I myself have never really been much of a PvE player and I've never really been into PvP...ever. Still, as a solo casual player and as an RPer who both RPs and DMs events I gotta say that the decision to halve group sizes has been one of the worst and I seriously hope that its reversed as soon as possible @ZOS_GinaBruno . Speaking solely from my experience as an RPer, its made hosting, running, and attending RP events a pain. While full groups of 24 might be on the rarer side of things its actually not uncommon to get a turnout that exceeds 12. My most recent event that I ran myself was a jousting tournament that included both guild members and other RPers from the Elsweyr section of the RP community and it had a fairly decent turnout. I don't recall the exact attendance but we did at one point exceed the new and definitely not improved cap of 12. Now granted, I did use zone chat within the house to post rolls and other DM posts I can't constantly remind people to unmute zone chat, which I can almost guarantee that your average RPer has muted. As a result, its possible some of the latecomers missed a few rolls and posts, both of which are essential to the overall experience of the event. What's worse, had this event taken place in the overworld rather than a house, which yes RPers do still RP in the overworld, the zone chat alternative to group chat goes right out the window. All in all, the change hasn't done anything to improve the game on our end, and given that the infrastructure is being reworked I question if it really helped all that much on your end ZOS, and has just actively made the game less fun to play.

Futard wrote: »

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

There's another example that didn't have any impact on overall performance and was a negative for players who's preferred playstyle was impacted.

ZOS reverted that change.

I agree on the guild point - I know it's negatively impacted my guild. Our regular pvp raids used to be big events, which got lots of new people coming along. Nowadays they're generally limited to the same group of 12 people. There just isn't the room to bring new people in.

The point I wanted to emphasise though was the impact this decision had on the PUG scene in cyro. When I started out pvping, there'd be at least three pugs running most afternoons (pceu). There'd be the leader, half a dozen or so of his guildies and then they opened the rest of the spots up to pick ups. That's how a lot of us got into pvp.

When zos cut the limit from 24 to 12, three more pug's didn't mysteriously spring up. Running those groups requires a lot of experience, patience and a pretty thick skin. We ended up with the same 3 or 4 groups just half the size. Moreover, that didn't just halve the number spots for casual players looking for a group. It more like cut it by 75%. Because the leader still had his 6 or 7 buddies with him and instead of there being say 16 free spots in the group, there were now maybe 4.

And of course, as people found, 12 man groups - or at least 12 man groups with a sizeable number of casual players in them - just aren't that effective. if you take 24 random people, there's enough people on site to mount a siege, and they'll have enough siege to knock over a fort. The 12 mans? When you bear in mind one person's probably leaving, one person's handing in at northgate, one persons on his way to join the group and one person's just plain lost, they've maybe got 8 or 9 bodies.

The month after zos put this decision through, there was a steady stream of casual players standing at northgate plaintively shouting LFG for what felt like an hour before they gave up. Some eventually went off and zerg surfed, some just left, and a lot didn't come back. And since then, I watched the population in cyro plumet. Sure the server still caps, but it caps later and later and there's almost nothing happening in the afternoons now. I don't go in before 5pm now, it's just not worth it, and often will leave it until after 6. It's a shadow of what it once was.

Now, I imagine a lot of players probably don't care what happens in pugs, or what goes down into the off peak period. But what I think we've lost because of this change was a really important feeder. A lot of people want to try cyro out, but they don't really know what to do, where to go and are probably a little worried just wondering off by themselves. Give them a group and a bit of leadership, they'll get their heads around it. But without that, they're probably just going to say sod it and go do something else.

They wont listen. I'm sick of hearing how 'ZOS listens to their community rather than the other devs do' No they dont.
They do whatever the hell they want. No matter how much feedback they get. There is no point in testing things on the PTS. All of the feedback will be ignored

The point still stands that if it didn't change anything for the better, why didn't it get reverted back to its original state? Especially outside PvP - Did a 24 player dolmen group hurt performance more than two 12 player groups?

I usually solo but I ran into this problem today. Joined a PuG that maxed out on people and offered to drop so the lead could get a buddy into the group, then tried to follow around via Discord. It worked for about two fights before I got killed and couldn’t find them again. Very frustrating.