best way to combat Ballgroups in Cyrodiil ?

Stx · February 21

They aren’t a problem. Why are they a problem?

Ultimately all a ball group is is a group of players participating in large scale PvP and attempting to min max their effectiveness.

But they cause lag? Sorry, not a ball group problem, that’s a server problem.

But they can’t be beaten by pugs or solo players? Sorry, why exactly should that be possible?

Stx · February 21

Major_Mangle wrote: »

Stx wrote: »

Form a better ball group.

Every MMO ever made that has large scale PvP has this “issue” which isn’t actually an issue it’s just basic design. The more organized team wins the battle and a bunch of randoms will never beat them unless they have a crazy numbers advantage.

Ball groups in this game aren’t doing anything malicious or scandalous. They are just working together as a team utilizing the best strategy of skills and gear available. This is what large groups do in any MMO.

Anything you try to nerf, like making it so HoTs don’t stack, won’t kill ball groups. They will adapt and still wipe the floor with you. You can’t nerf ball groups.

Advocating for clearly overpowered item sets or skills so that a single player can instantly kill groups of organized players has always been and always will be hilarious and horrible potential game design.

Well, the funny part about azureblight (I assume you refer to that in this case) is that in order for it to be effective vs larger stacks of players/ballgroups you needed 4-5 players to run it in an organized way and specifically build around it. So people did exactly what you talk about: Form their own groups to combat these ballgroups. Didn´t take long before some very vocal players on the forums spread some propaganda about the set.....

So while people from time to time do come up with counters to certain mechanics and playstyles, people with strong agendas tend to go lengths to remove that counterplay.

I’m not referring to any specific set. There are a number of bomb sets over the years that have come and gone and usually they start off insanely overpowered and then get nerfed and people cry about it even though from a game balance perspective the nerf was clearly warranted.

I think this is the only game I’ve ever played where players actually advocate for sets or skills that can literally global groups of enemies. In every other game I’ve played that’s just commonly understood as horrible balance and bad for the game.

Kartalin · February 21

Stx wrote: »

Form a better ball group.

Every MMO ever made that has large scale PvP has this “issue” which isn’t actually an issue it’s just basic design. The more organized team wins the battle and a bunch of randoms will never beat them unless they have a crazy numbers advantage.

Ball groups in this game aren’t doing anything malicious or scandalous. They are just working together as a team utilizing the best strategy of skills and gear available. This is what large groups do in any MMO.

Anything you try to nerf, like making it so HoTs don’t stack, won’t kill ball groups. They will adapt and still wipe the floor with you. You can’t nerf ball groups.

Advocating for clearly overpowered item sets or skills so that a single player can instantly kill groups of organized players has always been and always will be hilarious and horrible potential game design.

While coordination will be superior to uncoordinated groups, the fact remains that ball groups are excessively empowered by the ability to stack HoTs and shields, and a single pull set that has neither an obvious telegraph to the untrained eye nor long enough of a telegraph to allow proper reactions. I agree with a lot of what you say, but at the same time the balance is too far out of whack as far as how many opponents a fully comped out ball group can take on.

Edit: I want to emphasize that I'm saying this as someone who has primarily played in ball groups for about 8 years now

Iriidius · February 21

Stx wrote: »

They aren’t a problem. Why are they a problem?

Ultimately all a ball group is is a group of players participating in large scale PvP and attempting to min max their effectiveness.

But they cause lag? Sorry, not a ball group problem, that’s a server problem.

But they can’t be beaten by pugs or solo players? Sorry, why exactly should that be possible?

Maybe they are a problem because players in ballgroup can give sets, buffs and hots as strong as single target ones(or almost) for free to multiple other group members so everyone has 20 hots, buffs and statprocsets on them. For a solo player this is unreachable.

Powerful assault is viable and balanced solo with 300 wpn dmg , the 3600 wpn dmg it gives when given to 12 players balanced are definitely not. NMA giving 480 wpn dmg was too much eben with 5%increased cost drawback but 3600 wpn dmg is somehow fine.

Nobody asks to be able to kill them solo or with a pug of same size but if ballgroups fights 3-5 times their numbers for half an hour killing all of them multiple times with not s single ballgroupler dying all the time it is maybe a bit too much.

YandereGirlfriend · February 21

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Long-range High-Cost single-target pull/displacement. Probably something like an ultimate. More than 50m. Pick the ball apart.

This is the real answer.

