Gently Discourage Over-Healing

Credible_Joe · October 2024

The Ball-Group grievance has been going strong for years now. And yet, it's a pillar of what makes Cyrodiil a unique gameplay experience. Large groups enable those with less experience to meaningfully contribute to the campaign, even if all they do is spam Vigor and heavy attack.

Personally, I believe it's something we shouldn't dispose with out of hand. I believe this because of my previous contributions to the Cyrodiil discussion, suggestions to reduce the scope and preserving the objective-based gameplay, which were largely not received well. As far as I can tell, people won't accept reducing the population; the campaigns need to be lively and in-line with the advertised experience. Hordes of players wailing on each other all at once.

So, how do we address the ball-group grievance while maintaining the scope of the Cyrodiil experience?

People have suggested capping healing stacks; making sure you can only get healing from unique sources. I think that would work nicely, but it would also limit the effect supportive and casual players can offer in the campaign, which as far as I can tell, is a hard-and-fast design point for the dev team.

I suggest a different approach: ramping healing cost, the same as dodge roll and streak / ball-lightning. But only when your target is over-healed.

Pre-emptive Vigors would still be useful, but trains of players spamming heals and not fighting tactically would enter fights with spent resources, and quickly run out as they heal targets at full health. Casual players could still contribute the same way they had before, but must manage their resources, and will be metered by the ramping cost. It could even encourage them to find different ways to contribute, which would on its own make large-scale, public-grouped combat a bit more tactical.

And for the PvE'rs in the thread, we can limit this effect to battle-spirit so PvE activities aren't affected.

Thoughts? Criticisms?

edit: title. Punish -> Discourage

Just_Attivi · October 2024

I like the gist of it, but I see significant balance issues for the non ball groups.

lets say Im duo'ing, and I cast echoing vigor and a cleansing ritual. Eventually these heals overheal myself or my duo, and applies this cost increase. Now, I want to set myself up to go offensive, but have 3 seconds left on vigor and 17 seconds left on ritual, I recast Vigor at 33% more cost (actual percent doesnt mater in this example). Fight continues, I take all the pressure and my duo takes none. Both heals overheal my duo repeatedly, keeping the increase cost penalty. Now both vigor and ritual are dropping off, I recast both at 33%. (or 66%?) my resources are tanked and all I did was cast each skill nearing cooldown.

I do agree that we need to tackle cross healing stacking, but I think the proposed system above would need a lot of if/thens to make sure its not penalizing people just making sure HoTs dont drop off vs spamming them i na group of others spamming them. I think limiting stacks that can affect an individual is still optimal (lets say theres 36 players all spamming echoing vigor, only 2 or 4 or 6 can affect a player at a time, the right balance needs to be found. I think 4 is the magic number to appease most PVE and PVP scenarios, but they could utilize battle spirit to enforce a pvp limitation and leave PVE uncapped for... whoever runs PVE stuff with 12 echoing vigors)

Credible_Joe · October 2024

Just_Attivi wrote: »

I like the gist of it, but I see significant balance issues for the non ball groups.

lets say Im duo'ing, and I cast echoing vigor and a cleansing ritual. Eventually these heals overheal myself or my duo, and applies this cost increase. Now, I want to set myself up to go offensive, but have 3 seconds left on vigor and 17 seconds left on ritual, I recast Vigor at 33% more cost (actual percent doesnt mater in this example). Fight continues, I take all the pressure and my duo takes none. Both heals overheal my duo repeatedly, keeping the increase cost penalty. Now both vigor and ritual are dropping off, I recast both at 33%. (or 66%?) my resources are tanked and all I did was cast each skill nearing cooldown.

If we keep the meter running per tic it would be problematic. But if we limit the check to is full health: true : false when the heal is initially cast and only apply the ramping debuff then, duos and small groups would hardly need to worry about over healing at all.

The way I presented it is definitely problematic for general rotations in group; what I had in mind is only applying the debuff when you cast a heal on a full health target, which would almost never happen in the middle of a fight; the smaller the group, the smaller the chance. Maybe I shouldn't have specified 'overhealed,' simply full-health target heals.

For extra assurance, we could track an extra timer: Damaged within X seconds, and only apply the debuff on targets that haven't taken damage within that timeframe. Make it small; 2 or 3 seconds should be plenty of time to make the distinction in a fight.

Good points, thanks for replying.

