Ballgroups

RaidingTraiding · November 6

StihlReign wrote: »

The devs enabled this behaviour for years. If the developer of the abilities can't understand how they function in practice during high level gameplay and the combat team doesn't remove the ability to synergize abilities to function the way they do, the gameplay suffers.

ZOS devs have taken the approach that problems in PvP are solved by making an armor set or another more obnoxious skill to counter complaints of obnoxious skill and gameplay mechanics, or by ignoring the complaints, rather than fixing the problem.

Cyrodiil is broken on purpose, by design. The Devs want it broken, they made it this way.

They've ignored thousands of posts of solutions, treated the community poorly, moved commenting and interactions with the community off-site and off the Official Forums and treated players with disrespect and contempt in public Q and A's for years.

Vengeance Test One was a skills test that exposed the shield and heal stacking problem to everyone and the devs inability to move to do something. Many call it a zerg fest...clearly the Arena isn't for them. The game in Cyrodiil is massive battles. In Vengeance Test 1, sometimes the larger force won, but not every battle, and not the battles where highly skilled players were are able to adapt their force and won. Everyone died to skills. What was left was an undying graveyard of proc-whiners.

i agree with everything except the stuff on Vengeance. from my experience during the first few tests the largest side won every time, which is why it was called a zergfest. that on top of the way skills were implemented and bad balance just made it unfun. theres a reason why this last test was so dead. people don't actually want this. it was just like the no proc test which they made permanent on no cp. people said it was all skill based and so much better and super fun then after a while no cp became a ghost town. i think its just a novelty, something different, then when the novelty wears off people don't play anymore. would be way better if the devs listened, knew how their game worked, and had a budget for good servers. if they can't balance regular cyro i don't trust them to balance vengeance either. i also think theres no shot now they can achieve the pop they wanted to support massive battles in vengeance or otherwise.

SneaK · November 6

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

SneaK wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

The problem with ballgroups is the things that everyone suggests to "eliminate" ballgroups or "counter" ballgroups is just going to make ballgroups stronger. Look at what happened when they implemented sets designed to kill ballgroups.

Pull sets (dark convergence and rush of agony) ended up being used by ballgroups to be more efficient at killing.

Sets like Vicious Death, Hrothgar's Chill, and Plaguebreak were all used by ballgroups at some point to be more efficient at killing (and vicious death is still used today because it hasn't been nerfed to the ground).

Sets like Spellshredder and oakfather's retribution are designed to enhance your combat effectiveness against ballgroups that have all the major and minor buffs, but all this does is increase the strength of a ballgroup in ball on ball situations.

If you really want to counter ballgroups without making them stronger, you want sets that will buff the heck out of siege. Combined arms combat can take out a ballgroup right now you get the tanky brawlers working in unison with people who know what they are doing with seige. The problem is that there isn't usually that much coordination with the masses of unorganized players, and because seige damage is kind of weak vs. ballgroups, your margin of error is very thin. Buffing seige damage will increase that margin of error and make these fights more fair, but if you buff seige without the requirement to equip gear, then your just making ballgroups and zergs stronger, which is what you DO NOT want to do.

So instead, what they need is specific siege sets that increase their effectiveness. Not sets like seigemaster, which just let you see through walls and reduce the damage you take. Its a great gimick to try out, but its not that effective really. What I'm talking about are sets that we could stack on dedicated siegers that would make them worthless in hand-to-hand combat, but would make them valuable assets in any siege situation. Sets that do the following:

1. Increase the fire rate and turn rate of siege weapons
2. Increase the actual damage the siege does (both direct and DOT damage)
3. Sets that increase the duration of DoT damage of seige
4. Sets that increase the effected radius of siege
5. Sets that increase your movement speed while you have a siege weapon within a short distance from you (say 8 meters)
6. Sets that increase the duration of the status change inflicted by siege
7. Sets that have unpurgable secondary effects such as snare.

If you have sets that do any/all of these, then siege then becomes a devastating tool to use against ball groups (and zergs), but it cannot be used to empower ballgroups and zergs because players who use these sets will be basically useless outside of defensive sieging, which is precisely the situation you are in most of the time when you are fighting a ballgroup. And these sets also add nothing to the group combat effectiveness, so theres no room for it within a ballgroup.

