[Suggestion]Ways to balance AoE abilities without an arbitrary target cap

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

Most of the proponents of the target cap are under the impression that it is a necessary evil since there are unbalanced abilities in the game.
This is wrong.
The solution to an unbalanced skill is to balance it, not to break every other skill.

The issues of an aoe target cap are many and are already well explained in many other threads. The latest being:
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/120715/aecaps-zergballs-and-you/p1

So rather than doing yet another post focusing on the bad, I'll try here to show how much more interesting a system without a cap can be.

There are many ways to balance aoe abilities:
- diminishing damages away from impact point

This adds skills to both side of the engagement. As attacker, you need to aim precisely to maximise damage.
As a defender, you are rewarded for attempting to dodge. Rather than having a binary skill test, you have a linear one with varying degree of succes.

- diminishing effectiveness proprotional to targets affected

Let's take for example a healing spell with the followign formula:
healing= (1k + targets x 15hp)/targets
This means 115hp for 10 targets, but 65hp for 20. The spell overall total hp healed would continue increasing (1150 -> 1300) but would scale slower and slower.

- long channeling or casting time

Once again, this provides occasions to play skillfuly on both sides.
As an attacker, the assessement of the situation is more important: Are you safe enough to channel the spell? What is the opportunity cost of spending time casting that spell? It could end up costing resources but might not be relevant anymore when ready.
As the defender, you have the opportunity to notice and take advantage of the casting to do an interupt. If you fail to notice, the spell is damaging, if you succeed, you get no damage and an "exploit" possibility as rewards.

- resource cost and debt proportional to targets

For instance, whirlwind skill in dual wield with the following formula:
150 stam + 25 per target hit. 300 stam for 6 targets
The valuation skill is tested here. Is it worth the stam to dps ratio?
This could come with a resource debt, if using more stamina than available, you would have to generate back to 0 before going back in the positive, puting you at a real disadvantage. For a mistake, or perhaps a gamble?

- self debuffs with length/potency proportional to targets

Can be any kind of traditional debuff or condition. A snare, lower mana regen, imobilise, unbalanced, etc
It is meant as a reverse channeling. You can cast the ability instantly, but the more effect it has, the more vulnerable you are afterwards.

- burnout mechanic to prevent spam

Just like the mecanic implemented for streak/ball lightning.
The idea is that several abilities could have this "nerf" and over time cumulate into emulating tiredness and puting you increasingly at a disadvantage the more you use AoE abilities.

-Delayed/conditional trigger

Like Volcanic rune or daedric mine, an aoe can be setup on the groudn and take some time to trigger.
On the user's side, you need to learn how to lead yoru targets and anticipate how the battle will evolve. If it doesn't trigger, it still serve as a tool for aera denial and crowd control.
As the target, you have an easier time avoiding being hit AND avoiding triggering the effect. This enables very potent AOEs because of how dependant on the target's failure it is.

- Ramping up damages

For abilities where it isn't logic to have damage drop off away from center. For instance, the bow skill Volley and its morphs.
Instead, the damage could be separated in ticks of increasing damage.
It would also reward lineary for dodging as the sooner you avoid the location the less damage you'll receive. However, if you fail to react, you'll eventually get the full damage.

- Non stacking AoE

A great fit for ultimate abilities, or aoe CC abilities.
Some aoe effects could be so powerfull that they prevent other effects from happening above them and would cancel out any similar AoEs (offensive cancels offensive, friendly cancels friendly)
This would give those abilities an opportunity cost: Is it worth having that one aoe, or a stack of others.
It would also increase the need for coordination. it would take one guy to ruin the effects of all his team, and the larger the group, the more chances of this happening.
As a target, you could be CCd in an aoe, but not be AOE damaged at the same time, making the whole thing much more manageable.

- Reduced AoE size on certain abilities

It would make the abilities balanced this way much harder to take profit of.
As a user, you'll need to "snipe" when enough people are in the AoE to be worth the mana/stam/ultimate/time cost of the ability.
As a target, there would be less of a need to spread out to avoid those type of aoe, but if you make a mistake or have to go through a chokepoint, you'll have consequences.

- Simply balance cost vs reward to make single target abilities more sustainable

This comes in a bit with the burnout mechanic, but in a less restrictive way.
Increasing the opportunity cost for certain AoEs while keeping their power would mean that they become much more situational.
It leverages the excellent resource management aspect of the game

- A per ability target cap

For instance, mutagen. Some abilities can just have their own flavor by being limited to certain amount of targets. It gives them a "self service" vibe where you can control how much resources you spend and how many targets you hit.

In conclusion, adding limitations the player can evaluate and "get a feel" of is added depth. It offers players with choices and create more situational awareness/positioning to the game, improving its strong points.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

Edited to add "Delayed Trigger" and "Ramping up Damages".

Baphomet

Diminishing returns is a good alternative to AoE caps. It's something players have been asking about for a long time, too. I would like it much better than caps.

