The 12 person group thing stinks and is costing us members and participation...

Kwoung · February 2022

The lowering of group size proved to make zero difference in all the testing we all endured, so why was it left this way? And why should a message like this ever need be posted on my Discord?

RE: Current Roster Situations

Just wanted give a brief overview about our current roster and gradual growth. First off thank you all for your continued support and participation. Our attendance recently has been outstanding!

As you are aware we are well over 12 person group limit most nights recently. This is great because it does allow us some flexibility most nights as we do usually have 1 or more people that can’t always make it every night (myself included).

Unfortunately as we have seen this means also we may have extras that are formed into a 2nd group. Some players are ok with it and don’t mind not being part of the ‘main’ group. Understandably many of us want to only to run with the main group for various reasonable reasons(ex.ease to follow, survivability, AP etc..)

Making these group decisions raid night can be very difficult and nothing any of us want to do but unfortunately is necessary because of the limited group size. Many things will be taken into that decision - 1) What roles are critical and needed to fill group 2) Who has signed up 3) Are you in zone/on time 4) How long you can stay to play.

I wish it could be cut and dry and have EVERYONE in group. It’s not something we as leaders of group take lightly and never want anyone to feel unwanted.

VaranisArano · February 2022

I'm sorry that's going down with your guild. It already happened to mine, and it sucks.

My PVP guild used to run 18-24 players in Cyrodiil. We recruited and trained new PVPers, so we frequently had newer players with us learning the ropes. We'd help our guildmates learn the basics of siege, make sure they had the gear they needed, and talk about the strategy of finding and winning fights in Cyrodiil. We had a very popular raid night for beginners that usually hit 24 players.

Then group size was slashed to 12.

Well, all of a sudden, we didn't have room for newbies.

We didn't even have room for players who've been with the guild for years.

Sure, we could try to run a Raid 2, but that's a pain in the butt for any type of coordinated movement, and it clutter up voice comms as the two raid leads try to keep track of each other. It's doable...but it wasn't as fun as running in our full-size group. Raid 2 wasn't as fun as being in Raid 1, especially when you got down to 4 players trying to fight in large keep battles.

Since we couldn't lead the full raid, we stopped recruiting. We kept our experienced players, so the beginner raid night fell by the wayside.

I don't know if ZOS accomplished what they wanted when they killed off the big PVP guild raids who used to recruit PUGs and teach new PVPers. I hope they did, because we lost a lot in the process.

ZOS: "Hope you only have 12 friends!"

Sorry, ZOS. That's not how that works. I had more than 12 friends in my guild, and your decision to cut group size meant I couldn't play in raid with all of them.

I do hope that as ZOS does this rearchitecture, they seriously consider bringing back 24-player groups.

Arunei · February 2022

Yep, not only did it not accomplish anything in PvP, it also got applied to all groups in PvE. Who cares if it makes social events harder to organize?

neferpitou73 · February 2022

This decision is one of the main reasons for the death of PvP in ESO. Along with the performance.

FluffWit · February 2022

Arunei wrote: »

Yep, not only did it not accomplish anything in PvP, it also got applied to all groups in PvE. Who cares if it makes social events harder to organize?

This.

Oreyn_Bearclaw · February 2022

VaranisArano wrote: »

I'm sorry that's going down with your guild. It already happened to mine, and it sucks.

My PVP guild used to run 18-24 players in Cyrodiil. We recruited and trained new PVPers, so we frequently had newer players with us learning the ropes. We'd help our guildmates learn the basics of siege, make sure they had the gear they needed, and talk about the strategy of finding and winning fights in Cyrodiil. We had a very popular raid night for beginners that usually hit 24 players.

Then group size was slashed to 12.

Well, all of a sudden, we didn't have room for newbies.

We didn't even have room for players who've been with the guild for years.

Sure, we could try to run a Raid 2, but that's a pain in the butt for any type of coordinated movement, and it clutter up voice comms as the two raid leads try to keep track of each other. It's doable...but it wasn't as fun as running in our full-size group. Raid 2 wasn't as fun as being in Raid 1, especially when you got down to 4 players trying to fight in large keep battles.

Since we couldn't lead the full raid, we stopped recruiting. We kept our experienced players, so the beginner raid night fell by the wayside.

I don't know if ZOS accomplished what they wanted when they killed off the big PVP guild raids who used to recruit PUGs and teach new PVPers. I hope they did, because we lost a lot in the process.

ZOS: "Hope you only have 12 friends!"

Sorry, ZOS. That's not how that works. I had more than 12 friends in my guild, and your decision to cut group size meant I couldn't play in raid with all of them.

I do hope that as ZOS does this rearchitecture, they seriously consider bringing back 24-player groups.

I think that was the elephant in the room that ZOS missed. Even for someone like myself that I wouldnt call a noob, but also wouldnt call a hard core PVPer, it has affected me. It's been a while since I raided in PVP with any consistency (I did once upon a time), but there were a handful of guilds I would run with from time to time to fill out their numbers. That pretty much stopped when it went to 12. Not sure I have been in a group larger than 3 or 4 since the change.

