Or MAYBE groupplay is incentivised by using those tools to fight against huge stacking enemy numbers, no matter how the stacked people play, be it "solo" in the zerg, small group, "organised group" or "ballgroup" (wherever people want to differ and draw the lines in these).
To say it in your words, "there is virtually no downside to [zerging] and the more numbers you stack the better".
Just because some people prefer to just hop into Cyro and expect to be effective with their one and only build and playstyle for every occurence that's facing them, it doesn't mean that there is more to this PvP "sandbox mode", where everyone can freely choose who and how to encounter this zone.
Don't stack with your faction and a ballgroup will most likely not be in your way. They literally are a counter to big faction stacks. Even though i agree, that some groups rather have easy fights and pick easy targets and even stick with their own faction. But what, they are free to do so. If they have fun, they are doing at least something right.
I agree tho, that every "counter" to something provokes a reaction. And for the zergstacking player the only solution seems to be "stack more", where actually coordinated counterplay would be a lot more effective. But that would mean to adjust the "one build and gameplay" to face any encounter.

One effect of removing the group tools is, that there will be even lesser groups trying to find their own fights spreading around the map and thus more groups playing with their faction stack.

And regarding objectives groups are/ are not playing for, don't blame the people, if the (reward) system is an individual leaderboard based on AP earned and not something like objective points.
The overall goal to win the campaign is so far out of touch and without any good rewards to the daily Cyrodiil group-PvP (some only run a few times a week for a few hours), since most points are generated in lesser populated timezones by one faction taking the whole map.

If there was a different incentive with rewards for organised groups to fight for campagin points, you would see them do different stuff and could also help to spread wider around the maps.
And do'nt get me wrong, it's not like an organised group causing chaos on the different side of the map didn't have any effect. Every time we log in on EU AD nocp we are pretty much pushed back to our base. Shortly after DC is deposed, AD faction can take back homekeeps without a lot of resistance and soon after we also have one or two of AD scrolls taken out of enemy keeps (which we sometimes use to generate fights, but also sometimes deliver to other AD players to bring it home). Of course it's not us alone who did all that, but playing a seemingly big underestimated part.

Bind campaign points to further rewards, reduce the number of people gaining these points in the same area (could be set by participation points), implement "special events" that only those can partake, if they earned enough of their own alliances campaign points and hand out some rewards to actually play the map (e.g. small buffs until next special event, transmutes, AP, endeavurs, bags with crafting items etc).
A special event could be a spawned in boss that the three factions have to kill for some nice rewards etc, could even use the Imperial City map (just a different instance than the already existing ones).

I kinda got away a bit from the "group skills are too strong" topic with that, but the incentives to play a certain playstyle are strongly connected to how and why organised people play like they do. It wouldn't be that problematic for the not organised player, if the goals would be set differently.

Your skills and abilities aren't supposed to be worse or have a downside for grouping up. The whole point of being part of a team is that the a collection of individuals are stronger than the sum of the individual parts.

I can't believe this comes from official patch note. This must be a joke.

They are not doing this because of PvP. Nobody ever run pale order in PvP anyway. They do this because ppl run dungeons in 4 DD compositions.

Now this item is murdered for BGs.

ZOS what are you doing? @ZOS_GinaBruno

Grimlok_S wrote: »

It was already an awful choice for a PvP build. That's not what the OP is implying, anyway.

It was borderline playable, but playable. Now it is 100% useless. They completely ignored all PvP implications when did this change.

When people make suggestions based on emotions instead of game health, you get threads like these.
In an AvA situation, just get out of the way of the ball group. You aren't going to solo a group of 12 who are stacked and built to take down zergs of 40+, nor should you be able to.

Simplest thing I can think of to deal with ball groups is to buff Inevitable Detonation scaling.

Second is to have one or more siege engines that scale for number of targets the same way. Just enough to discourage the very tight formation of a ball group vs. waves of zergs already handled by normal sieges engines.

Joy_Division wrote: »

Ranger209 wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Your skills and abilities aren't supposed to be worse or have a downside for grouping up. The whole point of being part of a team is that the a collection of individuals are stronger than the sum of the individual parts.

Really, why not? Why should there be NO abilities or gear that is not better for small group and solo gameplay style. If they want to put gear into the game that helps those styles, and that doesn't become extremely OP in the hands of 12 this is exactly the sort of thing they need to do. If they want to put gear in the game for the solo playstyle that doesn't make groups of 4 extremely OP, or remove the need for certain playstyles, in this case healers, this is exactly the sort of thing they need to do. I am speaking of this both from a PVE and PVP standpoint as there are issues on both sides of the equation that they are trying to address with this change. This particular change probably has more to do with PVE than PVP, but is a tool that could be used to address these types of issues.

There are other skills and sets that are supposed to help bust zergs and balls that in the hands of balls become extremely OP. I support the same treatment for some of those skills and sets as well. Being in group is supposed to make the collection of individuals stronger than its parts, but it shouldn't make them nigh invincible. Some sets and skills approach making such teams invincible, and should be handled in similar fashion. I hope this is the beginning something that does make groups merely stronger, rather than borderline invincible.

I never said that no abilities and gear should not be better for small group / solo. I just don't think people should be penalized for grouping up. In fact, there are many morphs in ESO which compel the player to do just that: morph A that gives a stronger individual benefit as opposed to morph B that provides more benefits to allies.

