Tanks with the cyrodil test sets usually don’t pump out huge damage. Complaining about imbalance but wanting ‘the gear you’ve paid good money for” back makes no sense as the problems you are experiencing only get worse once that gear is reintroduced. If anything this more barebones cyrodil just exemplifies the fact that nearly all heavy lag is directly caused by large groups and particularly ball groups.

I don't see any improvement in gameplay with 95% of our gear taken away. I do, however, see a lot of disinterest in Cyrodiil since the theorycrafting nerf. Lots of people took great pleasure in testing out new builds with all the gear we worked hard to get. But now, nobody's going to gold out a bunch of garbage sets that are soon going to become irrelevant again.

I used to play a variety of characters in Cyro, but since I'm not interested in creating multiple sets again, I only play one character. And I play that character a lot less, due to how dead the Alliance War has become. Hard to believe ZOS is willing to let the best part of the game flounder and waste away like this.

As long as some of the AoE skills work as they do, I don't have much hope for a lot of performance improvements.
I know this is also ultimately a lot of assumptions, but at least there is some data to work with compared to other wild speculations of some forum-posts (addons, player behaviour etc.).

Taking Blood Altar as an example, cause i think it's the worst offender in this case:
Cast Time: Instant
Target: Area
Range: Radius: 28 meters
Cost: 4320 Health
Skill description
Sacrifice your life essence to conjure a fountain of blood to apply Minor Lifesteal to enemies in the area, healing you and your allies for 600 Health every 1 second when damaging them. Allies in the area can activate the Blood Funnel synergy, healing for 40% of their Maximum Health.

The Altar looks for the 6 closest enemies to apply the lifesteal debuff, every 0.5sec (!). After an enemy got hit with the "aura", they get the debuff applied on them and actually having 2 debuffs. This can be tested with cleanse for example -> 2 debuffs removed = more healing and also esologs shows 2 different lifesteal IDs and uptimes.
The Altar "ticks" every 0,5 seconds in a 28m radius, looking for the closest enemies constantly.

I tested the Altar in the first skyreach room, i think 12 mobs (maybe one more or less, doesn't really matter here tho), around 70 seconds and moving around, so different enemies were closest to the altar frequently. The "aura"-debuff got applied 912 times, switching enemies depending on which was closest to the altar placement. Same for the debuff itself, so together it was 1824 debuff refreshes.

The raw data for the esologs opened in word is ~240 pages with 2750 entries of the aura debuff and 1832 of the lifesteal debuff, together 4582 entries (that's ~65,5 entries per second). Cause the logs not only get updated, when a new effect is appplied, but also, when one is removed again. This shows a high amount of info that has to synced with the players client and the servers.

Example: IIRC ID 80020 is the actual debuff ID and 86304 the "aura" ID.


And this was only me casting the Altar and only 12 enemies.
Imagine 12 people using it for example, the debuffs would try to overwrite each other every 0,5seconds, which already would give an insane number of infos having to be synced.
Now imagine this in Cyrodiil in a big fight, where even more than 12 enemies are around.

Just this one skill is most likely a higher offender to data traffic than any player behaviour, may it be ballgroup, zerggroup or "solo" player in a zerg could cause.

EDIT: The synergy is not even included here, wouldn't be surprised if it also constantly checks the health of the friendly players in the area, if it's below 50% (or what was the right number again to show up?) to offer the synergy.


Excursion:
Looking at different AoE abilities shows they work in different ways.
Caltrops (only the debuff, damage gets applied to everyone inside of the AoE) for example has a lower range and if more than 6 people are standing inside of it, hits the enemies standing in it, which are closest to the center of the impact (kinda similar to altar, just that caltrops can be aimed and altar is dropped on the caster's position).

Graveyard is really weird, if more than 6 people are standing inside of it, it seems to hit (again only the debuff) the 6 people that got loaded within sight first, when entering the area. Not 100% sure on this, but it always hits the same 6 same targets, if they are inside of the skills area, additional targets will never be hit. Since it's a rather new skill compared to others, i think they already tried to reduce the data load by changing the way enemies are selected to get hit by the debuff, so it doesn't update all the time when enemies are moving a bit, not sure how much of improvement that does tho. Could as well be, that they just coded it different by "accident", new dev for example etc.