Joy_Division · October 2024

This both overcomplicates things unnecessarily and oversimplifies what healers do

Heals/support need to be proactive and ensure they do their job before an encounter or incoming damage takes place. They would be penalized for playing correctly and well. I see what you're trying to do with the checks but 1) more calculations 2) you'd be penalizing a healer if their target played correctly and dodged an incoming attack,

This doesn;t even consider mechanics such as shields.

The problems have many roots and ultimately, the solution is going to have to address them. It probably was never a good idea to scale heals and damage off the same stat so a player could be great at both with the same build. It certainly was not a good idea to allow a dozen of the same buff/heal/shield to stack. I also put a lot of blame for ZOS constantly nerfing anything when people complain it appears on their death recaps. Basically, ZOS made it far too easy for mediocre players to survive and too difficult for players to secure kills without resorting to proc sets (which they typically soon nerf).

Telel · October 2024

Organization, and team work should not be punished. Poor sportsmanship, playing selfishly, and only going after easy targets needs to be disincentivized.

AS much as khajiit dislikes bot train style groups they do not want to see them punished for being more organized than others. Especially when there are so many selfish players which choose to play bad builds. Players who seem to think that everyone else is suppose to play better while they sit back and wait for a 'free' tick.

That latter are of course the preferred targets of the former. They are after all usually playing slow, low health, low damage ranged builds. Perfect targets for their counterparts whom claim that K/D and or AP is a display of 'skill'.

Thus removing the rewards for the more toxic and selfish play styles is a far wiser, and way more fair, solution than just punishing one half of the problem.

Of course all of that would require a massive revamp of the current AP and campaign scoring system.

MidniteOwl1913 · October 2024

There are sets that proc on overhealing those would need to be addressed as well.

My take on it is if ZOS thought ballgroups were a problem why nerf AB?

alpha_synuclein · October 2024

As long as it's kept to PVP.

Although it does make me wonder, if stacking heals was limited to up to 2 sources, we might see some more variety in used skills, instead of just stacking vigors and regens. No idea about consequences of this in pvp though.

Major_Mangle · October 2024

Telel wrote: »

Organization, and team work should not be punished. Poor sportsmanship, playing selfishly, and only going after easy targets needs to be disincentivized.

No one with their head in the right place thinks that team work and organization should be punished. The problem (that´s been going on for too long in my opinion) is that it´s way too rewarding and the upper end of what a group can do is way too strong. One of the main issues is actually how many and overtuned stat- and utility sets ZOS have added throughout the years. With scribing they essentially opened pandora´s box when it comes to powercreep. The game as a whole needs a stat squish if you ask me.

Credible_Joe · October 2024

Maybe I should have said "Discourage" instead of "punish." I guess it means the same thing with a more mild connotation, but the way I see it, the same solution was applied to roll-dodge and streak, and worked.

Either way, rolling back power creep opens a whole other can of worms with power gamers refusing to part with their numbers. That prospect sounds dead on arrival, in my opinion. Not that I disagree (except on scribing); I just think the solution for power creep is in elevating the outmoded sets, rather than pushing the newer ones down. But that's a different discussion.

There was a good point earlier about damage shields; but I did address it in my previous reply just above it with the simple recently damaged / hit tracker, which should also work on shields. If the issue is my proposal being to complicated, it really isn't.

if( max_health == true && recently_hit == false ) { apply increased healing cost debuff }

This would reduce the effectiveness of vigor spam without eliminating it as a way to contribute. It would encourage people to fully kit healer to mitigate the increased resource cost of healing a group. And it wouldn't affect a smart fighting rotation, as the debuff will have worn off before you re-apply your buffs in a fight, grouped or un-grouped. If it was even applied to begin with, as being max-health and untouched in the middle of a fight is increasingly unlikely the smaller the scale, or the more you're out-numbered.

People will just have to be a little bit smarter about their heals, the same as it was with roll-dodge and streak.

Iriidius · October 2024

Telel wrote: »

Organization, and team work should not be punished. Poor sportsmanship, playing selfishly, and only going after easy targets needs to be disincentivized.

AS much as khajiit dislikes bot train style groups they do not want to see them punished for being more organized than others. Especially when there are so many selfish players which choose to play bad builds. Players who seem to think that everyone else is suppose to play better while they sit back and wait for a 'free' tick.

That latter are of course the preferred targets of the former. They are after all usually playing slow, low health, low damage ranged builds. Perfect targets for their counterparts whom claim that K/D and or AP is a display of 'skill'.

Thus removing the rewards for the more toxic and selfish play styles is a far wiser, and way more fair, solution than just punishing one half of the problem.

