AoE Cap - Lord Fengrush hits it on the head

OtarTheMad · October 2015

Korah_Eaglecry wrote: »

OtarTheMad wrote: »

Definitely agree with what you guys said about PVP. Fengrush at 59 minutes summed it up.

I mainly PVP, you could call me a casual if you want... I am not going to care but when I am trying to defend a keep or in IC sewers and we have 30+ PvEers just zerging through casting barriers and purging everything under the sun it becomes discouraging. I remember having 4-6 oils dropping on this group that was sieging a front door and it did absolutely nothing... it was like I was dropping water to get them all wet.

I fought most of you guys as AD, Fengrush often times comes into Haderus sewers and it's fun. I hate it when AD PvEers run away, lol, so frustrating. @Fengrush, not sure if you remember but we had a pretty fun fight on my NB yesterday I believe or Friday night (Mithllon Vules) and you died from the banner guard agro I dragged with me. Then you killed me later, lol, fun fights. My skills are rusty because of the lack of good small combat but it's always fun.

Hopefully ZOS listens to you guys and this game can go on for a long time.

Im sorry but blaming other players obviously PvPing on PvEers (who detest PvP) for zerg balls is exactly why you should probably go play another game.

Zergs is how PvP in this game works. IC might have been meant to be a smaller enviroment. But it doesnt prevent the group sizes...So if ZOS intended smaller PvP. They should of just went with 4v4 Arenas.

But I still cant stop laughing at how terrible at PvP you are for you to blame zerging on PvEers...How absolutely bad you must be.

Where is my lol button.

The 30+ comment was meant more for above ground PvP, I should have spaced that differently... my bad. Zerging shouldn't be a thing, at least not a constant thing. Some people miss the days where we had small battles 10 v 10 etc. Not 40 v 8.

And calling me bad when you don't even know me or even faced me in Cyrodiil? Lol, I consider myself a pretty good Sorc (my guildies would agree) but you know what... it doesn't matter because this is A GAME. At the end of the day it's about fun not who is the best at what.

Joy_Division · October 2015

Edit: what Hiero_Glyph said

Rylana · October 2015

briandivisionb16_ESO wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Imagine a non aoe capped Haxus, Vehemence, GoS, KHole or a similar sub-raid sized coordinated group.

Imagine removing the AOE cap and bombgroups have to think and play with equal skill.

Remove the AOE cap and each proxdet from that 12-16man will hit every single person within range for full damage.

Do you not understand how this is a very bad thing? Right now the larger groups are able to win via sheer numbers because they mitigate some of the damage. Take away that mitigation and it actually benefits the paintrains the most. No one but another paintrain would be able to counter them.

aco5712 · October 2015

Rylana wrote: »

briandivisionb16_ESO wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Imagine a non aoe capped Haxus, Vehemence, GoS, KHole or a similar sub-raid sized coordinated group.

Imagine removing the AOE cap and bombgroups have to think and play with equal skill.

Remove the AOE cap and each proxdet from that 12-16man will hit every single person within range for full damage.

Do you not understand how this is a very bad thing? Right now the larger groups are able to win via sheer numbers because they mitigate some of the damage. Take away that mitigation and it actually benefits the paintrains the most. No one but another paintrain would be able to counter them.

so why dont the other players learn to play the game properly and with skill? im tired of this argument, the larger groups should win because the number of healers and dps is more not because they mitigate more damage.

right now its harder to take out larger groups because they have more negates, more ultimates, more healers and take less damage. Remove this damage portion and fight is still in their favor but its just more fair.

and please dont tell me its because they need to protect the casuals or cater to them. PvP is considered a end game feature. You cant cater to the average scrub in a end game feature because that makes no sense. End game is where you go once you are the best you can be and then you try to improve yourself more. Thats what end game is and what it should be.

UltimaJoe777 · October 2015

usmcjdking wrote: »

Cyrodiil is comprised mostly of casuals. Dudes who wear green & blue armor and probably don't even know what a weapon enchantment is.

Sterotypical jerk much?

SleepyTroll · October 2015

Darnathian wrote: »

SleepyTroll wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Fengrush, I agree that zerg busting should be a thing. A 5-10 man group should have a reasonable chance of getting kills, in some cases many kills on much larger groups.

I have started leaning towards the removal but I have a major reservation.

