Crash427 wrote: »

Soul_Demon wrote: »

Crash427 wrote: »

Soul_Demon wrote: »

Mr_Gallows wrote: »

CrustyCroco wrote: »

Mr_Gallows wrote: »

CrustyCroco wrote: »

Mr_Gallows wrote: »

I don't think organized groups do anything wrong as such, but it would be better for gameplay if nore tactical movement was preferred because big balls would get punished harder by aoe.

So, what group are you talking about here exactly? Because groups are very different to each other.
Some want to stay below 10 people. Some limit at 12. Some take everything they can find and form several groups.
Some of these then try to find their own fights, some move with their faction from one keep to the other.

For my raid i can tell you, that a lot of tactical movement is needed fighting outnumbered.
Also drawing the lines between "solo" players in a zerg, a player joining an unorganised group, a player joining a semi-organised group and a player joining a fully organised group is very hard. The lines are blurred and opinions about it are very subjective again.

I prefer 12 or less too, but that doesn't make a 48 man attack wrong. I just like the gameplay better between smaller groups.

But it would be nice if aoe was more effective against groups but not against single target. The defensive edge og being abte to use choke points better would be great.

I heard that zos are dropping the megaserver tech, but what that means I do not know. If it's good for performamce, then it's awesome, because sometimes a huge siege can look awesome. From a gameplay perspective however it's not so great, because (if we disregard the lag) it's over too quick. Havibg better defence through aoe doing more damage the more people it hits at once would be great. 10 minutes is just a bit short for a siege and it can be over faster than that.

I don't really mind any playstyle either, to each their own, I played pretty much everything as well.
What you are saying here sounds like there weren't mechanics in the game that support tactical movements and skills already. I agree, that the tactical possibilities while running in a group within the own faction stack are kinda limited and also the group is protected by people around them.
That's the reason why i wanted to make clear, what groups we are talking about.
Because proxy/ inev detos and using chokes is a common strategy being used by groups that try to fight outnumbered, otherwise they would die way faster.
Also aoe damage having (almost) no limit on how many players it hits, is an indirect increase of aoe damage if you compare it to healing and purges. Most of the healing and supporting skills are limited at up to 6 people. So you really want to think about sending more than 6 people into the clash. Especially in GvGs you can see more people dying the more are in the push, what kinda balances smaller groups vs bigger groups to a certain extend, because the smaller group still can have a high impact, if they use the right movement and strategy.

Yes I agree. Would just like to see it tweaked some more in the right direction. But yeah heals being limited is great. Heals or rather automatic health regen is completely out of whack. When you stack 4k+ health regen the gameplay simply breaks. A hard cap of 2k regen across the board would be great... then it's up to you to decide where you get your regen. While in the current game the health regen CP star makes the issue worse, it is really a great idea, because it means you sacrifice regen to use your ultimate... that's good gameplay. A 2k limit would work well because it balances fine with dots.

You could look at that....But I think some of the longstanding bugs and over-heals would be more productive time for ZOS to spend. CC' immunity has been mentioned here and no one who really plays the game is unaware of how devastating it is during lag to have them malfunction so consistently. Fix it---take all your resources and fix that first.

If they could fix it, they would have by now.

I understand why you might think that way....but to be honest I don't believe they take any action whatsoever until they have some semblance of community consensus on what the issues are. Now, I don't think anyone really knows how they make those decisions or who they would even speak to- or even where they get feedback from.

But, I feel its safe to say for as long as the community feedback in forums is focused around multiple pitches for particular playstyles to be buffed/nerfed rather than in game issues that directly impact the largest portion of the players----absolutely nothing is more likely to be being done in the background. I would think the only vehicle the players really have at this point is overwhelming numbers of statements in forums calling for things to even have a chance to be looked at now.

Could be wrong, but I think you are being really, really generous assuming they put a lot of time and effort into anything like this from a few mentions here and there over the years. Something tells me that is highly unlikely.

You know why we can use transit shrines while in combat? Because they couldn't fix the stuck in combat bug. So I guess they at least looked at that one. Whether they are unwilling or unable doesn't really matter, to me at least. My guild said enough is enough and moved on. How many more have to quit before they get serious about fixing things?

But hey, did you see the latest reskinned junk in the crown store?

BardInSolitude wrote: »

I haven't really read the thread, but I will respond to the original post just to have another voice heard in this discussion.

Those of us that run ball groups do not "exploit inherent weaknesses in the combat system". Since when is optimisation "exploiting weaknesses"? Do you blame PvE DDs for optimising their DPS using parses? Do you blame PvE healers for optimising their healing and support capacity by choosing the right sets? If not, then why would you blame us doing exactly the same thing but in PvP?