The process of wiping a group always begins with someone getting giga-pulled back into the zerg and focused-down before anyone else has time to react. You do that a few times and now the group is missing huge pieces (remember, it's min-maxed with little redundancies so every player is doing something important and likely unique). If you specifically pull and focus the speeder then it is suddenly an enormous problem.

These are also the sorts of actually constructive things that people can do rather than simply cry out for nerfs to this and that. Learn to see the wireframe of the fights. It's all just patterns repeating themselves. You see those patterns and you see the moments of vulnerability and understand what you can do even as a solo player to exploit them.

Stx · February 21

All I’m hearing is that certain item sets are a problem, not groups. ZOS doesn’t spend a lot of time balancing items / skills compared to other games, so let’s start there. Let’s ask for things to be balanced because they are imbalanced.. not because “ball groups are a problem”.

Zama666 · February 22

Is Plaguebreak still useful?

(5 items) Dealing direct damage causes player enemies to become a Plague Carrier, dealing 1000 Disease Damage over 10 seconds and applying the Diseased status effect. If the plague is removed early it explodes and deals 735 Disease Damage to all enemies within 8 meters of the carrier, increasing by 50% per enemy hit. This effect can occur once every 20 seconds per target, once per attack, and scales off the higher of your Weapon or Spell Damage.

If a few people have it? Can it be stacked by multiple users?

DarthKitana · February 22

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

First you need to understand why there are ballgroups to begin with. In my alliance, where you are routinely outnumbered by at least a bar every night (and where reds and yellows refuse to actually engage in serious combat against the other), Ball grouping is really the only way to combat overwhelming numbers. If it were not for ball groups, 30 man + groups would rule Cyrodil all day long. They outnumber you, they can outseige you. And without ballgroups, the ONLY thing that would dictate outcomes is who has the numbers advantage. Is that really what players want? If it is and they get their way, people will just log on, look at the population bar to see if its favorable, and either switch to the color that has the most players, or they won't play at all.

So understand this: ballgroups aren't a "problem." They're a response to a problem, which is zerging. And I see no issue with it. Its basically highly coordinated PVP very similar to high end PVE. And just like in PVE, there are low tier players, mid tier players, and high tier players - and you need to be a high tier player in addition to build for maximum group synergy in order to actually be a serious threat as a ballgroup.

So no, I don't believe that any nerfs are necessary here. And having played in one, I know exactly how to counter them, but I don't want to share "TOP TEN THINGS THAT IRK BALLGROUP PLAYERS" because then I'll see that a lot more on the battlefield, which I don't really want to do.

I know the perception is that ballgroups have no counter, but that is simply not true. If you watch big ballgroup fights and you start taking notice of what factors cause one group to fail vs the other, or if you see huge battles in which ballgroups are participants, you can see what things will bog down the group, you can figure it out. It's actually really not that difficult. But it requires players to be more than thoughtless potatoes charging into a situation that they have no plan of attack and no coordination with their other teammates who are present on the battlefield.

what we really want is zero ball groups , actually play the game and stop relying on pocket heals. Like thats the whole point of large scale pvp . Stop defending ball /zerg groups .

Tendrielle · February 22

I think we would maybe need to tie AP gain more closely to campaign objectives for them less running around in circles at least, dunno.

Xarc · February 22

when you're able to stack 12 shields on you and cross heals from 12 people, you're unkillable.
Combined to bomber sets, and people following 1 crown, you get a ballgroup.

In my opinion, it's not good for 4 reasons :
- they're causing huge calculation on server that causes LAG.
- large number of people in the same place on the map isnt good, when Zenimax tried to disperse people (AP bonus in delve, villages & outpost created (vlastarus crops & bruma))
- the fights are endless
- The overpowering nature of these groups creates frustration for many good players who could normally beat these players in 1vs1 (which is really negative for the game itself)

Stx · February 23

DarthKitana wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

First you need to understand why there are ballgroups to begin with. In my alliance, where you are routinely outnumbered by at least a bar every night (and where reds and yellows refuse to actually engage in serious combat against the other), Ball grouping is really the only way to combat overwhelming numbers. If it were not for ball groups, 30 man + groups would rule Cyrodil all day long. They outnumber you, they can outseige you. And without ballgroups, the ONLY thing that would dictate outcomes is who has the numbers advantage. Is that really what players want? If it is and they get their way, people will just log on, look at the population bar to see if its favorable, and either switch to the color that has the most players, or they won't play at all.