Imagine a non aoe capped Haxus, Vehemence, GoS, KHole or a similar sub-raid sized coordinated group. a 12-16 man solid group that can already bust a 40+ man zergball. Now remove the AoE caps. What have you just created? You literally just made a high damage small-medium man bomb group completely unbeatable, and at the same time even if those groups meet up vs each other, its a damage war, whoever has the most DPS would then win every fight. Forget healing and movement, boom boom kapow.

There are only two guilds in the game right now that on even numbers footing even gives GoS a challenge (and no I am not claiming we are the best, I am simply stating the current state of the game for us) and that is VE (DC) and Rage(AD). This is generally speaking of course, and there are other smaller groups and conglomerates like Khole and Tertiary Meat that if they had up to 15-20 guys probably would be able to take us on fairly well.

My point in this is that besides those named, the only time we ever lose a fight, is when we are outnumbered 2 or 3 to 1 or even more. But we SHOULD lose those fights, or at least barely eke out a win via superior strategy and movement.

If you removed AoE caps, those 50-60 man zergballs that are REQUIRED to beat us, would be completely useless. What you would see is basically the top six or seven 12-20 man organized groups basically rendering the entire rest of the population null and just slamming each other with as much damage as they can stack.

Now imagine your four man squad running into one of those 16 man high DPS groups. You might think four people would bust them, but the reality is youre going to be running 4 equal footing into 16 equal footing in a game where burst DPS has been nerfed so hard for PvP that youre basically ensuring the death of smallman. Its already in a bad enough state. This potentially makes it actually worse, considering the truly organized groups already out there.

The real issue in this game is how damage stacking benefits by force multiplication. Why have one prox det when you can have 10 all at once. Nothing will survive that. Only takes 10. Thats not a very large group.

Your second to last paragraph doesn't make any sense at all. Here's why: right now 4 people vs 16, the 4 people hit 6 of the 16 for full damage and the rest at 50%. The 16 hit the 4 for full damage. If cap was removed then the 4 and 16 would all get hit for full damage.... So how again does the removal of AOE caps make it worse for the 4 group?

Why cater to 4 customers instead of catering to 24 customers that came to this game for large scale PVP and not elitists?

That's not what we were talking about but that's cool. I wasn't arguing for any scale only explaining how the post made no sense. Next time read before posting.

Nijjion · October 2015

Rylana wrote: »

briandivisionb16_ESO wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Imagine a non aoe capped Haxus, Vehemence, GoS, KHole or a similar sub-raid sized coordinated group.

Imagine removing the AOE cap and bombgroups have to think and play with equal skill.

Remove the AOE cap and each proxdet from that 12-16man will hit every single person within range for full damage.

Do you not understand how this is a very bad thing? Right now the larger groups are able to win via sheer numbers because they mitigate some of the damage. Take away that mitigation and it actually benefits the paintrains the most. No one but another paintrain would be able to counter them.

Maybe they should not clump up together and take all the damage together?... that's a player skill issue not an ability OP issue... they should be penalised to ALL taking damage from 1 skill if they are that close to 1 skill... that's how MMOs have worked for bloody 15 years.

sure maybe some skills like proxy don't need the increase any more... but with the damage cap it wasn't doing much before anyway.

Darnathian wrote: »

Why cater to 4 customers instead of catering to 24 customers that came to this game for large scale PVP and not elitists?

You would get a game like Call of Duty then which skill doesn't mean anyway (no incentive to get better or change a bad play style). That's just bad game design in general.

You want a game like Counter Strike where skilled people can exceed but lower people skill in skill can still progress/have fun as well.

Frawr · October 2015

I absolutely agree with the complete removal of AOE caps.

The larger group benefits from extra heals and extra ultimate. This is sufficient advantage.

The smaller group should be able to benefit from timing and strategy to beat the larger group. This maintains a natural balance. A good large group will beat a good small group but a bad large group will lose to a good small group.

This mechanic alone will absolutely disincentivise and reduce zerging because the zerg will actually die!!

Ultimately it is not about catering to one specific group of players but, rather, about levelling the playing field.

Tankqull · October 2015

Rylana wrote: »

briandivisionb16_ESO wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Imagine a non aoe capped Haxus, Vehemence, GoS, KHole or a similar sub-raid sized coordinated group.