Of course all of that would require a massive revamp of the current AP and campaign scoring system.

In other words everyone not playing in a ballgroup is a selfish ranged ganker build with poor sportsmanship going after easy targets.

The letter despite beeing „preferred targets“ are not targets because they are avoiding to fight ballgroups because in your own words they are

Telel wrote: »

only going after easy targets … sit back and wait for a 'free' tick

outside of ballgroup range.
Many ranged gankers are also organized in group with discord working as a team to Xv1 easy targets in form of solo players. They are still

Telel wrote: »

Poor sportsmanship, playing selfishly, and only going after easy targets

because they impair gaming experience of enemys and allies outside their group.

Ballgroups are about as unselfish sozial teams as cartely and assembly line workers when they obey leaders and give buffs/heals/shields to their group knowing they get everything multiple times back.
They also have poor sportsmanship and are playing selfishly and only going after easy targets when farming unorganized randoms while having all these group effekts.

I dont know what others mean with punishing teamwork but guess they mean reducing the overrewarding of ballgroups
I understand it as artificially making teamwork less effektive than naturally. Currently teamwork is artificially made more effektive than naturally as in ballgroups if 1 player uses multitarget set/skill everybody else gets it for free and if you nerf them ballgroups would still be artificially more effektive unless you remove it completely.
Even than still ballgroups would get rewarded for beeing organized and be more effektive than unorganized randoms naturally but not atificially.

Except ballgroups and ranged bow gankers there are also competitive solo and smallscale player. Are they selfish and poor sportsman for using „selfish“ builds and not using ballgroup builds giving crosshealing/shielding and groupbuffs to their non existent teammates that give them nothing back? Wearing a ballgroup build with poor selfhealing they will not be useful and survive long in a PuG.

Telel · October 2024

Iriidius wrote: »

Telel wrote: »

Organization, and team work should not be punished. Poor sportsmanship, playing selfishly, and only going after easy targets needs to be disincentivized.

AS much as khajiit dislikes bot train style groups they do not want to see them punished for being more organized than others. Especially when there are so many selfish players which choose to play bad builds. Players who seem to think that everyone else is suppose to play better while they sit back and wait for a 'free' tick.

That latter are of course the preferred targets of the former. They are after all usually playing slow, low health, low damage ranged builds. Perfect targets for their counterparts whom claim that K/D and or AP is a display of 'skill'.

Thus removing the rewards for the more toxic and selfish play styles is a far wiser, and way more fair, solution than just punishing one half of the problem.

Of course all of that would require a massive revamp of the current AP and campaign scoring system.

In other words everyone not playing in a ballgroup is a selfish ranged ganker build with poor sportsmanship going after easy targets.

The letter despite beeing „preferred targets“ are not targets because they are avoiding to fight ballgroups because in your own words they are

Telel wrote: »

only going after easy targets … sit back and wait for a 'free' tick

outside of ballgroup range.
Many ranged gankers are also organized in group with discord working as a team to Xv1 easy targets in form of solo players. They are still

Telel wrote: »

Poor sportsmanship, playing selfishly, and only going after easy targets

because they impair gaming experience of enemys and allies outside their group.

Ballgroups are about as unselfish sozial teams as cartely and assembly line workers when they obey leaders and give buffs/heals/shields to their group knowing they get everything multiple times back.
They also have poor sportsmanship and are playing selfishly and only going after easy targets when farming unorganized randoms while having all these group effekts.

I dont know what others mean with punishing teamwork but guess they mean reducing the overrewarding of ballgroups
I understand it as artificially making teamwork less effektive than naturally. Currently teamwork is artificially made more effektive than naturally as in ballgroups if 1 player uses multitarget set/skill everybody else gets it for free and if you nerf them ballgroups would still be artificially more effektive unless you remove it completely.
Even than still ballgroups would get rewarded for beeing organized and be more effektive than unorganized randoms naturally but not atificially.

Except ballgroups and ranged bow gankers there are also competitive solo and smallscale player. Are they selfish and poor sportsman for using „selfish“ builds and not using ballgroup builds giving crosshealing/shielding and groupbuffs to their non existent teammates that give them nothing back? Wearing a ballgroup build with poor selfhealing they will not be useful and survive long in a PuG.

You seem to be operating under a false assumption about someone. Let me assure you that no one that employs facts could ever accuse Telel of leading a bot train style group. Let alone endorsing the abusive game play they often engage in.

Have a nice day.