EdmondDontes wrote: »

Prospero_ESO wrote: »

CSose wrote: »

What makes sense to you isn't relevant. What I've paid good money and time for is. Balance was roughly the same as it is now with proc sets. You said as much in your post.

What you paid money for is the entitlement to use the service ZOS provides. You did not pay money for certain gear do you, because if you did, that might be against the terms of service. So your complaint is completely irrelevant. MMORPG´s evolve over time, certain builds and certain gear might become viable or unviable anytime, that is just part of the game. This is completely independent of your or mine or anybody else's view whether no proc cyrodiil is a better place or not. Grow up and adapt.

There is always the option to stop paying for a service when you're unhappy with it as well.

And that´s perfectly fine, if somebody is not satisfied with a service anymore it´s time to cancel and move on. making claims like the op did are ridiculous though.

EdmondDontes wrote: »

Prospero_ESO wrote: »

EdmondDontes wrote: »

Prospero_ESO wrote: »

CSose wrote: »

What makes sense to you isn't relevant. What I've paid good money and time for is. Balance was roughly the same as it is now with proc sets. You said as much in your post.

What you paid money for is the entitlement to use the service ZOS provides. You did not pay money for certain gear do you, because if you did, that might be against the terms of service. So your complaint is completely irrelevant. MMORPG´s evolve over time, certain builds and certain gear might become viable or unviable anytime, that is just part of the game. This is completely independent of your or mine or anybody else's view whether no proc cyrodiil is a better place or not. Grow up and adapt.

There is always the option to stop paying for a service when you're unhappy with it as well.

And that´s perfectly fine, if somebody is not satisfied with a service anymore it´s time to cancel and move on. making claims like the op did are ridiculous though.

The OP's complaints are legitimate. Your criticisms on the other hand.....

The OP claims are far from legitimate. [snip]

I don´t know how many MMORPGs you played before, but name me one where over the lifetime of the game some changes in class balance or gear balance would not lead to making them more or less viable. You won´t find a single one. This is just business as usual as online games evolve. If you can´t stand that or if you value your time so high that nothing you achieved is allowed to change ever, do yourself a favor and stay away from MMO´s. Play single-player games.

[edited for baiting]

CSose wrote: »

Well, now that we can only use 19 sets in PvP and people have figured out how to make virtually unkillable builds already, now what? The ball groups run around unchallenged again already and performance is as bad as it's ever been. (lag, disconnects, stuck in combat, skills not firing, you know the list) We don't have the gear we've paid good money and time for, and performance AND BALANCE is still in the tank even with set restrictions.

What do we do now ZOS? The population in cyro is clearing out fast.

the population has been dropping for the last 5 years straight. Lag is mostly the culprit, but also limited skills that actually work in pvp.

The ball groups DO create a lot of lag, but IMO it's mostly due to purge and the stacks of buffs from group comp. It's almost as bad tho, from straight up faction stacks. Even at midnight central, 3 bar pop, with only 1 or 2 guilds on that time slot, I dc'd 3 times with 200u/200d fiber and a newer computer. People on DC and EP run in a discord and/or callout every encounter, which brings more than half the faction to every fight. Guilds used to spread the fights, not stack. Needs to be more incentives for guilds AND more bonuses to damage aoe's to spread people.

EdmondDontes wrote: »

CSose wrote: »

Well, now that we can only use 19 sets in PvP and people have figured out how to make virtually unkillable builds already, now what? The ball groups run around unchallenged again already and performance is as bad as it's ever been. (lag, disconnects, stuck in combat, skills not firing, you know the list) We don't have the gear we've paid good money and time for, and performance AND BALANCE is still in the tank even with set restrictions.

What do we do now ZOS? The population in cyro is clearing out fast.

Agree 100%. The ball groups just keep getting bigger, performance keeps getting worse, and balance is worse now than with proc sets enabled. Also, the reduced population cap that came at the same time as permanent set restrictions is very noticeable.

So as it stands now, we have worse performance, set restrictions, lower populations and people fleeing ESO in droves. (there is a reason none of the people who historically streamed ESO to large audiences are streaming anymore, and it's these changes and restrictions)

The lag definitely seems worse then ever. not sure what is going on there. Not sure its the ball groups fault but it sure is very strange. I notice it happening sometimes even in the bg's now which I never did before.

Anyone know how people hit 2 heavy attacks in one swing? I got a vedio of me being killed by 1 guy in 3 sconds and he got 3 heavy attacks and 2 abilities