Imagine removing the AOE cap and bombgroups have to think and play with equal skill.

Remove the AOE cap and each proxdet from that 12-16man will hit every single person within range for full damage.

Do you not understand how this is a very bad thing? Right now the larger groups are able to win via sheer numbers because they mitigate some of the damage. Take away that mitigation and it actually benefits the paintrains the most. No one but another paintrain would be able to counter them.

and? i´m going to have 4-6 irresitable detonations on them from perfectly safe distance probably 3-4 other players too screwing them entirely if it would be uncapped now i´m not able to dent them the slightest thx to uncapped barriers and smart healing while my dmg is significantly hindered.

or in other words.
this game is lacking skills to [snip] up "tight stackers" regardless of their numbers and to force them into splitting up at wich point each individually start to get vulnurable. and a first step to do so is to uncap aoe´s especially ranged aoes.
as your example of your group is not dying to a larger number of players only to an equal or largernumber of tightstackers (because of your coordination advantage over casual randoms)

[Moderator Note: Edited per our rules on Cursing & Profanity]

Minnesinger · October 2015

This show has 4 of the pro pvpers everyone fricken loves or hates. None can deny that they know the game inside out. Imagine if the developers had asked their advice to make the game better, especially PvP.....Alas I hope they will do something with AoE caps. First of all, I find it absolutely unjustified that the game favors the zergs in the current situation. ZENI has added them extra safety by having this weird AoE cap that not only deduces the damage but randomly chooses the players hit by AoE. This wrong could be easily fixed. Either remove the AoE caps altogether or raise the damage.

BTW as an idea why not form a group of 4 and stream it? I would love to see these guys play together.

twistedmonk · October 2015

I understand these guys have a very specific personal agenda. Also realize that they only represent less than 1% of the player base.

Part of the limitations of PvP in this game is the technology. Their game engine just can't handle a big zone like Cyodiil. So the developers made compromises.

The alternative solution I think is just to give these guys their structured PvP arenas and let them fight each other. Look at many other past and present MMOs - WoW, GW2, Skyforge, Neverwinter, Warhammer Online - they all have a small group PvP Arena. Even this game had one in beta until they took it out for whatever reason. Or heck , look at any FPS - they are all the same.

The other alternative is I invite these guys to find a game that has what they are looking for instead of trying to make something that isn't. Maybe time for them to move on and play something else.

Zheg · October 2015

Ernest145 wrote: »

Zheg wrote: »

Fully agree that healing should be harder and require positioning rather than just spamming breath of life.

Fully agree that aoe caps need work. I believe ZOS originally said full removal would impede performance, though I'm not sure if that still holds true given that they're now doing calcs to halve and quarter damage after the initial 6 people are hit.

Fully agree the 50% damage mitigation is just bonkers, and indicative of awful combat design. If you need to mitigate the damage that much in pvp, your original numbers were wrong to begin with.

Fully disagree with the underlying tone that the pvp mechanics should be catered to a 4 man sized group. GW2 had 4-man spvp instances, but it also had full wvw because that's where large-scale fighting with large-scale groups is supposed to occur. Cyrodiil is supposed to be large groups fighting each other, not a bunch of small mans. I certainly appreciate the lack of an arena where solo or small groups can fight each other - I'd love for that to be added. For regular Cyrodiil though, a 4-man squad should not be able to take a keep. Period.

The game should reward the group that can take ~20 people and coordinate. There are too many youtube egos who bemoan pvp groups that aren't even at the full group size the game allows and yet have never tried to coordinate that many. It's no easy task. I can promise you it's harder than running solo, and harder than running a 4 man. To clarify, this does not mean I'm advocating the size of the blue group on Azuras, the gigantic yellow blobs on TF on sunday/tuesday/thursday, or the red zerg for that matter. But the mechanics of Cyrodiil should indeed favor groups - just trying to coordinate enough people to be on at the same time can be difficult. I'd like to see some of the youtube egos actually lead a 20 man group in Cyrodiil during prime-time against a veteran pvp guild. I've solo wiped a group of 10 trying to take a keep before, but that should be the exception, not the norm. /soapboxrant.