The other thing it missed was the necessity of large group sizes for the pug herders of the world. People like Ahtu get a lot of grief, but it is often overlooked as to how much it helps the faction for one person to carry the mantle for their alliance to recruit pugs out of zone chat and set them to a task that benefits your alliance, even if it is a simple one like PVDoor. These types of groups are way less effective and help far fewer people with a cap of 12.

RisenEclipse · February 2022

I think that this decision should be looked at again and reconsidered if it really has not had a significant impact improving the game. Especially since it seems to have more of a negative impact then a positive one for the community.

SimonThesis · February 2022

The limit group thing really hit the nail of the coffin in a lot of large scale pvp guilds. Hard to do things with 12 people without being super organized and anyone outside of group 1 feels left out or extra. Group 2 can be hard to follow and find leads for. I think most players would prefer returning to at the very least 16 person groups even at the cost of performance. Performance hasn't gotten any better since this change anyway. It also makes it very hard for pvp guilds to keep their current members and have room to train new pvpers.

@ZOS_Kevin The OPs thread deserves a read.

BahometZ · February 2022

I have to agree that the move to 12 person groups has been one of the most significantly deleterious moves that Zos have made, not just to PvP, but also social guilds of any stripe.

It effectively halved the efficacy of average groups in cyrodiil as there were suddenly the same amount of effective group leaders, but twice as many group cohorts. Alongside meta ball groups and deliberate small scale groups, 1vXers and solo loners, Cyrodiil used to have a decent population of largeish groups of average players who could be turned into a force by a decent leader instructing them. Now casual people who might have grown into PvP find either they are locked out of restricted-by-necessity 12 man groups, or clump together in ungainly groups lead by someone not even on comms (if voice chat is even working). Rudderless they flounder, get frustrated, and leave.

There are still those middle ground groups but they are far fewer, and Cyrodiil feels less lively than ever. A lot of people found that a sense of working together was one element that made Cyro compelling despite the bad. Of course other issues are at play (server performance, constant rule changes and set nerf/buff fluctuations, etc.) but the group size change was a hugely unhelpful shift in the cyrodiil dynamic.

Consider also that numerous houses have a population cap of 24, for the sake of housing tours, or guild social events. Coordinating the movement of two large groups for any purpose is difficult.

The immediate and flow on effects of this move have been so predictable and striking across a range of guilds, that it's shocking to me that they went ahead with it. It really displayed a lack of understanding of their own player base.

Wolfpaw · February 2022

Arunei wrote: »

Yep, not only did it not accomplish anything in PvP, it also got applied to all groups in PvE. Who cares if it makes social events harder to organize?

Agree, in PvP instead of a 24players group it's usually an alliance zerg of randos or two 12player+ groups on one crown.

Not sure what's the difference, but we wouldn't since ZOS didn't disclose any behind the scene information.

Fennwitty · February 2022

It was really more fun with big groups of players.

dem0n1k · February 2022

It really sucks for guild organised events... that aren't even in PVP. Every year we have a guild anniversary (7th last year!) & we often get 20-30 guildies turn up for the event. It makes it so much more difficult to gather everyone together (especially those without discord/voice chat) when we have to make 3 groups.

At the very least... increase the group size to 24 again for PVE overland!

freespirit · February 2022

@ZoS_Kevin @ZOS_RichLambert .... Please, please please point this in the right direction.

We NEED 24 man groups back asap after all this is MMO right??? Or do @ZoS no longer consider ESO to be a MMO?? :'(

Supreme_Atromancer · February 2022

@ZOS_GinaBruno , sorry to be a tag monkey, but this is absolutely something the pvp community would love some communication and insight on. Over the last year or so, we're piecing together a narrative based on the communication ZOS has offered regarding the issue, and what we're left to conclude is making people feel like (in terms of pvp community needs), you're out of touch, or aren't listening.

People in this thread have already explained very well the feelings of frustration and bewilderment, and the practical problems, so I wont harp on any more except to say that @Oreyn_Bearclaw 's post highlights the problem of what do we even say to new guildies and community members we have to sideline them (and grimmace as they naturally move on) when we don't understand ourselves.

The recent news about zos's dedication to massive upgrades is something im excited and optimistic about. Along with you, Matt and Rich making genuine efforts to reach out to the community (including about pvp stuff) I personally don't believe you're out of touch, don't care, or aren't listening. But this is clearly one of those issues that actual communication and insight from you guys would really show you mean what you say.

Knockmaker · February 2022

Kwoung wrote: »

The lowering of group size proved to make zero difference in all the testing we all endured, so why was it left this way? And why should a message like this ever need be posted on my Discord?

RE: Current Roster Situations

Just wanted give a brief overview about our current roster and gradual growth. First off thank you all for your continued support and participation. Our attendance recently has been outstanding!

As you are aware we are well over 12 person group limit most nights recently. This is great because it does allow us some flexibility most nights as we do usually have 1 or more people that can’t always make it every night (myself included).

Unfortunately as we have seen this means also we may have extras that are formed into a 2nd group. Some players are ok with it and don’t mind not being part of the ‘main’ group. Understandably many of us want to only to run with the main group for various reasonable reasons(ex.ease to follow, survivability, AP etc..)

Making these group decisions raid night can be very difficult and nothing any of us want to do but unfortunately is necessary because of the limited group size. Many things will be taken into that decision - 1) What roles are critical and needed to fill group 2) Who has signed up 3) Are you in zone/on time 4) How long you can stay to play.