So understand this: ballgroups aren't a "problem." They're a response to a problem, which is zerging. And I see no issue with it. Its basically highly coordinated PVP very similar to high end PVE. And just like in PVE, there are low tier players, mid tier players, and high tier players - and you need to be a high tier player in addition to build for maximum group synergy in order to actually be a serious threat as a ballgroup.

So no, I don't believe that any nerfs are necessary here. And having played in one, I know exactly how to counter them, but I don't want to share "TOP TEN THINGS THAT IRK BALLGROUP PLAYERS" because then I'll see that a lot more on the battlefield, which I don't really want to do.

I know the perception is that ballgroups have no counter, but that is simply not true. If you watch big ballgroup fights and you start taking notice of what factors cause one group to fail vs the other, or if you see huge battles in which ballgroups are participants, you can see what things will bog down the group, you can figure it out. It's actually really not that difficult. But it requires players to be more than thoughtless potatoes charging into a situation that they have no plan of attack and no coordination with their other teammates who are present on the battlefield.

what we really want is zero ball groups , actually play the game and stop relying on pocket heals. Like thats the whole point of large scale pvp . Stop defending ball /zerg groups .

“Actually play the game” LOL. So playing the game = be bad? The point of large scale PvP is to.. not heal each other??? What am I reading? Large scale PvP is LITERALLY about zerging / organized groups.

Amottica · February 23

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Long-range High-Cost single-target pull/displacement. Probably something like an ultimate. More than 50m. Pick the ball apart.

Like other changes, ball groups would find a way to use it to their advantage. Pull those who are aware enough to avoid large groups only to demonstrate that Zenimax made it so they could not run or hide.

I can already see the threads in the forums.

necro_the_crafter · February 23

biggest issue with ballgroups is that they are not in Crodiil to play... Cyrodiil.
They will hold the objective and simply farm players over and over again. Being organasid to achieve objectives is one thing, holding whole zerg as hostages inside their own keep and keep rolling over them is not achiving anithing relevan objective-wise while building up a frustration for whole zerg that just tries to defend their keep, that ironicly isnt threatend. Ball-group wont just capture a keep and move forfard because reward in AP is smaller for that, they will make much more with kills, wipe a zerg a few dozen times until ap gain diminishes from repetative kills, and then move to where the next zerg is.
I think biggest issue is Cyrodiil reward structure.

You see much less ball-groups in IC becuse telvar from kills are splited between evry paticipant which makes farming telvar from the players with 12-man group not as efficient.
Much more frequently its the zerg that farms bosses, and thats is clever PvP reward design form a decade ago. You form and organise a group to achieve an objective - suck as much telavar from enviorment as you can. And with cyro its different, capturing objective isnt close in reward to farming a zerg for 30 mins straight. And seeing sets like RoA being introduced by a devs that aoutomates "player farm", instead of rectructuring reward system, is malicious and scandalous. Not that players are organising to make as much ap per hour as they can, but that the player are organising not to compete with other organised groups, not to pursue objectives, but to farm unorganised players specificly.

Also the premice that organised players would kill you either way so nerfing them wont do anything is wrong. They also deserve balancing and meta shakeups, like everybody else.

Navaac223 · February 26

Nerfing heals would be a nice first step but please don't add a new set supposed to counter ball groups. It will 100% be used by ball groups themselves to kill pugs even faster

Arrow312 · February 26

Cap heals could be a 1st step but this will also hits the zergs more then the BGs.

Why BGs farm players? As a former BG Player there are 2 main reasons

1.) Fun

2.) Farming players is more worthy then get the Keeps or Scrolls. As Bg we made around 1Mio or more a day just by farming. How muchs AP give the Scroll or a Keep? around 6000Ap?

Normally a BG can just lose against a "better" or more exp. BG. BGs act like one Person and thats the difference to the zerg. In the zerg they are throwing random Ultis, snares, CCs on BGs nothing really coordinated and thats the problem.

Gerwulf67 · February 26

This should have been an open ended question and not a poll as the "solution" to ball groups is a combination of things. I find that is why ball groups are so powerful in Cyro, as most of us can't agree on what to attack next much less a strategy to combat ball groups lol. Ball groups are what the zerg was when I started playing ... a fact of life. Best just to respawn and go elsewhere ...

Funniest thing in the world, however, is watching two ball groups battle it out lol! I just hide and watch! It's worth the time, I promise.

Also, I don't find ball groups to be the most annoying part of PVP. I think its the build where literally ten to fifteen players are bombarding a single player and their health bar stays full. Ugh! Now that's something I'd like to complain/talk about lol.