You are completely wrong running solo and in a small man is much more difficult than running with a full raid, I've done all three. There is no need to reward people for stacking with 20+ and spamming aoe's and rolling over people because it requires little risk. Sure the raid leader needs to be somewhat aware of what is happening and also know what he/she is doing but still it doesn't compare to leading a small group without having 5+ healers spamming heals and everyone using barrier. People in the group literally don't need to have any skill, just stack their weapon/spell damage and the healers heal, spam 3 abilities and know how to hug the leaders butt. Also, large groups already have the numbers so they can easily wipe the small groups if they know what they are doing, what he wants is for small groups to have a chance at wiping larger numbers which is very difficult because of these aoe caps and the way healing is. Even if a group of 10 can wipe 50 that is completely fine if they are a very solid group, the 50 already have them outnumbered but if they are bad then they should wipe.

To avoid conflicts of interest and tooting our own horn, you're telling me that people in haxus, GoS, and the long-lost Deci weren't skilled? Have you ever even caught one of them alone or with just a few others? What's that? You don't remember because they beat you so badly you've blocked out the memory of the encounter? Well, I'll take some pity on you then.

Just because you may have X'd up in some random zone chat group does not mean you've run in a coordinated raid. Running 20 people does indeed invoke risk, because now your group is the focus of enemy siege and ult dumps. The random pug running solo is targeted last unless he's stupid and overextends. Furthermore, people running solo or in a 4 man tend to have far more survivability on their bars/builds, whereas people in a 20 man group run more group focused bars - meaning if you do catch them on siege/running back from a keep/etc., they will be far easier to kill than a good solo spec.

No one (other than maybe 3 guilds I can think of) proposes playing with 50 people. But the game should not be catered to group sizes of 4 because people are either anti-social or have egos big enough to fill out the remaining 20 slots. The raid size is 24, and should never be exceeded, but the general mechanics should be designed around the expectation that large-scale pvp is occurring in the large-scall pvp zone. Small man pvp is for the sewers, and (hopefully...someday...) the yet to be released pvp arena. This is why fengrush says he can wipe large groups in the sewers - the layout is built for it, groups running more than 12 suffer from diminished loot, and peoples' armor is half broken because of all the pve. The sewers is where 4 man groups can shine. A 4 man squad should not be able to wipe a 24 man haxus group unless people are crashing/afk, I don't care how good 4 people are, when you take 20-24 good and coordinated players that know how to pvp, the 4 man should only ever win on incredibly rare occasions.

Rylana already pointed it out, but if you give the organized pvp guilds uncapped aoe, GG. Furthermore, what do you think will happen to a well-played emperor that has none of their aoe/ults mitigated against numbers? Lulz.

To conclude, if you take out the aoe caps, I (and other pvp guilds) will just push for our guys to run full tank specs and turn the battlefield into napalm with fire ballistas because that damage isn't tied to your build. The 4 man won't be able to kill people because everyone is running stupid amounts of hp, resist, and stacking inside a nova. Does that sound fun to you? Hmm? I appreciate that some of you mean well, but you really don't think things through.

EDIT: to be fair, there was once upon a time where I asked for the aoe cap to be removed. But since then, I've learned more and pvp'd a LOT more. Anyone that tries to oversimply the needed fixes for pvp into something as simple as removing the aoe cap does not know what they're talking about (even if they talk about it on youtube for 2.5 hours). Unfortunately pvp is far too complicated for a blanket fix and requires tweaks on multiple fronts. You want to remove the aoe cap? Groups just run tankier. People always adapt to the new meta.

twistedmonk · October 2015

I don't support their ideas...they just want to be able to take 4 people and kill 20+...no thanks.

Like I said, they have their own personal agenda which is not in the best interest of the overall game and playerbase. I respect their opinions, but they have a limited perspective and not looking at the big picture.

Didn't we already have uncapped AOE...do you realize what happens when an organized guild group gets uncapped AoE? take that 4-man team and make it 10-20 running barriers/purge, support builds, etc...they are unstoppable.

This game PvP is not balanced and fair....level, classes, gear, builds, champion points all combine to make pvp unfair.

These guys all want to 1vX = and that is only successful against what they call "bad" players - ie people that have inferior gear/builds/classes/levels/experience. sorry 1vX was never a good thing for the game and shouldn't be encouraged.