I agree with the siege remarks.

VD is still a counter to BGs. Solo bombers still disrupt ball groups.

But, the average rando in Cyro is running a selfish build with crafted sets, not Zerg busting sets. They complain about being killed by “groups” when they Zerg surf and pick the wrong fights. That’s how it is, and how it will always be. Nothing should be balanced based on these types of players. Ball groups are actually a good thing, they shouldn’t be penalized for being strategic and playing well together. It’s only a problem when your faction doesn’t have a good one.

VD might be a counter to ball groups, but it also empowers ballgroups to blow up groups of random players. The key to fighting ballgroups is to give the masses a weapon that the ballgroups won't want to use or can't use, and the one weapon I can guarantee you a ballgroup won't want to use is sets that ONLY empower your effectiveness with siege. I think the Siegemaster set was an attempt to give us a siege-buffing set, but it was as if Zos was too scared to make it good, because the set is absolute crap.

And everyone should keep in mind that ballgroups also have a place. Without ballgroups, everything is just zerg. Ballgroups are the counter to zergs.

I don’t disagree with the siege comments. Minus the un-purgeable idea.

The biggest factor to all of this is subclassing and healing being too strong.

Dropping a random thought, add the option to build ramparts/walls. Nothing crazy but something that would slow an advance down. Maybe like in Chivalry… also, make stone trebs relevant again, it’s so super rare to seige walls over doors nowadays and that’s decreased the variety of keep fights.

The_Meathead · November 6

Eriboss5 wrote: »

silentxthreat wrote: »

Friendly-assasin81 wrote: »

Why is there still ballgroups in cyrodiil?
Ruins the whole campaign. Its stupid to have people run around doing nothing for the caimpaign objective and are unkillable...
They almost look like they are cheating(some of them might be)....

ball groups are the main reason of lag with the add ons they use to track everything. they kill server pop and gate camp at early am hours. we need massive nerfs to heal stacking and snow treads because in this meta the only thing that kills them is a better ball group and they just dont fight each other.

if you cant fix the problems they exploit just ban them

this is incorrect. The lag does not stem from Ballgroups. This is a server issue. Look back before Ballgrouping became a thing and the server STILL had issues then. ZOS has, possibly, not done their part for a while in resolving server related issues.

I have mixed feelings about this. I don't blame BGers for doing whatever they're allowed, but they absolutely contribute in a major way to lag with some combination of their mechanics or stacking. Not their fault, ZOS should handle it, but it's very easy to see.

You're right that lag absolutely existed way back when, without being more prevalent because of BGs, but there was a big ol' hardware upgrade a while back and since then I rarely and maybe never at all see lag without BGs being present. In current ESO with current Servers, I can absolutely tell when certain or multiple Ballgroups are in the vicinity because it's the only time I see lag at all, and it's very easy to correlate.

Not implying you because I have no idea if you're among them, but there's a group of players who defend BGs regularly who tell us to not believe our own eyes in regard to BGs and lag. Those of us that play very regularly are well aware of the connection.

If it matters to the discussion, I'm on PC NA.

RaidingTraiding · November 6

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Someone on a siege is completely vulnerable, you can tell those that don't actually PvP.

if the entire enemy faction is sieging your keep then no i don't think theyre vulnerable at all. maybe youve had some luck leaving the inner keep to kill siegers on the outer wall that are a part of a faction stack, but i doubt most people will. if its just one person or a few on siege then sure lol.

Iriidius · November 6

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Iriidius wrote: »

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Friendly-assasin81 wrote: »

When i say ballgroup, i mean a group of people that is unkillable and that doesnt play the objective in cyrodiil.
The objective is clearly to win the campaign by taking keeps and scrolls. Ballgroups never take keeps only farms players in them. Ballgroups takes scrolls and farm players with it until the scroll spawns back in the keep it was in...
Ravenwatch was okay before the procsets but is just ballgroup and mostly dead now.
I only play in Greyhost now and my group takes keeps and scrolls but just moves away(if we are fast enough) when there are towertrolls and ballgroups.
But it is still annoying when you take a keep and then have a ballgroup running in that you have to run away from because they are un killable...
I have tried Spellshredder and oakfather against them too. Does nothing.
Dont let cyrodiil die because of a few groups with small *******!