On the same subject, they also ought to power up ground based damage AoEs like elemental wall in order to prohibit stacking just a little more.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

Ha! that's a good idea. Adding it to the OP.

Some AOEs could cancel other aoes in the zone or prevent other aoe effects from triggering to prevent stacking.

Morvul

A lot of good ideas in this thread!

rich_nicholsonb16_ESO

Let all damaging area all be on a cast time? Everyone has a interpt but everything apart from a few skills/spells are instant so let's make use of the interrupt skill. Keep single target skills instant though.

Bramir

Allowing zerg balls for the pvers so they can compete is more important than game balance...

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

Added size and cost modifications to the OP
These were so obvious that I didn't think necessary to mention them initially.
But I guess it wouldn't hurt to be exhaustive.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

@ZOS_BrianWheeler‌ , @ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ , @ZOS_GinaBruno‌

Shameless name dropping and bump.
I've seen Brian comment that you guys were discussing the target cap issue internally, so I'm trying to get this feedback to you.

This is a combination of all the possible solutions I've seen mentionned throughout the forums and reddit, mixed with my own suggestions.

I didn't mention it in the op, but consider also a ultimate gains soft/hard cap diminishing return mechanic.
Perhaps even setting a burnout mechanic that reduce your ultimate gains in function of how much ultimate you gained in the previous second.

Either ways, thank you for finally addressing the issue. I really hope you make the correct decision.

Have a nice day.

Xsorus

Ultimate gain is already capped at 15 from what I understand, Basically your ability can hit as many targets as it wants, but i'll never go past 15 ultimate gain on a single use of it.

Some abilities were bugged and the dots were also giving 15 ultimate gain as well.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

@xsorusb14_ESO‌ Yes, I heard about that before. Didn't get to test it myself, but good to get a confirmation of it.
I won't be able to do tests until EU comes back up in germany.

But I was trying to go a bit further than that.

How much targets and damage is necessary to reach the cap with aoes?
And what about single target abilities?

In my opinion, there should be equivalent ultimate gains over time, which would give an advantage to single target abilities as they cost less resources.
Is this already the case?

If you have the possibility to test this, please do so. Perhaps I am seeing an issue where there isn't one.

On another note, a possible tweak would be to lower the cap by 1 for one second each time it is reached to the minimum of 1.
Meaning that spamming an ability non stop, be it single or aoe, would eventually mean barely gaining any ultimate.
A goal akin to the idea of "finesse" from early development.

nicholaspingasb16_ESO

I think a combination of these, with perhaps a long cast time (2 seconds) and a large tell (levitate high in the air and glow). So that it's still dangerous, but at the same time players know that it's coming and have time to react. It would get rid of mindless zerg balls and force people to move apart.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

Yup, you got the concept.

Well, this thread really is a "just in case".
I actually don't think many aoes will be op once the aoe target cap gets removed. There are rarely more the 4 targets in the same area in "normal" play.

But in case there are skills that do stand out, then the suggestions in this thread are a "toolbox" to tailor each skill to their own flavor.

For instance I could see encase, talon or any aoe CC give out the same effect to their caster. You have to root yourself to root others.

Spellos

we need something which only effect the PvP Part of the game, something like an passive AE Resistance in the AvA Skilltree.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

Why shoudl it impact only the PvP aspect of the game?

It is also an issue in pve.
Maybe not as much because the situations where there are more than 6 targets can be avoided. And I can think of maybe only one instance where the cap had any relevance on my normal pve experience.

However, for people unaware of the cap (99% of the playerbase?) it is just a glitch/bug that their ability didn't hit all targets that one time it applied.
It's immersion breaking and just random.
In the case of a skill like encase, necessary for many low level sorcerers, it can be a random that kills you.

I can understand if bosses had target caps on some of their massive abilities, it could help scale the difficulty of encounters in trials. (normal mode: 6 targets, so 50% of group gets hit, hard mode no cap: everyone gets hit)
But aside from that, there are no valid reasons to have a target cap in pve. Especially not on the player side.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

Since it seems to be appropriate with the news from the latest Guild summit, I take the opportunity to bump this thread.
To implement a generalistic fall off solutions now would be a disregard of the reasons why the target cap is an issue in the first place.

The ideal way of using the suggestions here would be to remove all caps, both for healing and damages, and to not implement falloff.

Then, if some abilities seem to be Op, they can be addressed on a case by case basis with the suggestions here to add "lore" related and varied limitations to abilities.


For instance:
- batswarm can have a falloff with a steep curve, since a vampire can realistically have a maximu blood input he can handle. This could also be based on the vampirism stage.
- Impulse and meteor could have their damage with a distance based falloff.
- for encase and talons, or any kind of aoe CC, the caster could receive the same debuff as he applies.
- For whirlwind, it could have a stamina debt over howm any targets are impacted.

It is very likely that this thread is completely useless, I doubt that removing aoe caps will do anything negative, but just i ncase it is good to have a contingency plan.