As a Templar, I have to choose between Blazing Spear which provides more damage or Luminous Shards which does less damage but gives my allies more resources. A Warden has to choose between Leeching vines morph, which provides allies with the minor Lifesteal buff, or the selfish Living trellis morph that just gives the recipient a heal. Nightblades probably have to make such a choice most often; when I'm solo, I really want Swallow Soul, but if I have allies, Funnel Health. There is lots of gear that is tailored to solo-play; stuff like Pariah grants powerful defensive bonuses to the user that does nothing for allies or group-mates. I used to wear sets like hist robes or Desert Rose all the time, as they provide better healing and resource management (usually under easier proc conditions) than sets that perform similar functions to allies.

All of this is perfectly fine. Having abilities and gear offer stronger benefits for individuals is common RPG practice and not the same thing as "your skill is now weaker because you joined a group even though that 'solo' player who is embedded in a faction stack has their skills work normally."

If there are a handful of problematic skills and sets that make groups exponentially stronger rather than somewhat stronger I see no reason not to give that handful of sets and skills the Pale Order treatment. Obviously this should not be a wide spread thing, but rather pinpointed on those sets and skills that are abused by groups. Especially those sets and skills that are supposed to be useful against groups of people that instead are being used by the very groups they are supposed to be detrimental to.

I am sure you have seen my proposal for VD and Inev. Det. These proposals use the same group conditions to weaken them in groups and strengthen them for players running solo, or in smaller groups by manipulating the radius size based on how many members are in your group. There are a few select sets and abilities that I think this treatment could be beneficial to gameplay. The idea would be for those select sets and abilities to not be weaker because you joined a group, but rather to not be used because you joined a group. There has to be a middle ground between no advantage to grouping and near immortality because you are in a group. Using this type of debuff increase the bigger your group gets could help with this pursuit.

Fawn4287 wrote: »

You don’t have to PvP much to quickly see there is virtually no downside to grouping and the more numbers you stack the better. Large groups and particularly ball groups absolutely dominate PvP with virtually no downside in combat, players in ball groups can build tankier and with more damage whilst simultaneously stacking more damage abilities and buffs whilst the bulk of the groups damage dealers being able to virtually forgo self healing, buffing and stacking in to regen thanks to nothing other than stacking numbers. ZOS has identified this an issue in PvE with a change to the Pale Order mythic making it useless in trials and large groups. The ability to essentially multiple damage for every person in the group is beyond strong enough and the ability to heal, buff and cleanse everyone in a group is just flat out broken.

Ring of the Pale Order

Increased the amount of healing done from this set to 20% of your damage done, up from 18%.
This set now loses 4% of its value per group member you are with. This means if you are alone it will stay at 20% but reduce to 8% if you are in a group with 3 other players, and 0% when with 5 or more other players.

This change to Ring of the pale order shows that ZOS can quite easily add a fix that changes stats based on group numbers, meaning its not difficult to add this system to other aspects of the game. This exact system of becoming less effective as you stack more numbers is the perfect way to reduce the effectiveness of large PvP groups. Skills like purge and AOE heals should work like this becoming less effective as you stack more numbers to the point where in a large group purge and cleansing ritual becomes nothing other than a self cleanse and heal. Another change that should adjust the obscene damage these groups put out is ult gain, many of these groups don’t actually rely on normal abilities for survival and damage but ultimates and with sets like arkasis a group gains more ultimate than a solo player which is just terrible balance. This system of decreasing effectiveness based on group size should also be implemented in to the ultimate gain of these groups in some way, causing their ultimate generation build up to occur in a matter of several minutes rather than the 20 or 30 seconds it takes them. There are many ways that ZOS can free PvP players from the tyranny of large groups and its very obvious they have the tools to do so, its up to them if things will ever change.

The problem with this idea is that healing and purge aren't bound by group. A ball group can function just as well with all its members in the same group as it can with everybody not being in a group or dividing into smaller groups.

This happened during the fourth round of testing last year when aoes had cooldowns if you were in a group of 6 or more people. We just divided up into smaller groups and nothing really changed.

Grimlok_S wrote: »

divnyi wrote: »

I can't believe this comes from official patch note. This must be a joke.

They are not doing this because of PvP. Nobody ever run pale order in PvP anyway. They do this because ppl run dungeons in 4 DD compositions.

Now this item is murdered for BGs.

ZOS what are you doing? @ZOS_GinaBruno

It was already an awful choice for a PvP build. That's not what the OP is implying, anyway.

I used it on mine to make Blood for Blood less of an issue casting, but that's a vampire build where it makes sense. In Battlegrounds the change pretty much guts my build, and means I'll never group up in Cyrodiil anymore unless ZOS changes something else or adds a limit to just how low the healing can go.

Grouped members don't have crutch sets like soloers do. If you adjust a few sets most will move on to other useful sets.

If you don't want to large groups in the large group area, take back line resources or towns. Its easy to see where faction stacks are going.

Karm1cOne wrote: »

Grouped members don't have crutch sets like soloers do. If you adjust a few sets most will move on to other useful sets.

If you don't want to large groups in the large group area, take back line resources or towns. Its easy to see where faction stacks are going.

I wish I could get the amount of bang for buck that ball groups do. Olorime's would be worth probably over 7k weapon and spell damage then. As it is it's pretty high in stats for a solo player.

The point of Cyrodiil are big warbands fights and sieges.

Joy_Division wrote: »

Your skills and abilities aren't supposed to be worse or have a downside for grouping up. The whole point of being part of a team is that the a collection of individuals are stronger than the sum of the individual parts.

This. A collection of random solo players will never be as effective as a coordinated group, nor should they be.