Not true at all we always go after emp for someone in our group and usually the only ones taking the ring keeps.
Most non ball groups practice PvP in zone chat. lol
Not to mention the objective in PvP is to kill players not doors.

That you take keeps only to make group members emperor while allies outside your group are unworthy to even talk with confirms rather than contradicts that you don’t play for objective of winning campaign by taking keeps. Claiming players not in ballgroup only PvP in zone chat is insulting nonsense.
Players not in a group of 12 with stats of 30 need to coordinate with players outside their group to get enaugh players to do things.
Players in different groups have differend opinions and leaders and without groupchat discussions take place in zonechat.

Well grab crown and group up, that is what the game was designed for.

Groups only take „good“ players with regular schedule with expected build.
That ESO is a MMORPG doesn’t mean you should work together ONLY with your group and not help or talk with allies outside your group or take emperor keeps for them? Playing with allies outside your group is also multiplayer.
If PvP was designed only for groups Cyrodiil wouldn’t be AvAvA but group versus anyone else and have different map or get replaced by PvP mode designed for GVG (like 12v12 deathmatch BG). But you want to play group deathmatch against players wanting to play solo queue CTF not other group deathmatch players.

Muizer · November 7

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

VD might be a counter to ball groups, but it also empowers ballgroups to blow up groups of random players.

It's only adding to the problem IMHO. They chose that path because they could not address the underlying causes of why ball groups are effective. Addressing those causes would affect PvE in a big way. As I said, they'd have to institute minimum range on healing and damage AOE. That would literally force organized groups to spread out, because they simply would not be effective balled up. IMHO that's by far the best solution here. The only thing stopping it is it would affect PvE as long as the rule set is shared. At a higher level that (and the fact that PvE has primacy) is the root cause of PvP woes.

SneaK · November 7

Muizer wrote: »

BXR_Lonestar wrote: »

VD might be a counter to ball groups, but it also empowers ballgroups to blow up groups of random players.

It's only adding to the problem IMHO. They chose that path because they could not address the underlying causes of why ball groups are effective. Addressing those causes would affect PvE in a big way. As I said, they'd have to institute minimum range on healing and damage AOE. That would literally force organized groups to spread out, because they simply would not be effective balled up. IMHO that's by far the best solution here. The only thing stopping it is it would affect PvE as long as the rule set is shared. At a higher level that (and the fact that PvE has primacy) is the root cause of PvP woes.

Designing the game to push people away from each other is an awful idea. VD is a counter to ball groups, it’s a hard counter, but again the average pug isn’t running VD and they lack the skills to be effective against larger groups. The best counter to a coordinated group is another coordinated group, that SHOULD NOT CHANGE. Sure, add some other variants to counter it, but empowering solo pugs to take down extremely coordinated groups is a slippery slope when it comes to balance. I’d argue that it really shouldn’t be something they should be pushing for, why punish people for playing at the highest levels possible in PvP.

The real problem right now is the amount of damage people can tank while in parallel can deal out. The highest performers in Cyro are literally running 3 damage abilities and the rest are “buffs” with way too many major/minors. While also getting free purges and running 50% plus move speed. The subclassing power gap is absurd.

Muizer · November 7

SneaK wrote: »

Designing the game to push people away from each other is an awful idea.

I don't think that would happen though. It would be more like splitting a homogeneous ball into something with a front and a rear. Once you have that, manoeuvering actually becomes meaningful. As for it being awful. It's pretty much what battle has been about since the bronze age.

RaidingTraiding · November 7

Muizer wrote: »

SneaK wrote: »

Designing the game to push people away from each other is an awful idea.

I don't think that would happen though. It would be more like splitting a homogeneous ball into something with a front and a rear. Once you have that, manoeuvering actually becomes meaningful. As for it being awful. It's pretty much what battle has been about since the bronze age.

there used to be more meaningful movement before rush of agony and before groups became even way more unkillable than they used to be. rush gives you a choke point on demand every 6 secs so they can just face tank and pull whenever. just beetles, pull, and spear ult for quick bursts, and with ult gen sets plus cheap ults (specifically spear ult thanks to subclassing) they don't have to wait for everyone to build ult back or carefully plan pushes. pretty braindead compared to what it used to be. there were better counters back then too.