I wish it could be cut and dry and have EVERYONE in group. It’s not something we as leaders of group take lightly and never want anyone to feel unwanted.

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/561247/revert-the-group-size-changes-please

I said this a thousand times, explaining why it was bad and how terribly negatively it impacted players and drove them away. Yet, it is worth saying it one last time.

It was probably the second worst thing that happened to pvp in Cyrodiil right after the performance (lag, desync etc.) issues.

Vevvev · February 2022

I'm more of a solo PvPer, but the group change absolutely nuked my RP guild's ability to host events, and it makes quest sharing a pain in the rear when you get lots of people in on it. Would definitely love to have that change reverted sometime in the future.

Arunei · February 2022

Wolfpaw wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Yep, not only did it not accomplish anything in PvP, it also got applied to all groups in PvE. Who cares if it makes social events harder to organize?

Agree, in PvP instead of a 24players group it's usually an alliance zerg of randos or two 12player+ groups on one crown.

Not sure what's the difference, but we wouldn't since ZOS didn't disclose any behind the scene information.

That's what I'd like to know myself. Iirc it was because the server was dealing with too much info of bigger groups, but...isn't having 2 groups of 12 essentially the same as having 1 group of 24? It doesn't make sense to me, how does breaking up group composition make any difference if the same number of people are still there. Apparently none since ZOS mentioned it didn't really do much after imposing smaller groups, yet instead of reverting it they made it apply to all PvE groups as well.

freespirit wrote: »

@ZoS_Kevin @ZOS_RichLambert .... Please, please please point this in the right direction.

We NEED 24 man groups back asap after all this is MMO right??? Or do @ZoS no longer consider ESO to be a MMO?? :'(

They never considered it to be an MMO. There's been interviews where they outright say they don't see ESO as an MMO and thus don't call it one.

VaranisArano · February 2022

Arunei wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Yep, not only did it not accomplish anything in PvP, it also got applied to all groups in PvE. Who cares if it makes social events harder to organize?

Agree, in PvP instead of a 24players group it's usually an alliance zerg of randos or two 12player+ groups on one crown.

Not sure what's the difference, but we wouldn't since ZOS didn't disclose any behind the scene information.

That's what I'd like to know myself. Iirc it was because the server was dealing with too much info of bigger groups, but...isn't having 2 groups of 12 essentially the same as having 1 group of 24? It doesn't make sense to me, how does breaking up group composition make any difference if the same number of people are still there. Apparently none since ZOS mentioned it didn't really do much after imposing smaller groups, yet instead of reverting it they made it apply to all PvE groups as well.

It does reduce the amount of intra-group communication, though.

For example, 24 players in a group get constant updates on each other's map position and health bars. When you split them into two groups, they don't see that data from the other group anymore.

So if we imagine that health bars are one data point, then:

24-player groups are generating 24×24 health bar data points per second. 576 data points.

12-player groups are generating 12x12 health bar data points per second. 144 data points.

On the surface at least, ZOS slashed the amount of intra-group data being passed between group members by more than half when they cut the group numbers.

Like I said, I hope that ZOS got what they want out of it, because it absolutely sucks for players.

Celephantsylvius_Bornasfinmo · February 2022

I understand the frustration of a 12 man limit everywhere in the game, for sure.
But the game just can't handle it anymore it seems.

12 man raids are sluggish in PvE already, so imagine more...?

Arunei · February 2022

VaranisArano wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Yep, not only did it not accomplish anything in PvP, it also got applied to all groups in PvE. Who cares if it makes social events harder to organize?

Agree, in PvP instead of a 24players group it's usually an alliance zerg of randos or two 12player+ groups on one crown.

Not sure what's the difference, but we wouldn't since ZOS didn't disclose any behind the scene information.

That's what I'd like to know myself. Iirc it was because the server was dealing with too much info of bigger groups, but...isn't having 2 groups of 12 essentially the same as having 1 group of 24? It doesn't make sense to me, how does breaking up group composition make any difference if the same number of people are still there. Apparently none since ZOS mentioned it didn't really do much after imposing smaller groups, yet instead of reverting it they made it apply to all PvE groups as well.

It does reduce the amount of intra-group communication, though.

For example, 24 players in a group get constant updates on each other's map position and health bars. When you split them into two groups, they don't see that data from the other group anymore.

So if we imagine that health bars are one data point, then:

24-player groups are generating 24×24 health bar data points per second. 576 data points.

12-player groups are generating 12x12 health bar data points per second. 144 data points.

On the surface at least, ZOS slashed the amount of intra-group data being passed between group members by more than half when they cut the group numbers.

Like I said, I hope that ZOS got what they want out of it, because it absolutely sucks for players.

But what about the fact that smaller groups versus big ones still results in the same numbers roughly, just split over more groups. In your example one 24-man group might be 576, but two 12-man groups would still be 288. That's close to a 50% reduction in information being transmitted, but there's nothing saying the difference in the amount of data going back and forth is that great between group sizes, as we've been given absolutely no numbers either way. In fact, seeing as ZOS has said there was no significant impact from reducing group sizes, I think we have a better case for that difference to be much smaller.