DocFrost72 · February 26

We're still trying to find a way to combat (relatively) small, elite teams of highly skilled, well equipped, heavily practiced individuals all with excellent communication and a game plan in real life too.

It might be that this laundry list of advantages is why ball groups are oppressive.

Xarc · February 27

Gerwulf67 wrote: »

This should have been an open ended question and not a poll as the "solution" to ball groups is a combination of things.

This is just an aid to guide the responses a little, but the survey remains open, particularly with the "other" option.

SeaGtGruff · February 27

moo_2021 wrote: »

not nerf. kill healers.

all healing, shields and buffing only work for oneself, including set effects.

No, please. I almost never group with other players in Cyrodiil or Imperial City, and much of the time I don't get any healing or shielding except whatever I can provide for myself. On the occasions that I do get buffing, shielding, and healing from other players (without being grouped with them), it can have a huge impact on my ability to stay alive long enough to help kill some of the enemy. Removing the ability of healers to heal, shield, or buff other players would just be plain wrong; you might as well just say that any characters who are healers are forbidden from queuing for Cyrodiil at all.

Iriidius · February 28

Stx wrote: »

All I’m hearing is that certain item sets are a problem, not groups. ZOS doesn’t spend a lot of time balancing items / skills compared to other games, so let’s start there. Let’s ask for things to be balanced because they are imbalanced.. not because “ball groups are a problem”.

Most of the time nerfing ballgroups actually means balancing the sets and skills that get overpowered and unbalanced when used by a (ball)group. But ballgroupler also vehemently defend all of them.

Balancing things because they are imbalancing is often the same as balancing them because ballgroups are a problem is often the same when ballgroups use the things.

Using sets and skills that require a group to get their overpowered full effect is what makes a team a ballgroup.
Without it they are just a group playing together as a team like ballgroups often claim to be as if having 20 setprocs and hots on you makes no difference.
They would be strong but not overpowered and not get more nerf request than other playstiles.

Group sets and skills are subventions/subsidies to already strongest playstile to make it overpowered and excluding players not farming them from that playstile.

Iriidius · February 28

Stx wrote: »

DarthKitana wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

First you need to understand why there are ballgroups to begin with. In my alliance, where you are routinely outnumbered by at least a bar every night (and where reds and yellows refuse to actually engage in serious combat against the other), Ball grouping is really the only way to combat overwhelming numbers. If it were not for ball groups, 30 man + groups would rule Cyrodil all day long. They outnumber you, they can outseige you. And without ballgroups, the ONLY thing that would dictate outcomes is who has the numbers advantage. Is that really what players want? If it is and they get their way, people will just log on, look at the population bar to see if its favorable, and either switch to the color that has the most players, or they won't play at all.

So understand this: ballgroups aren't a "problem." They're a response to a problem, which is zerging. And I see no issue with it. Its basically highly coordinated PVP very similar to high end PVE. And just like in PVE, there are low tier players, mid tier players, and high tier players - and you need to be a high tier player in addition to build for maximum group synergy in order to actually be a serious threat as a ballgroup.

So no, I don't believe that any nerfs are necessary here. And having played in one, I know exactly how to counter them, but I don't want to share "TOP TEN THINGS THAT IRK BALLGROUP PLAYERS" because then I'll see that a lot more on the battlefield, which I don't really want to do.

I know the perception is that ballgroups have no counter, but that is simply not true. If you watch big ballgroup fights and you start taking notice of what factors cause one group to fail vs the other, or if you see huge battles in which ballgroups are participants, you can see what things will bog down the group, you can figure it out. It's actually really not that difficult. But it requires players to be more than thoughtless potatoes charging into a situation that they have no plan of attack and no coordination with their other teammates who are present on the battlefield.

what we really want is zero ball groups , actually play the game and stop relying on pocket heals. Like thats the whole point of large scale pvp . Stop defending ball /zerg groups .

“Actually play the game” LOL. So playing the game = be bad? The point of large scale PvP is to.. not heal each other??? What am I reading? Large scale PvP is LITERALLY about zerging / organized groups.

So not playing in a ballgroup=be bad?

Sure large scale PvP is about large scale. That does not mean that every large scale must be a ballgroup and smallscale and solo PvP should not also exist.
And their existence is not supported if ballgroups get subsidized to further reduce the already low chance of a smallscale defeating a largescale and (can) still attack them in every campaign so other playstiles can only have fun if there is no bg active.
PuGs are also largescales but not overpowered and available to everyone(when there are PuGs).

Sets/Skills giving multiple groupmates an effekt not or barely weaker than a singletarget effekt make ballgroups overpowered and exclude players not having this sets/skills from ballgroup playstile.