Moreover, I don't understand where this mentality of needing anti-ball mechanics is coming from. Vicious Death was the perfect anti-ball set, and ZOS removed it for whatever reason with their no-proc thing. The funny thing is that most people in the forums have been complaining that VD is the main tool of ball groups when by taking a look at damage logs you can see that most ball groups who were using VD before no-proc had been doing negligible damage with it ever since its damage got buffed a while back, because most people stopped stacking close enough for VD to do significant damage. Do you know who stacks, though? Ball groups!

Lastly, I just want to say this very simple thing: have you ever thought that perhaps ball groups and other large gatherings of players are intended to be the primary mode of combat in Cyrodiil, since it is a simplified representation of a real battlefield? Why would you expect that an unorganised zerg or small-scale group should be able to take on a better equipped and coordinated 12-man raid? Imagine if during Alexander's campaign against Persia the Persians complained to their gods that Greek tactics were "broken" and needed to be balanced, just because they managed to get steamrolled by a far smaller force. It'd be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

I do not mean any offense to anyone, but it has been quite annoying receiving blame for stuff that isn't our fault. I mean, have you guys ever considered that it's ZOS's job to get better servers and not our fault for casting a lot of AoE skills? Also, please do not confuse us with those running server-bloating software; ball groups despise them, too. A lot of you are presenting our work as if it some sort of cheating, a cop-out, when in fact it is the result of a lot of arduous design and practice. And some of us are really out to fight for our faction rather than just farm AP - though it is true that some ball groups are merely looking for fights without any regard for the map.

Kwoung wrote: »

Sandman929 wrote: »

Izanagi.Xiiib16_ESO wrote: »

Nevidyra wrote: »

If ZOS fixes healstacking so only one Rapid Regen or Vigor or something similar is ticking on you at a time... Zergs won't be nearly as effective, and Ballgroups will be (largely) a thing of the past.

Groups would actually become more effective in that environment.

Great, let's find out.

You probably wouldn't like how that would play out. Coordinated groups would change and adapt almost immediately, normal players would chug along business as usual and be wiped quicker than ever due to not having the protection of 50 random players around them taking care of their buffs, heals and purges for them.

I go out solo or in non-coordinated groups all the time and when taking keeps "in the zerg", many times I have more heals running on me than I get in my regular group just due to the shear number of folks around me casting them. The difference is not the heals stacking, it is the difference in how the average player takes advantage of them, versus how a group working together does. The average player would melt in 2 seconds without all that protection and have a worst time in Cyro than anything they have experienced to date.

Thats how I would see that playing out at least.

Soul_Demon wrote: »

BardInSolitude wrote: »

I haven't really read the thread, but I will respond to the original post just to have another voice heard in this discussion.

Those of us that run ball groups do not "exploit inherent weaknesses in the combat system". Since when is optimisation "exploiting weaknesses"? Do you blame PvE DDs for optimising their DPS using parses? Do you blame PvE healers for optimising their healing and support capacity by choosing the right sets? If not, then why would you blame us doing exactly the same thing but in PvP?

Moreover, I don't understand where this mentality of needing anti-ball mechanics is coming from. Vicious Death was the perfect anti-ball set, and ZOS removed it for whatever reason with their no-proc thing. The funny thing is that most people in the forums have been complaining that VD is the main tool of ball groups when by taking a look at damage logs you can see that most ball groups who were using VD before no-proc had been doing negligible damage with it ever since its damage got buffed a while back, because most people stopped stacking close enough for VD to do significant damage. Do you know who stacks, though? Ball groups!

Lastly, I just want to say this very simple thing: have you ever thought that perhaps ball groups and other large gatherings of players are intended to be the primary mode of combat in Cyrodiil, since it is a simplified representation of a real battlefield? Why would you expect that an unorganised zerg or small-scale group should be able to take on a better equipped and coordinated 12-man raid? Imagine if during Alexander's campaign against Persia the Persians complained to their gods that Greek tactics were "broken" and needed to be balanced, just because they managed to get steamrolled by a far smaller force. It'd be ridiculous, wouldn't it?

I do not mean any offense to anyone, but it has been quite annoying receiving blame for stuff that isn't our fault. I mean, have you guys ever considered that it's ZOS's job to get better servers and not our fault for casting a lot of AoE skills? Also, please do not confuse us with those running server-bloating software; ball groups despise them, too. A lot of you are presenting our work as if it some sort of cheating, a cop-out, when in fact it is the result of a lot of arduous design and practice. And some of us are really out to fight for our faction rather than just farm AP - though it is true that some ball groups are merely looking for fights without any regard for the map.