Onyx_Werewolf_Gnome · February 2022

When did they do this?

Is it just in Cyrodiil (& IC) or is it everywhere?

They hate PvP

.

VaranisArano · February 2022

Arunei wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Yep, not only did it not accomplish anything in PvP, it also got applied to all groups in PvE. Who cares if it makes social events harder to organize?

Agree, in PvP instead of a 24players group it's usually an alliance zerg of randos or two 12player+ groups on one crown.

Not sure what's the difference, but we wouldn't since ZOS didn't disclose any behind the scene information.

That's what I'd like to know myself. Iirc it was because the server was dealing with too much info of bigger groups, but...isn't having 2 groups of 12 essentially the same as having 1 group of 24? It doesn't make sense to me, how does breaking up group composition make any difference if the same number of people are still there. Apparently none since ZOS mentioned it didn't really do much after imposing smaller groups, yet instead of reverting it they made it apply to all PvE groups as well.

It does reduce the amount of intra-group communication, though.

For example, 24 players in a group get constant updates on each other's map position and health bars. When you split them into two groups, they don't see that data from the other group anymore.

So if we imagine that health bars are one data point, then:

24-player groups are generating 24×24 health bar data points per second. 576 data points.

12-player groups are generating 12x12 health bar data points per second. 144 data points.

On the surface at least, ZOS slashed the amount of intra-group data being passed between group members by more than half when they cut the group numbers.

Like I said, I hope that ZOS got what they want out of it, because it absolutely sucks for players.

But what about the fact that smaller groups versus big ones still results in the same numbers roughly, just split over more groups. In your example one 24-man group might be 576, but two 12-man groups would still be 288. That's close to a 50% reduction in information being transmitted, but there's nothing saying the difference in the amount of data going back and forth is that great between group sizes, as we've been given absolutely no numbers either way. In fact, seeing as ZOS has said there was no significant impact from reducing group sizes, I think we have a better case for that difference to be much smaller.

So here's my impression (and it's just an impression, so take with appropriate salt): when ZOS cut the group size, it's pretty rare to see a group of 24 replaced by 2 groups of 12 in PC/NA PVP.

There's a lot of reasons for that.

The larger the group, the better the leadership needs to be to keep it coordinated. 12 is still a pretty large group. Unfortunately, it's not like the number of good raid leaders willing to lead PUGs doubled.

The guilds who do have good raid leaders have to deal with the difficulties of Raid 2. The OP did a good job of describing those annoyances. My guild dropped to one raid of 12 pretty quickly even though we had several good raid leads.

The big PUG guilds who used to run 2-3 raids of 24 players like Army of the Pact did...well, I don't see anyone running Raid 4 or Raid 5 anymore.

What we get now is closer to the old joke my guild used to make: "DC never zergs. Those are twenty small-scale groups all in the same place." From the perspective of lowering group communications, ZOS is fine with that.

So I guess that's a long way to say that whether or not ZOS achieved their goal in terms of 24 players vs 2 groups of 12, the knock-on effects of slashing group size certainly did have the effect of lowering overall communcations just because there were less full-size groups in PVP. On PC/NA, I just don't see every, or even most, 24-player raids being replaced by 2 12-player raids.

I can't comment on PVE as to how many guilds cut back on their multi-group activities due to this change, though. My trading guilds weren't ever into that.

etchedpixels · February 2022

VaranisArano wrote: »

I can't comment on PVE as to how many guilds cut back on their multi-group activities due to this change, though. My trading guilds weren't ever into that.

It turned into exactly the farce that was predicted at the time in PvE, where as ever Zenimax didn't listen.

The main guild I'm in used to take a big group of new people into a public dungeon or other location together on voice chat and take a relaxed trip through content that many of the newer and more casual players never did. Now we end up with two groups of 12 often can't get them all in the same instance and all the banter and fun has been replaced by "is group 2 at boss X yet" and lots of "follow X, no not in group 2, that's group 1" and utter confusion and chaos.

Participation appears to be way down as a result, in fact the problem seems to have fixed itself in many cases because now nobody turns up at all except about 6 usual suspects.

VaranisArano · February 2022

etchedpixels wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

I can't comment on PVE as to how many guilds cut back on their multi-group activities due to this change, though. My trading guilds weren't ever into that.

It turned into exactly the farce that was predicted at the time in PvE, where as ever Zenimax didn't listen.

The main guild I'm in used to take a big group of new people into a public dungeon or other location together on voice chat and take a relaxed trip through content that many of the newer and more casual players never did. Now we end up with two groups of 12 often can't get them all in the same instance and all the banter and fun has been replaced by "is group 2 at boss X yet" and lots of "follow X, no not in group 2, that's group 1" and utter confusion and chaos.

Participation appears to be way down as a result, in fact the problem seems to have fixed itself in many cases because now nobody turns up at all except about 6 usual suspects.

I'm sorry to hear that. I remember that feedback from PVe guild officers pointing out the likely effects, and its sad to hear that their fears have largely come to pass.

I had a similar experience in PVP where a lot of our banter got replaced by "Crown, where are you?" And "Raid 2, are you still there?"

The whole "Raid 2" thing just doesn't work well in PVP or PVE when you can't see each other on the map.