Cuwen · March 2

Why is the response to always nerf heals? I'm a healer and have been for the past 6+ years. We have been nerfed into oblivion. We honestly can barely do anything. Rush of agony right now is the biggest problem. That has to be nerfed. Also, one-hit deaths with over 30k damage is ridiculous. There are supposed to be big groups in Cyrodiil. It's supposed to be an army scenario. Battlegrounds is more for small player scenarios. I would like to see a set, though, that causes groups of the opposite faction to be pushed apart and disbanded. Kind of like the opposite of rush of agony.

Cuwen · March 2

moo_2021 wrote: »

not nerf. kill healers.

all healing, shields and buffing only work for oneself, including set effects.

I like to play as a healer. I don't work with ball groups, just a small 7-8 person group. Are you saying I shouldn't be allowed to play the role I want to? ZoS's big thing a few years ago was that they were making updates to the game so that we could play the way we wanted to.

Avran_Sylt · March 2

YandereGirlfriend wrote: »

Avran_Sylt wrote: »

Long-range High-Cost single-target pull/displacement. Probably something like an ultimate. More than 50m. Pick the ball apart.

This is the real answer.

The process of wiping a group always begins with someone getting giga-pulled back into the zerg and focused-down before anyone else has time to react. You do that a few times and now the group is missing huge pieces (remember, it's min-maxed with little redundancies so every player is doing something important and likely unique). If you specifically pull and focus the speeder then it is suddenly an enormous problem.

These are also the sorts of actually constructive things that people can do rather than simply cry out for nerfs to this and that. Learn to see the wireframe of the fights. It's all just patterns repeating themselves. You see those patterns and you see the moments of vulnerability and understand what you can do even as a solo player to exploit them.

Unfortunately what I suggested isn't actually in the game yet in really any capacity.

RebornV3x · March 2

The only option is just not to play theres better PVP out there or go and "touch grass" If ZOS wants to sit back and do nothing and pretend everything is fine and refuse to fix this mess they call pvp and ball groups wanna continue ruining Cyrodill let them.

Major_Mangle · March 2

Cuwen wrote: »

moo_2021 wrote: »

not nerf. kill healers.

all healing, shields and buffing only work for oneself, including set effects.

I like to play as a healer. I don't work with ball groups, just a small 7-8 person group. Are you saying I shouldn't be allowed to play the role I want to? ZoS's big thing a few years ago was that they were making updates to the game so that we could play the way we wanted to.

7-8 isn't a small group......

spartaxoxo · March 2

That's the neat part. You don't

Xarc · March 2

Cuwen wrote: »

Why is the response to always nerf heals? I'm a healer and have been for the past 6+ years. We have been nerfed into oblivion. We honestly can barely do anything. Rush of agony right now is the biggest problem. That has to be nerfed. Also, one-hit deaths with over 30k damage is ridiculous. There are supposed to be big groups in Cyrodiil. It's supposed to be an army scenario. Battlegrounds is more for small player scenarios. I would like to see a set, though, that causes groups of the opposite faction to be pushed apart and disbanded. Kind of like the opposite of rush of agony.

it is possible to nerf heals only for groups, for example:
- if you are in a group, the healing and shields given to other members of the group are reduced by 2% per additional number of people starting from 2.
or:
- add an incantation delay on aoe healing
- etc

Turtle_Bot · March 3

spartaxoxo wrote: »

That's the neat part. You don't

Wish I could give this both an "Awesome" and "Agree" react for the reference and being an actual fact.

BXR_Lonestar · March 3

You guys honestly over exaggerate the "oppressiveness" of ballgroups. You do realize that if it wasn't for ballgroups, Cyrodil would be nothing but zerg or be zerged right? Meaning that the only thing that would really dictate outcomes is numbers. At that point, you might as well just log on, see which alliance has a population advantage, and make your decision whether or not to play based only on that metric. That isn't healthy for the game either.

Ballgroups can be killed and are often killed. I play in one, and we get killed. I see others play in ball groups and I've watched them get killed. Across all alliances. Red, yellow, Blue. They all get killed. Playing as a ballgroup doesn't make you unkillable, it just makes it harder for players to kill you (so long as you are playing as a unit), and it gives you better ability to kill other players. But you are not unstoppable.

It's against my own personal interest to tell you exactly what kills us the most or how we die the most, and how to attack the ball group, but that part of the game I think is more L2P than anything, but that is where PVP skill and experience comes into play.