Here is another voice heard in here as I am not a ball group player and as such free to post opinions without having my play-style threatened by others opinions. That being said, anytime you utilize something that tends to be more problematic during specific times than others, and do so with what we have seen posted as clearly overuse of said skills......I my opinion you are - let me use a ball group players own words here "However noone is using any skills to intentionally bug enemies out or anything, realistically it's just a sort of "evolution". Behavior that works gets repeated. At some point someone just noticed that it helps killing stuff in lag to spam stuns (and then aoe down the guys who got stunned). " Ahem....yeah. That.

Personally I don't mind a bit of protective posting for a play-style you are committed to, but with ball-groups this tendency to "swarm" threads with protective posts claiming others simply misunderstand them and are being overly critical, even suggesting the other players don't understand how the game works....is quite tiresome at this point. Regardless of how you see yourselves, and we have established that is on a pretty high pedestal, the reality of a game losing players to the degree we see now calls for quite a bit more honesty about what could be something ZOS might fix that would improve the gaming experience of the vast majority of players they do have left in PvP. They do NOT need to focus on yet again inadvertently buffing said play-styles due to the forum 'swarm' and thread derails to protect it. No one is listing ONE group out of them all or even using groups names at this point----its more of a discussion from players who love the game and want to get focus where it will do the most good and possibly enhance what we do have left of a great game. Don't read into it what isn't there.

Global cool-down for 5 seconds on ALL CC's that worked reliably in game even in lag if focused on would impact the most players right now. The lag is our terminal problem but we have turned things upside down to deal with it---we have no less than two full pages of bugs that have been around for extensive periods of time and not been addressed, yet this one thing above all others would stop taking players chars out of their hands allowing for responses to better deal with all the other issues we face daily in PvP.

Not a ball group in sight on my last few forays to Greyhost over the weekend... but before the AD zerg even came into visual range, you could feel their "presence", as skills suddenly stopped working, lag hit the roof and everyone got hit with the slow bug (that wasn't in their zerg). Please tell me how that fits into the whole ball groups are the cause of lag discussion? I would lean more towards zerg stacking being the issue, rather than the ballgroups. They are generally in the same place, but I find it a lot easier to accept 100 random players having a larger effect on performance than 8-12 people would, regardless of what those 8-12 are doing.

BardInSolitude wrote: »

Soul_Demon wrote: »

Personally I don't mind a bit of protective posting for a play-style you are committed to, but with ball-groups this tendency to "swarm" threads with protective posts claiming others simply misunderstand them and are being overly critical, even suggesting the other players don't understand how the game works....is quite tiresome at this point. Regardless of how you see yourselves, and we have established that is on a pretty high pedestal, the reality of a game losing players to the degree we see now calls for quite a bit more honesty about what could be something ZOS might fix that would improve the gaming experience of the vast majority of players they do have left in PvP. They do NOT need to focus on yet again inadvertently buffing said play-styles due to the forum 'swarm' and thread derails to protect it. No one is listing ONE group out of them all or even using groups names at this point----its more of a discussion from players who love the game and want to get focus where it will do the most good and possibly enhance what we do have left of a great game. Don't read into it what isn't there.

If you do not love organised Cyrodiil combat, such as that practiced by ball groups, you do not love Cyrodiil; you just love a version of Cyrodiil that exists in your head but isn't the real thing. On what arguments do you base your request for mechanics to combat ball groups? I have already made a case as to why it makes sense from for organised units to be the primary mode of efficient combat in Cyrodiil (i.e. that they parallel real war tactics), but I have thus not seen any counterargument other than "it's not fun for us". You know what's not fun? Effortlessly steamrolling through an unorganised group. I wish that more people formed organised groups because most of us find no pleasure in beating zerglings.

Lastly, in what way is lag related to ball groups? Do you think I enjoy the fact that it takes me 2-3s to get my Negate down when fighting other ball groups? Do you think we never get perma-CCed even when we've already used our Immovable potions? All the problems you are describing are problems that ball groups are facing, too, and would like to see solved. Zenimax's practices is our common problem, yet you choose to turn against other players playing the game fair and square.