I can't imagine the Devs thought turning a fun group activity into the voice comms equivalent of "Marco? Polo!" was a good idea.

Arunei · February 2022

HedgehogFeet wrote: »

When did they do this? Is it just in Cyrodiil (& IC) or is it everywhere?

They hate PvP

It was done months and months ago in Cyrodill, when they were doing all those tests to try and fix performance. Then it was imposed game-wide a few updates ago, icr which one. ALL groups are limited to 12 now and have been for months now. It really does suck.

VaranisArano wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Yep, not only did it not accomplish anything in PvP, it also got applied to all groups in PvE. Who cares if it makes social events harder to organize?

Agree, in PvP instead of a 24players group it's usually an alliance zerg of randos or two 12player+ groups on one crown.

Not sure what's the difference, but we wouldn't since ZOS didn't disclose any behind the scene information.

That's what I'd like to know myself. Iirc it was because the server was dealing with too much info of bigger groups, but...isn't having 2 groups of 12 essentially the same as having 1 group of 24? It doesn't make sense to me, how does breaking up group composition make any difference if the same number of people are still there. Apparently none since ZOS mentioned it didn't really do much after imposing smaller groups, yet instead of reverting it they made it apply to all PvE groups as well.

It does reduce the amount of intra-group communication, though.

For example, 24 players in a group get constant updates on each other's map position and health bars. When you split them into two groups, they don't see that data from the other group anymore.

So if we imagine that health bars are one data point, then:

24-player groups are generating 24×24 health bar data points per second. 576 data points.

12-player groups are generating 12x12 health bar data points per second. 144 data points.

On the surface at least, ZOS slashed the amount of intra-group data being passed between group members by more than half when they cut the group numbers.

Like I said, I hope that ZOS got what they want out of it, because it absolutely sucks for players.

But what about the fact that smaller groups versus big ones still results in the same numbers roughly, just split over more groups. In your example one 24-man group might be 576, but two 12-man groups would still be 288. That's close to a 50% reduction in information being transmitted, but there's nothing saying the difference in the amount of data going back and forth is that great between group sizes, as we've been given absolutely no numbers either way. In fact, seeing as ZOS has said there was no significant impact from reducing group sizes, I think we have a better case for that difference to be much smaller.

So here's my impression (and it's just an impression, so take with appropriate salt): when ZOS cut the group size, it's pretty rare to see a group of 24 replaced by 2 groups of 12 in PC/NA PVP.

There's a lot of reasons for that.

The larger the group, the better the leadership needs to be to keep it coordinated. 12 is still a pretty large group. Unfortunately, it's not like the number of good raid leaders willing to lead PUGs doubled.

The guilds who do have good raid leaders have to deal with the difficulties of Raid 2. The OP did a good job of describing those annoyances. My guild dropped to one raid of 12 pretty quickly even though we had several good raid leads.

The big PUG guilds who used to run 2-3 raids of 24 players like Army of the Pact did...well, I don't see anyone running Raid 4 or Raid 5 anymore.

What we get now is closer to the old joke my guild used to make: "DC never zergs. Those are twenty small-scale groups all in the same place." From the perspective of lowering group communications, ZOS is fine with that.

So I guess that's a long way to say that whether or not ZOS achieved their goal in terms of 24 players vs 2 groups of 12, the knock-on effects of slashing group size certainly did have the effect of lowering overall communcations just because there were less full-size groups in PVP. On PC/NA, I just don't see every, or even most, 24-player raids being replaced by 2 12-player raids.

I can't comment on PVE as to how many guilds cut back on their multi-group activities due to this change, though. My trading guilds weren't ever into that.

In practice we might not see a lot of two12-man groups to make a full 24 for Cyro, but my point is more about how splitting groups into smaller ones just results in a larger number of smaller groups, rather than smaller numbers of larger groups. Sort of like taking three groups of ten oranges and splitting them into six groups of five. You haven't really done much. Obviously there's a lot more to it than that given coding is a lot more to complicated than sorting a handful of fruit, I was just using it as an example.

In a way ZOS succeeded, since stories like your PvP guild's have certainly been going on through a lot of others. And so it led to smaller numbers of people bothering with Cyrodiil at all, but from what ZOS was saying on the technical side of things, there wasn't much of a backend difference between 24-man groups and 12-man groups.

VaranisArano · February 2022

Arunei wrote: »

HedgehogFeet wrote: »

When did they do this? Is it just in Cyrodiil (& IC) or is it everywhere?

They hate PvP

It was done months and months ago in Cyrodill, when they were doing all those tests to try and fix performance. Then it was imposed game-wide a few updates ago, icr which one. ALL groups are limited to 12 now and have been for months now. It really does suck.

VaranisArano wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Yep, not only did it not accomplish anything in PvP, it also got applied to all groups in PvE. Who cares if it makes social events harder to organize?

Agree, in PvP instead of a 24players group it's usually an alliance zerg of randos or two 12player+ groups on one crown.

Not sure what's the difference, but we wouldn't since ZOS didn't disclose any behind the scene information.

