needs to be addressed to change organized groups for the better.

How do you think heals and purge should work in an mmo? What you suggest essentially means there shouldnt be any type of support or healing role.

manny254 wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

manny254 wrote: »

As someone who only plays solo and small scale right now, the only big change I would want is heal stacking. The biggest offender being mutagen.

It is probably the most oppressive part of fighting a large group right now. Seeing a players health being unmoved due to having 10 or more mutagens is just not fun. If this was active healing on the part of healers I would be fine with it, but in reality it is because majority of an organized groups consists of people spamming mutagen while moving.

I want to make sure I understand this correctly.

Active healing on the part of 1 or more dedicated healers in the group is okay, but everyone in the group making mutagen a part of their active rotation is not?

I understand the logic of wanting to limit healstacking in general, but I'm a little confused about why its acceptable when coming from healers and not from non-healers.

My personal issue with mutagen heal stacking is that the healing is happening without anyone actually reacting to anything.

If a healer or even a DD reacts and throws an AoE heal or something like Honor the Dead, they are reacting to damage or anticipating the location of a fight. Area of denial can be used to mitigate the AoE healing and the single target heals are just not going to be infinitely sustainable.

Heal stacking makes it feel like there is little to no counter play against a large group. Now a small group should not expect to be able to outplay a full group that knows how to play, but if a group is playing bad there should be options for them to be outplayed.

As it stands, if a group all has 10 mutagens stacked, there is little to no way for them to be consistently outplayed. Even if the large group is not playing at mid-high level.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you prefer reactive healing (targeted and burst heals) to proactive healing (non-targeted or smart HOTs)?

I think they each have their place. Reactive heals usually come in response to a group or player taking damage or anticipating taking damage. Heal-stacking and HOTs are usually used proactively before the damage hits, to minimize the amount of burst reactive healing that needs to be done.

One reason why we play that way is because Reactive healing isn't powerful or bursty enough to overcome incoming PVP damage on its own, as its neither speedy enough nor cost-effective to spam. ZOS does that deliberately - they like to avoid seeing big swings in health from low to full with a single skill, they like to ensure that it takes effort to reactively heal groups, and they tend to nerf the reactive heals that get a lot of complaints about "this heal saved a player I should have been able to kill!" When it comes to reactive healing, we've seen big nerfs to Healing Springs, Breath of Life, and Earthgore because ZOS doesn't want reactive healing to be too powerful.

So with reactive heals nerfed, its no wonder that experienced PvPers from solo to ball groups rely on proactive healing - HOTs and Healstacking. When your burst reactive heals are less powerful and can't cover all the incoming damage, proactive heals fill in that gap especially in very fast-paced PVP or in a siege/large battle situation where there's a lot of incoming damage. We see this in small scale too - lots of players like that their proactive smart heals are guaranteed to hit them now instead of a low-health ally.

In short, ball groups spam proactive heals because ZOS nerfed a lot of reactive heals. Unlike PUGs, their non-healer members actually will all slot and proactively use HOTs to support the group. Then you add in their dedicated healers who do have reactive heals and you've got a very tough nut to crack.

I'm not necessarily opposed to limiting healstacking to lower the amount of proactive healing. I just think its worth considering if we're asking for an overall healing nerf (nerf proactive healing, don't touch ironic also nerf reactive) or if we're really looking to boost reactive heals (nerf proactive healing, buff reactive heals).

Vizirith wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

manny254 wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

manny254 wrote: »

As someone who only plays solo and small scale right now, the only big change I would want is heal stacking. The biggest offender being mutagen.

It is probably the most oppressive part of fighting a large group right now. Seeing a players health being unmoved due to having 10 or more mutagens is just not fun. If this was active healing on the part of healers I would be fine with it, but in reality it is because majority of an organized groups consists of people spamming mutagen while moving.

I want to make sure I understand this correctly.

Active healing on the part of 1 or more dedicated healers in the group is okay, but everyone in the group making mutagen a part of their active rotation is not?

I understand the logic of wanting to limit healstacking in general, but I'm a little confused about why its acceptable when coming from healers and not from non-healers.