SneaK · November 7

Muizer wrote: »

SneaK wrote: »

Designing the game to push people away from each other is an awful idea.

I don't think that would happen though. It would be more like splitting a homogeneous ball into something with a front and a rear. Once you have that, manoeuvering actually becomes meaningful. As for it being awful. It's pretty much what battle has been about since the bronze age.

Are we saying ESO PvP should be more realistic?!

Gabriel_H · November 7

KiltMaster wrote: »

How to kill ballgroups 101 (yes, it IS possible!)

1) Rally your faction (if you're not in a group)
2) set up counter siege (meatbags, oils, cold fire, lancers, etc.)
3) get some negates
4) USE the siege and negates
5) Pick off the healers or the stragglers

How to avoid ballgroups 101 (yes, it IS possible, too!)
1) watch how they run - usually around/on keep walls
2) realize how their 'pull' works
3) when they go in for a pull, hold BLOCK
4) whilst holding block, walk out of the convergence or area where RoA was
4a) P.S. This is also an effective way to not get bombed
BONUS: Don't walk into obvious choke points, like those narrow parts of the palisade or around a corner where they just went

Nah. Easiest way to deal with a ball group: It's a big map, be somewhere else.

Gabriel_H · November 7

Four_Fingers wrote: »

Not to mention the objective in PvP is to kill players not doors.

Very true ... BUT ... Cyro is not PvP, it's AvA. That distinction matters. They have different goals.

React · November 7

Surely part 3 of the pvp Q&A will adress how zenimax feels about ballgroup power levels, right? After all, it is the most frequently asked question in the pvp community and was the most upvoted question in the Q&A thread by a huge margin.

Muizer · November 7

SneaK wrote: »

Are we saying ESO PvP should be more realistic?!

I think what 'we' should borrow from pre-modern warfare is that having different troop types (in this case, melee, cavalry, missile) had consequences for their positioning relative to each other.

PvE is built around the trinity, which actually does somewhat enforce that. I'm trying to come up with something that would do the same for PvP.

Minimum range, especially for damage and healing AOE might do that. Having to keep your ranged healers in the back and your ranged dd in front with melee (tanks?) to protect against a closing enemy.

And that would still be effective against an unorganized mass. It's just a little harder because the kill zone' and the 'heal zone' no longer overlap in a cheeseball. You'd have to learn how to organize and maintain formation to get the benefits.

fizzybeef · November 7

Organised groups will always remain and win and casualy will always complain.

We played before pull sets organised and killed everything, we played in no proc organised and killed everything, we played in vengeance organised and killed everything and we will do in what ever happens next.

Wanna know why? Because we are sitting in a voice chat, speaking to each other, are spending time to min max and analysing our fails and wins to become better.

You want to play casual and still win?
Wrong game, that wont happen. Get over it.
Everything Zos will do against bg‘s will either make the game worse for everyone because it effects everyone, will buff them in the long run or will ruin it for pve too, so the even bigger playerbase is gonna be mad aswell.
And whats gonna happen then?
The organised group just uses another tool given by the game to adapt; changing setup or playstyle and here we go again

QB1 · 2:34AM

Remove snow treaders from PvP or disable them if in a group. Problem solved.

Just made a post about it PvP activities. The biggest issue with ball groups is not cross healing, it’s not shielding, it’s not even sets like RoA. It’s snow treaders.

Been fighting ball groups every night for years on PC-NA grey host and there is a monumental difference in fighting ball groups who have snow treaders on and those who don’t. The groups that don’t can get snared, immobilized and pulled away from the group. Still takes a lot of players to kill them but can be done pretty manageably. The groups that have every player in snow treaders are invincible unless the entire faction shows up.

Rohamad_Ali · 2:45AM

QB1 wrote: »

Remove snow treaders from PvP or disable them if in a group. Problem solved.

Just made a post about it PvP activities. The biggest issue with ball groups is not cross healing, it’s not shielding, it’s not even sets like RoA. It’s snow treaders.

Been fighting ball groups every night for years on PC-NA grey host and there is a monumental difference in fighting ball groups who have snow treaders on and those who don’t. The groups that don’t can get snared, immobilized and pulled away from the group. Still takes a lot of players to kill them but can be done pretty manageably. The groups that have every player in snow treaders are invincible unless the entire faction shows up.