That's what I'd like to know myself. Iirc it was because the server was dealing with too much info of bigger groups, but...isn't having 2 groups of 12 essentially the same as having 1 group of 24? It doesn't make sense to me, how does breaking up group composition make any difference if the same number of people are still there. Apparently none since ZOS mentioned it didn't really do much after imposing smaller groups, yet instead of reverting it they made it apply to all PvE groups as well.

It does reduce the amount of intra-group communication, though.

For example, 24 players in a group get constant updates on each other's map position and health bars. When you split them into two groups, they don't see that data from the other group anymore.

So if we imagine that health bars are one data point, then:

24-player groups are generating 24×24 health bar data points per second. 576 data points.

12-player groups are generating 12x12 health bar data points per second. 144 data points.

On the surface at least, ZOS slashed the amount of intra-group data being passed between group members by more than half when they cut the group numbers.

Like I said, I hope that ZOS got what they want out of it, because it absolutely sucks for players.

But what about the fact that smaller groups versus big ones still results in the same numbers roughly, just split over more groups. In your example one 24-man group might be 576, but two 12-man groups would still be 288. That's close to a 50% reduction in information being transmitted, but there's nothing saying the difference in the amount of data going back and forth is that great between group sizes, as we've been given absolutely no numbers either way. In fact, seeing as ZOS has said there was no significant impact from reducing group sizes, I think we have a better case for that difference to be much smaller.

So here's my impression (and it's just an impression, so take with appropriate salt): when ZOS cut the group size, it's pretty rare to see a group of 24 replaced by 2 groups of 12 in PC/NA PVP.

There's a lot of reasons for that.

The larger the group, the better the leadership needs to be to keep it coordinated. 12 is still a pretty large group. Unfortunately, it's not like the number of good raid leaders willing to lead PUGs doubled.

The guilds who do have good raid leaders have to deal with the difficulties of Raid 2. The OP did a good job of describing those annoyances. My guild dropped to one raid of 12 pretty quickly even though we had several good raid leads.

The big PUG guilds who used to run 2-3 raids of 24 players like Army of the Pact did...well, I don't see anyone running Raid 4 or Raid 5 anymore.

What we get now is closer to the old joke my guild used to make: "DC never zergs. Those are twenty small-scale groups all in the same place." From the perspective of lowering group communications, ZOS is fine with that.

So I guess that's a long way to say that whether or not ZOS achieved their goal in terms of 24 players vs 2 groups of 12, the knock-on effects of slashing group size certainly did have the effect of lowering overall communcations just because there were less full-size groups in PVP. On PC/NA, I just don't see every, or even most, 24-player raids being replaced by 2 12-player raids.

I can't comment on PVE as to how many guilds cut back on their multi-group activities due to this change, though. My trading guilds weren't ever into that.

In practice we might not see a lot of two12-man groups to make a full 24 for Cyro, but my point is more about how splitting groups into smaller ones just results in a larger number of smaller groups, rather than smaller numbers of larger groups. Sort of like taking three groups of ten oranges and splitting them into six groups of five. You haven't really done much. Obviously there's a lot more to it than that given coding is a lot more to complicated than sorting a handful of fruit, I was just using it as an example.

In a way ZOS succeeded, since stories like your PvP guild's have certainly been going on through a lot of others. And so it led to smaller numbers of people bothering with Cyrodiil at all, but from what ZOS was saying on the technical side of things, there wasn't much of a backend difference between 24-man groups and 12-man groups.

But even in your example of oranges, there is a substantial decrease in data sent between group members.

3 groups of 10 are sharing 300 data points per second just for one item of information like position on the map.

6 groups of 5 are sharing 150 data points.

So assuming that there's an exact replacement of large groups with smaller groups, the amount of datapoints is halved.

This is what Gina Bruno said about their goals:

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone,

First, we wanted to thank you all for providing so much valuable feedback on the change to group sizes in this update. We understand there are situations where having a larger group size is desired and makes some activities more enjoyable.

As some of you have guessed, this change ultimately comes down to performance. We’ve been continually looking at ways to improve performance and stability across the game and we found reducing the group size was an effective way to ensure there would be fewer situations where you hit critical memory. Additionally, there’s a fair amount of data that has to be exchanged on the backend for every person in your group. By limiting the group size to 12, we’re introducing additional performance gains.

Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts with us on this topic. We appreciate it, and we hope this helps provide additional context for the change.

If there's been a follow-up message, I don't remember it, sorry.

And finally, what you have to remember is that even if the change didn't impact the overall player experience with performance (that is, we didn't see an improvement on our end), it doesn't mean that ZOS wasn't successful in targeting those specific metrics on the backend.

_adhyffbjjjf12 · February 2022

VaranisArano wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

HedgehogFeet wrote: »

When did they do this? Is it just in Cyrodiil (& IC) or is it everywhere?

They hate PvP

It was done months and months ago in Cyrodill, when they were doing all those tests to try and fix performance. Then it was imposed game-wide a few updates ago, icr which one. ALL groups are limited to 12 now and have been for months now. It really does suck.

VaranisArano wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Wolfpaw wrote: »

Arunei wrote: »

Yep, not only did it not accomplish anything in PvP, it also got applied to all groups in PvE. Who cares if it makes social events harder to organize?

Agree, in PvP instead of a 24players group it's usually an alliance zerg of randos or two 12player+ groups on one crown.