My personal issue with mutagen heal stacking is that the healing is happening without anyone actually reacting to anything.

If a healer or even a DD reacts and throws an AoE heal or something like Honor the Dead, they are reacting to damage or anticipating the location of a fight. Area of denial can be used to mitigate the AoE healing and the single target heals are just not going to be infinitely sustainable.

Heal stacking makes it feel like there is little to no counter play against a large group. Now a small group should not expect to be able to outplay a full group that knows how to play, but if a group is playing bad there should be options for them to be outplayed.

As it stands, if a group all has 10 mutagens stacked, there is little to no way for them to be consistently outplayed. Even if the large group is not playing at mid-high level.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like you prefer reactive healing (targeted and burst heals) to proactive healing (non-targeted or smart HOTs)?

I think they each have their place. Reactive heals usually come in response to a group or player taking damage or anticipating taking damage. Heal-stacking and HOTs are usually used proactively before the damage hits, to minimize the amount of burst reactive healing that needs to be done.

One reason why we play that way is because Reactive healing isn't powerful or bursty enough to overcome incoming PVP damage on its own, as its neither speedy enough nor cost-effective to spam. ZOS does that deliberately - they like to avoid seeing big swings in health from low to full with a single skill, they like to ensure that it takes effort to reactively heal groups, and they tend to nerf the reactive heals that get a lot of complaints about "this heal saved a player I should have been able to kill!" When it comes to reactive healing, we've seen big nerfs to Healing Springs, Breath of Life, and Earthgore because ZOS doesn't want reactive healing to be too powerful.

So with reactive heals nerfed, its no wonder that experienced PvPers from solo to ball groups rely on proactive healing - HOTs and Healstacking. When your burst reactive heals are less powerful and can't cover all the incoming damage, proactive heals fill in that gap especially in very fast-paced PVP or in a siege/large battle situation where there's a lot of incoming damage. We see this in small scale too - lots of players like that their proactive smart heals are guaranteed to hit them now instead of a low-health ally.

In short, ball groups spam proactive heals because ZOS nerfed a lot of reactive heals. Unlike PUGs, their non-healer members actually will all slot and proactively use HOTs to support the group. Then you add in their dedicated healers who do have reactive heals and you've got a very tough nut to crack.

I'm not necessarily opposed to limiting healstacking to lower the amount of proactive healing. I just think its worth considering if we're asking for an overall healing nerf (nerf proactive healing, don't touch ironic also nerf reactive) or if we're really looking to boost reactive heals (nerf proactive healing, buff reactive heals).

Well in all fairness healing springs and earthgore were only used by groups usually anyway. Breath of life is only worth it in groups bigger than 4 or 5, HotD is usually better otherwise.

Yeah, prior to the Earthgore nerf there were a lot more criticisms about how bad players could slap it on and get a saving burst heal when they needed it. To which plenty of players responded with "if they are bad enough to need it, just kill them on the long cooldown", but since it was an overpowered proc heal in solo and groups, it eventually got a nerf when ZOS figured they had enough DLC sales.

Now since the reactive heal on earthgore is less effective, we don't see it used as much, in part because its more effective to proactively heal so you aren't relying on an burst reactive heal or stacked Earthgores in a group to save your butt.

Another aspect of proactive ve reactive that I only thought of now is that in heavy lag or situations where your skills might not go off (which does happen to ball groups as well as their opponents) proactive heals become a lot more important. Those keep ticking when your skills lock up, while if you rely on reactive heals, you are at the mercy of a lag spike or your skills working exactly when they should.

Vizirith wrote: »

Zos has seen fit to bless the ball zergs with buff after buff, asking them to nerf them is clearly futile. Zos refuses over and over. When grouping was reduced to 6 during testing there was a noticeable decrease in lag, "not enough to be significant" because it was just zos way of pretending they care and looking like they are doing something.

Here's an idea, even if you remove the grouping as a tool you can easily (with enough experience ofc) run around as a "group". The only difference now is that everyone else is at an even bigger disadvantage