You do realize that people in groups are running group/support builds right? so yeah, when you catch a guy alone running a support build vs a person running a specific pvp solo build = yeah of course you are going to have a huge advantage. that's what these guys are counting on...

put in a pvp arena and be done with it....

cyrodiil is large scale battles...What cyrodiil needs is more team-based objectives like a MOBA and make it more group friendly and team oriented. how about a commander icon like GW2 that helps solo players go to the action, taking keeps/resources gets old...its a huge zone...add more pvp-focused content...capture tower X and boss spawns, add more guild-oriented content - claim a keep and you get guild perks - being able to port to it anytime, crafting stations that you can make unique pvp items, etc.

but...to change the game to support a very vocal minority who want to 1vX or "zerg" bust because they think people that group with others in a MMO are skill-less/talent-less and all deserve to die for zerging, ie grouping/socializing. have you seen the coordination/patience it takes to lead a group of players in a MMO? not many can do it.

no to their ideas...that's the wrong direction to take this game.

Like @Zheg said...you need to think this through.

Xeven · October 2015

I loved Fengrush's comments on smart healing. It really is just facerolling your keyboard, and thats just obnoxious. I don't see how they could remove this without revamping group targeting though. Maybe there just needs to be a healing cap, ults included.

About dynamic ult... I can get behind the argument that 4 guys have 4 ults and 10 guys have 10, but how do you bring back dynamic ult elegantly? How do you do it with out breaking balance? I know nobody wants DKs spamming bats every 3 seconds again, but I haven't heard any solid suggestions about how dynamic ult 2.0 should actually work.

Frawr · October 2015

twistedmonk wrote: »

I understand these guys have a very specific personal agenda. Also realize that they only represent less than 1% of the player base.

Part of the limitations of PvP in this game is the technology. Their game engine just can't handle a big zone like Cyodiil. So the developers made compromises.

The alternative solution I think is just to give these guys their structured PvP arenas and let them fight each other. Look at many other past and present MMOs - WoW, GW2, Skyforge, Neverwinter, Warhammer Online - they all have a small group PvP Arena. Even this game had one in beta until they took it out for whatever reason. Or heck , look at any FPS - they are all the same.

The other alternative is I invite these guys to find a game that has what they are looking for instead of trying to make something that isn't. Maybe time for them to move on and play something else.

The engine has been marketed as capable of large scale pvp from day 1. It only started going wrong with patch 1.3 (ithe7 added anti-speed hacking software I believe).

As far as i can see, the opinions expressed by these guys generally favour 2 things; Replayable activities and a balanced ruleset.

What is it about their views that you dislike?

WarrioroftheWind_ESO · October 2015

Why *shouldnt* 4 people wipe a grp 3-4x their size if the larger grp is unorganized and the 4man are top-range pvpers?

I can personally recount a time when the Quietus family and Co. made a EP grp of 18ppl look entirely silly. Most of their strength came from their complement of blink sorcs, but their real meat and potatoes came in the form of Lyric. She is one tough cookie to kill and if anyone dies she pops them back in a flash. The group played smart and supported each other. That's the truest form of skill (this was way back before IC I think).

Unless it's a tightly organized guild like Nexus/Havoc/Haxus or Mojicat's group, most pugs will gravitate towards a zerg because it allows them to just steamroll without abandon without really having to use specific tactics UNLESS faced with such a organized group who does use anti-zerg abilities. It's a rare enough occasion to see a small group wipe a much larger group, and that isn't an indicator of 'omg op!" it just means this small grp knew what it was doing and executed correctly.

Of course that would only work if the small group was actually good. 5 people can't expect to beat a raid grp of 20 if any number of them are inebriated/dumb/high as a (@&$! kite and choose a very poor area of engagement, for example thinking they can ambush a group OUTSIDE the doors of a keep, rather than INSIDE where they could set up anti-personnel siege and use NPC guards to their advantage.

They really should just remove detonation entirely. It just does not do what was intended. Heck bugged elemental wall was more effective in thwarting zergs.

FENGRUSH · October 2015

Going to try to reply to a lot of people cause I feel strongly about this subject.

Rylana wrote: »

Fengrush, I agree that zerg busting should be a thing. A 5-10 man group should have a reasonable chance of getting kills, in some cases many kills on much larger groups.

I have started leaning towards the removal but I have a major reservation.