Not sure what's the difference, but we wouldn't since ZOS didn't disclose any behind the scene information.

That's what I'd like to know myself. Iirc it was because the server was dealing with too much info of bigger groups, but...isn't having 2 groups of 12 essentially the same as having 1 group of 24? It doesn't make sense to me, how does breaking up group composition make any difference if the same number of people are still there. Apparently none since ZOS mentioned it didn't really do much after imposing smaller groups, yet instead of reverting it they made it apply to all PvE groups as well.

It does reduce the amount of intra-group communication, though.

For example, 24 players in a group get constant updates on each other's map position and health bars. When you split them into two groups, they don't see that data from the other group anymore.

So if we imagine that health bars are one data point, then:

24-player groups are generating 24×24 health bar data points per second. 576 data points.

12-player groups are generating 12x12 health bar data points per second. 144 data points.

On the surface at least, ZOS slashed the amount of intra-group data being passed between group members by more than half when they cut the group numbers.

Like I said, I hope that ZOS got what they want out of it, because it absolutely sucks for players.

But what about the fact that smaller groups versus big ones still results in the same numbers roughly, just split over more groups. In your example one 24-man group might be 576, but two 12-man groups would still be 288. That's close to a 50% reduction in information being transmitted, but there's nothing saying the difference in the amount of data going back and forth is that great between group sizes, as we've been given absolutely no numbers either way. In fact, seeing as ZOS has said there was no significant impact from reducing group sizes, I think we have a better case for that difference to be much smaller.

So here's my impression (and it's just an impression, so take with appropriate salt): when ZOS cut the group size, it's pretty rare to see a group of 24 replaced by 2 groups of 12 in PC/NA PVP.

There's a lot of reasons for that.

The larger the group, the better the leadership needs to be to keep it coordinated. 12 is still a pretty large group. Unfortunately, it's not like the number of good raid leaders willing to lead PUGs doubled.

The guilds who do have good raid leaders have to deal with the difficulties of Raid 2. The OP did a good job of describing those annoyances. My guild dropped to one raid of 12 pretty quickly even though we had several good raid leads.

The big PUG guilds who used to run 2-3 raids of 24 players like Army of the Pact did...well, I don't see anyone running Raid 4 or Raid 5 anymore.

What we get now is closer to the old joke my guild used to make: "DC never zergs. Those are twenty small-scale groups all in the same place." From the perspective of lowering group communications, ZOS is fine with that.

So I guess that's a long way to say that whether or not ZOS achieved their goal in terms of 24 players vs 2 groups of 12, the knock-on effects of slashing group size certainly did have the effect of lowering overall communcations just because there were less full-size groups in PVP. On PC/NA, I just don't see every, or even most, 24-player raids being replaced by 2 12-player raids.

I can't comment on PVE as to how many guilds cut back on their multi-group activities due to this change, though. My trading guilds weren't ever into that.

In practice we might not see a lot of two12-man groups to make a full 24 for Cyro, but my point is more about how splitting groups into smaller ones just results in a larger number of smaller groups, rather than smaller numbers of larger groups. Sort of like taking three groups of ten oranges and splitting them into six groups of five. You haven't really done much. Obviously there's a lot more to it than that given coding is a lot more to complicated than sorting a handful of fruit, I was just using it as an example.

In a way ZOS succeeded, since stories like your PvP guild's have certainly been going on through a lot of others. And so it led to smaller numbers of people bothering with Cyrodiil at all, but from what ZOS was saying on the technical side of things, there wasn't much of a backend difference between 24-man groups and 12-man groups.

But even in your example of oranges, there is a substantial decrease in data sent between group members.

3 groups of 10 are sharing 300 data points per second just for one item of information like position on the map.

6 groups of 5 are sharing 150 data points.

So assuming that there's an exact replacement of large groups with smaller groups, the amount of datapoints is halved.

This is what Gina Bruno said about their goals:

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

Hi everyone,

First, we wanted to thank you all for providing so much valuable feedback on the change to group sizes in this update. We understand there are situations where having a larger group size is desired and makes some activities more enjoyable.

As some of you have guessed, this change ultimately comes down to performance. We’ve been continually looking at ways to improve performance and stability across the game and we found reducing the group size was an effective way to ensure there would be fewer situations where you hit critical memory. Additionally, there’s a fair amount of data that has to be exchanged on the backend for every person in your group. By limiting the group size to 12, we’re introducing additional performance gains.

Thanks again for taking the time to share your thoughts with us on this topic. We appreciate it, and we hope this helps provide additional context for the change.

If there's been a follow-up message, I don't remember it, sorry.

And finally, what you have to remember is that even if the change didn't impact the overall player experience with performance (that is, we didn't see an improvement on our end), it doesn't mean that ZOS wasn't successful in targeting those specific metrics on the backend.

yeah critical memory usage is a side effect of poor design. You don't cut content (in this case ability for larger groups) to deal with a side effect. Worse, its clear the decrease in memory has had no noticeable impact on the overall playability of the game so they should have restored the group size.

I've come to realise this game is a car crash and not fit for purpose apart from pve. My mistake along with many others was to hope that the next fix would be it, then the next etc etc until years have passed. People need to realise this is it, it will not get better until they commit and implement the major rewrite they have just recently started referring to and that looks to be at least a years work considering they have avoided it like the plague in the past and obfuscated the issue with the 'lets try this' hackery.