So, no, I'm not trying to "defend" ball groups. I'm just trying to show you and so many other people sharing similar views that you are letting ZOS divide and conquer the playerbase. There's nothing you can do that will stop us from using our collective wits and skills to prevail against players that refuse to use group tactics, but if ZOS makes their own game playable maybe we can all finally get a taste of what Cyrodiil-as-intended truly is.

jekyto wrote: »

If zos make the game playable, your "organized tactics group" wont last for more than 5 seconds mate

BardInSolitude wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

The issue for me is that they tend to exploit inherent weakness in the combat system while also overloading the server with aoe spasm that further make it hard to kill them.

Ackwalan wrote: »

A ball group and an organized group are not the same thing. An organized group will uses classes, skills and gear to be the best they can. A ball group will stack a few select skills and gear to the point of being an exploit.

master_vanargand wrote: »

I often see Ballgroup using Blood Altar.
Moreover, Ballgroup uses 3-4 or more Blood Altar at the same time.

Why does Ballgroup do something seemingly useless?

[snip]

[edited for conspiracy theory]

Earthewen wrote: »

I would agree with almost everything you said here. However, I don't think it is just the AOE that is causing all the lag. I think it is far more likely that the constant speed with which they are going off is the problem along with the CC overuse. There are some groups who realize that you can exploit the fear CC to an advantage. If two or more fears are layered with other things, you can try to break free or roll dodge until you're blue in the face. You aren't going anywhere and your stam will still be drained. The speed with which these skills go down might be causing an electronic bottleneck in the system and with any macros, etc., ... Well, there goes the neighborhood.

Soul_Demon wrote: »

I my opinion you are - let me use a ball group players own words here "However noone is using any skills to intentionally bug enemies out or anything, realistically it's just a sort of "evolution". Behavior that works gets repeated. At some point someone just noticed that it helps killing stuff in lag to spam stuns (and then aoe down the guys who got stunned). " Ahem....yeah. That.

I apologise for not being able to resist responding, despite what I stated on my last post. Do I need to quote the entire thread?

As for the CC exploits and whatnot, we all hate them. Yet this thread isn't about them, is it? It's about "ball groups". I know a total of, what, two groups in PC-NA No-CP that use these exploits (I'm not going to say names for obvious reasons), and maybe a few players that use CC-related hacks (again, can't say the names, if you play in this server you know who they are). Yet there exist so many ball groups than just those two.

In fact, to respond to another person who recently responded to me, I would say I can't wait for the moment that I can put down my ults when I mean to and not 2-3s later. Most ball groups truly are screwed by server mishaps and have to resort to meta-gaming tactics such as casting ultimates and using Immovables before you normally would.

So, please, make your own organised groups in Cyrodiil! Facing other raids is our passion, especially when they are defending a precious map resource! We don't spend hours upon hours designing builds to fight zergs or exploiters. And, no, that last statement certainly isn't neutral - and it's not meant to be.

Cheers.

Soul_Demon wrote: »

but selective quotes only works if you have one where someone claimed it was ball groups alone that caused lag as one of your posts seemed to feel was the topic and what really was not the topic at all.

neferpitou73 wrote: »

Can I get an invite, Bard? I love a good secret society! Do we get cool uniforms?

Joy_Division wrote: »

TheEndBringer wrote: »

Sanctum74 wrote: »

Makes more sense to just use the many counters already available instead of adding an I win button to the game. Ball groups would just use it against you and then people would be back complaining again.

No one said anything about an I win button. The lack of destructible environments make it difficult to counter certain game play. Their ability to stack spam heals and purges make current siege useless against them.

Like it or not, most players don't want to ball up. It shouldn't take a zerg to kill 12 enemies.

And if they want to use such a siege weapon then more power to them but there's a reason why they usually don't use siege. They aren't usually trying to take keeps.

You did. You want a piece of inventory to place down and kill multiple players that you are incapable of doing so with your actual abilities. That's absolutely an I Win button. It's the equivalent of opening up the console on a game like Civilization and just nuking the crap of all the other civilizations.

You honestly think destroying resource towers is going to stop the pugs that get farmed chasing organized groups and small scalers who wait in there? This is a behavior issue that's not going to go away because players can destroy a resource tower. There are probably 1001 choke points throughout Cyrodiil that will serve just as well.

It doesn't take a zerg to kill 12 enemies. It just takes another 12 players with better players, superior teamwork, and more intelligent tactics. That's it. There isn't any need for ZOS to hand out the equivalent of tactical nukes. If you don;t want to be a part of a group of 10-12, that's fine. Just stop mindlessly chasing groups (of whatever size) of skilled players simply hoping numerical superiority will win the day and you'll stop appearing on the kill counts of organized group players.