Imagine a non aoe capped Haxus, Vehemence, GoS, KHole or a similar sub-raid sized coordinated group. a 12-16 man solid group that can already bust a 40+ man zergball. Now remove the AoE caps. What have you just created? You literally just made a high damage small-medium man bomb group completely unbeatable, and at the same time even if those groups meet up vs each other, its a damage war, whoever has the most DPS would then win every fight. Forget healing and movement, boom boom kapow.

There are only two guilds in the game right now that on even numbers footing even gives GoS a challenge (and no I am not claiming we are the best, I am simply stating the current state of the game for us) and that is VE (DC) and Rage(AD). This is generally speaking of course, and there are other smaller groups and conglomerates like Khole and Tertiary Meat that if they had up to 15-20 guys probably would be able to take us on fairly well.

My point in this is that besides those named, the only time we ever lose a fight, is when we are outnumbered 2 or 3 to 1 or even more. But we SHOULD lose those fights, or at least barely eke out a win via superior strategy and movement.

If you removed AoE caps, those 50-60 man zergballs that are REQUIRED to beat us, would be completely useless. What you would see is basically the top six or seven 12-20 man organized groups basically rendering the entire rest of the population null and just slamming each other with as much damage as they can stack.

Now imagine your four man squad running into one of those 16 man high DPS groups. You might think four people would bust them, but the reality is youre going to be running 4 equal footing into 16 equal footing in a game where burst DPS has been nerfed so hard for PvP that youre basically ensuring the death of smallman. Its already in a bad enough state. This potentially makes it actually worse, considering the truly organized groups already out there.

The real issue in this game is how damage stacking benefits by force multiplication. Why have one prox det when you can have 10 all at once. Nothing will survive that. Only takes 10. Thats not a very large group.

Your advocating that the check for 20 man groups is 40-60 as a 'solution' to ball groups. Not because theres so many and theyre doing so damage or playing well, but because AOE caps are taking over to such an extreme that your gameplay is simply negated. Not even sure how you can advocate that. Basically if your painfully outnumbered - youre suggesting you shouldnt even show up to the fight. Well, theres a lot of people in that boat already, theyre out there dueling because this gameplay is trash. Nothing feels rewarding about this at all.

The reality is if you took your 20 man group to go bust up the 40 without AOE caps, theres likely to be a group like mine that is going to jump in behind it and be a lot more relevant than we could be today. Were just 4 more people throwing our mess around in a group of AOE caps and barriers. Our coordinated effort is as good as the uncoordinated efforts of a mass. Its just completely awful.

And if you think 4 people cant be a serious impact against 20 without caps, you either chose to forget what I did with 4 people during release or do not have the memory to remember. Agrippas group used to be beat on the regular with 20 people filled with ranks of good players and some high ranking PvP players today simply because theyve always moved from one large group to another. The only difference is the game has continually made these groups stronger and stronger. The caliber of players that coordinate together are exactly what will counter your 20man ball groups, they are simply negated by AOE caps at this point. To hope you get even larger groups as the 'only counter' is really a joke.

r.jan_emailb16_ESO wrote: »

I think that the legendary 4-man should not be able to take out every other group per se. They should be able to do so, if the others have no clue at all. But regardless if the 4 (or 8 or whatever) engage the bigger group with a lot of damage, people should drop. There should be no safety in numbers just because of the numbers. I'm okay when their mates react and heal them, that's how it should work. But just standing there and being protected because there are six others also just standing there, no.

None of the players on that podcast want easy wins - they want fair fights. As it stands today - 4 v 12, the 4 people will take full damage from the 12, the 12 will have half their group take half damage throughout the entire fight if they happen to hit everyone with AOE. Basically the 4 are outnumbered 1:3 and also dealing with half damage. Its well enough to simply be outnumbered.

houimetub17_ESO wrote: »

you guys do realize that if you remove aoe caps, zergs of 40+ players' aoe will be un capped too.

now imagine half of them running steel tornado hitting for lets say 4000 each with no cap to aoe.

80k dmg to everyone a pop. It would take only 5 of them to hit the buttin all at once to one shot most people. ( remember someone multiboxing multiple sorcs spamming impulse)

With uncapped healing for aoes like Combat prayer, which means it takes less healers to sustain those raids.

The main thing that would help small groups in those situations would be aoe CC being uncapped and the use of it at the right moment but then again it could backfire as zergs can also use this.