Necrotech_Master · February 2022

maybe the group size limitation can be revisited once all of these supposed rearchitecting plans are finished

the biggest limitation i can see for cross data is the positioning since that data is shared only with group

most things like heals and some buffs can be given cross group and splitting group size isnt really altering this data too much and this is likely where performance would be a concern now especially now that we have heal stacking + tons more individual buffs/debuffs that are unique outside of the major/minor system

zaria · February 2022

Oreyn_Bearclaw wrote: »

VaranisArano wrote: »

I'm sorry that's going down with your guild. It already happened to mine, and it sucks.

My PVP guild used to run 18-24 players in Cyrodiil. We recruited and trained new PVPers, so we frequently had newer players with us learning the ropes. We'd help our guildmates learn the basics of siege, make sure they had the gear they needed, and talk about the strategy of finding and winning fights in Cyrodiil. We had a very popular raid night for beginners that usually hit 24 players.

Then group size was slashed to 12.

Well, all of a sudden, we didn't have room for newbies.

We didn't even have room for players who've been with the guild for years.

Sure, we could try to run a Raid 2, but that's a pain in the butt for any type of coordinated movement, and it clutter up voice comms as the two raid leads try to keep track of each other. It's doable...but it wasn't as fun as running in our full-size group. Raid 2 wasn't as fun as being in Raid 1, especially when you got down to 4 players trying to fight in large keep battles.

Since we couldn't lead the full raid, we stopped recruiting. We kept our experienced players, so the beginner raid night fell by the wayside.

I don't know if ZOS accomplished what they wanted when they killed off the big PVP guild raids who used to recruit PUGs and teach new PVPers. I hope they did, because we lost a lot in the process.

ZOS: "Hope you only have 12 friends!"

Sorry, ZOS. That's not how that works. I had more than 12 friends in my guild, and your decision to cut group size meant I couldn't play in raid with all of them.

I do hope that as ZOS does this rearchitecture, they seriously consider bringing back 24-player groups.

I think that was the elephant in the room that ZOS missed. Even for someone like myself that I wouldnt call a noob, but also wouldnt call a hard core PVPer, it has affected me. It's been a while since I raided in PVP with any consistency (I did once upon a time), but there were a handful of guilds I would run with from time to time to fill out their numbers. That pretty much stopped when it went to 12. Not sure I have been in a group larger than 3 or 4 since the change.

The other thing it missed was the necessity of large group sizes for the pug herders of the world. People like Ahtu get a lot of grief, but it is often overlooked as to how much it helps the faction for one person to carry the mantle for their alliance to recruit pugs out of zone chat and set them to a task that benefits your alliance, even if it is a simple one like PVDoor. These types of groups are way less effective and help far fewer people with a cap of 12.

This, it made adding pugs to your cyrodil run an no go, this robs new people from the rush of getting into an group of decent players. And as above statement that an 24 man pug run is able to take an lightly defended keep, an 12 man does not not as only half are at objective. Organized pvp guilds are still on common discord and are hurt far less than pugs.

Now add social events in houses and overland.

DerAlleinTiger · February 2022

I really hope we hear about a revisit of this issue from @ZOS_GinaBruno. This has been a terrible decision for RP guilds all over the community. Before this change, we used to have events of all sorts that would fill up the group. Combat events in particular found it necessary because the person "DM'ing" the enemies needs to be able to talk to everyone in a group channel, and anyone who happens to beyond the range of local chat (/say and /emote) needs to use group for everyone to actually see their emotes. Some of my best memories were DM'ing groups of 19, 20, even 22 and 23 players. Hectic, yes, but also a great time. Some events like arena matches also required it for the announcer and fighters to all be 'visible' in chat to the players since they can often be too far from the viewing stands or areas for the players to get the local channels, plus everyone wants to see the rolls.

Recently there was a big market event in a player housing instance, a large one with a 24-player pop cap, that had a literal queue to get in. As in, there were so many people who wanted to join in, some had to actually wait for others to leave first, and then were fighting to port in first. This was a huge deal since it was a part of some efforts to renew a section of the community and the guild hosting it were relative newcomers on the scene and had yet to receive so much support before in such a direct manner for their events. Yet we couldn't all be in a group together to community-build, coordinate, and chat it up. It had to be split down the middle. Now luckily we've started to use zone chat in player housing instances as a rudimentary group chat, but it's not preferable since a lot of people have zone chat turned off by default at this point (If you've ever spent considerable time in zone chat, you probably know why). This solution also does not work for events that are outside of player housing too, for obvious reasons.

This change is actively hurting the RP community, and in one of the worst ways possible: It's destroying massive potential for networking at large-scale and public events, which are integral to maintaining a healthy community. Yes, we make due, but it's really becoming quite a pain as the RP scene sees a resurgence and the group limitations only become more of a constriction. We gave it a chance and tried it out. There has been zero impact on gameplay or performance on our end, but a massively negative impact on our social capabilities, which directly impacts our desire to play the game in the first place.

Futard · February 2022

Another idea...
They just should let it be as it is and remove healing outside of your own group again.