That sounds game breaking.

SneaK · 2:48AM

Muizer wrote: »

SneaK wrote: »

Are we saying ESO PvP should be more realistic?!

I think what 'we' should borrow from pre-modern warfare is that having different troop types (in this case, melee, cavalry, missile) had consequences for their positioning relative to each other.

PvE is built around the trinity, which actually does somewhat enforce that. I'm trying to come up with something that would do the same for PvP.

Minimum range, especially for damage and healing AOE might do that. Having to keep your ranged healers in the back and your ranged dd in front with melee (tanks?) to protect against a closing enemy.

And that would still be effective against an unorganized mass. It's just a little harder because the kill zone' and the 'heal zone' no longer overlap in a cheeseball. You'd have to learn how to organize and maintain formation to get the benefits.

Player vs player is not scripted and that is why this couldn’t work. ZOS has also pushed everything away from the trinity mindset, especially in PvP. Everyone is a tank, everyone has massive burst heals, and damage is too easy to come by.

A keep fight will never ever work like that, sorry to say it. Even if it were balanced out a lot like PvE, scenarios are too random to force people into formations. It would not be fun at all.

SneaK · 3:00AM

fizzybeef wrote: »

Organised groups will always remain and win and casualy will always complain.

We played before pull sets organised and killed everything, we played in no proc organised and killed everything, we played in vengeance organised and killed everything and we will do in what ever happens next.

Wanna know why? Because we are sitting in a voice chat, speaking to each other, are spending time to min max and analysing our fails and wins to become better.

You want to play casual and still win?
Wrong game, that wont happen. Get over it.
Everything Zos will do against bg‘s will either make the game worse for everyone because it effects everyone, will buff them in the long run or will ruin it for pve too, so the even bigger playerbase is gonna be mad aswell.
And whats gonna happen then?
The organised group just uses another tool given by the game to adapt; changing setup or playstyle and here we go again

It’s also kind of funny that people assume bg crowns don’t love theorycrafting the most efficient killing machines possible. The thought that nerfing something is going to solve “the problem” of a crafty person who leads PvP groups is very naive.

fizzybeef · 7:59AM

QB1 wrote: »

Remove snow treaders from PvP or disable them if in a group. Problem solved.

Just made a post about it PvP activities. The biggest issue with ball groups is not cross healing, it’s not shielding, it’s not even sets like RoA. It’s snow treaders.

Been fighting ball groups every night for years on PC-NA grey host and there is a monumental difference in fighting ball groups who have snow treaders on and those who don’t. The groups that don’t can get snared, immobilized and pulled away from the group. Still takes a lot of players to kill them but can be done pretty manageably. The groups that have every player in snow treaders are invincible unless the entire faction shows up.

Okay you clearly must think organised groups just exist since mythics and pull sets, what is portraying well how much clue the average here is.

Race against time : exists.
Elude : exists
even controlled purge, betty spam aswell to purge : exists

and there are more ..

SneaK wrote: »

fizzybeef wrote: »

Organised groups will always remain and win and casualy will always complain.

We played before pull sets organised and killed everything, we played in no proc organised and killed everything, we played in vengeance organised and killed everything and we will do in what ever happens next.

Wanna know why? Because we are sitting in a voice chat, speaking to each other, are spending time to min max and analysing our fails and wins to become better.

You want to play casual and still win?
Wrong game, that wont happen. Get over it.
Everything Zos will do against bg‘s will either make the game worse for everyone because it effects everyone, will buff them in the long run or will ruin it for pve too, so the even bigger playerbase is gonna be mad aswell.
And whats gonna happen then?
The organised group just uses another tool given by the game to adapt; changing setup or playstyle and here we go again

It’s also kind of funny that people assume bg crowns don’t love theorycrafting the most efficient killing machines possible. The thought that nerfing something is going to solve “the problem” of a crafty person who leads PvP groups is very naive.

THIS.
We worked out a way to play organised from small group to 12 man in every patch since 6 years.

Only time we stopped playing was when the server was empty by bars, like right now.

Thats the only way to get rid of ball groups, kill the game like its happening right now.