Now i'm not saying i'm against aoe caps removal, but then again I lean more towards a gradual change into it so we fond the softspot.

I think for now a good solution might be to remove aoe caps on ground aoe ults like Negate, Nova, DK standard to begin with. Then expand from there.

This is in line with the Rylana fear. How many groups of people are standing alive in radius of 40 people taking magical AOE cap reduction from them? The smaller groups, never at all. The larger 20 man groups trying to counter them? Yes they will. But in a 20v40 with AOE caps, the 20 are fighting a much harder battle than if AOE caps were removed and they had a chance to strategically hit them and initiate properly. This is what group fighting should be about. Not ramming into eachother with blobs. This does no favors to the people trying to actually PvP in the area or for performance either.

PBpsy wrote: »

The removal of dynamic ulti generation was the absolutely worst decision they have made since launch both in terms of PVP and PVE. It was obvious since the "lowering the inequality" speech a year ago and it still obvious now..For me it was the thing that marked the end of ESO as a game and the beginning of ESO as a comedy show.

This is kind of another topic - but I believe it needs to be brought back as well. I think it goes hand in hand with making cyro a better place. The reality is, people figured out ways to build ults quickly before between uncapped AOEs and dynamic ults with certain armor/skill builds. First Zenimax put in AOE caps. But this didnt fix the issue because someone didnt do the math on how these ults were being generated. Then they simply changed dynamic ult to be static. Now we have 2 bandaids that have completely changed the meta of the game for a problem that simply revolved around rebalancing numbers.

ESO was in a great place when a solo DK could build his ult potentially 3x faster than 3 people hitting him in a 1v3. This is what made DKs possible and viable even when jammed up in open fields. This is why DKs are lost and imbalanced in 1vX, and something discussed in the podcast. Now those 3 players can build ults at the same rate, and once the DK blows his ult, they could all just slam him together, and if it failed, they will have a chance to build it up at the same rate. Being outnumbered had ways of offsetting itself before if you have the ability to carry yourself through the fight and stay alive skillfully. They have removed the benefits of playing your character well though. Another mechanic that has dumbed down the game.

GreenSoup2HoT wrote: »

I would much rather all abilities have a AOE cap including Barrier and Purge. This way there is no 450k shield damage a small group has to burn through.

(different story on console. bigger player base of 1vX/casual player's. Very rarely do you see coordinated large group's who pop ult's like barrier/ Templar heal's and stack crown. )

After hearing Fengrush discuss this more with me on his stream, his reasoning is good. I wouldn't be opposed to removing the AoE cap or my suggestion.

The strength of barriers are insane. Its something worth looking at. But the ULTIMATE problem, is that the barriers can hit so many people, and then the players burning through those barriers, are doing so with AOE cap reduction. Not only that, but once the barrier goes up, you cant even crit them because of how shields function in this game. So my 10k steel tornado that gets taken down to 7k after armor reduction, is blocked for 3.5k, and halved by AOE caps to 1.75 - now has to burn through a 30k shield. No problem, let me just throw out 17 steel tornados and hope you dont apply another barrier anytime soon so I can get back to hitting your health bar that will automatically focus one of the many heals per second coming out if you happen to be the focus of burst and drop low in health.

usmcjdking wrote: »

Cyrodiil is comprised mostly of casuals. Dudes who wear green & blue armor and probably don't even know what a weapon enchantment is. These "AoE caps" and "smart healing" are not catering to casuals anymore than they are catering to the elite. The casuals just prefer to use these mechanics to their advantage whilst the elite whine and moan about how they don't benefit from it because they choose not to utilize them.

Not all that wrong here - some of the more experienced players use them, some dont. Many find this gameplay to be completely mind numbing and absolutely disinteresting. Ive played other large scale PvP games. Ive led guilds/groups from sizes of 4, 20, 40, 150+ as the main leader. @Akinos is one who played with me in my last MMO (against me), he could attest to my leadership talent!

The reality is ESO at 20+ doesnt take much of any talent. You need a leader who essentially is driving a bus. And he fills the bus up with different tools. The role of the tools is very simple, the decisions the bus driver makes involves a bit more awareness and keeping his tools in check. This is pretty much 20+ ball group PvP. Its painfully simple, and a lot of players cant be bothered to do this. This really only exists as a thing because of AOE caps. If you take out the AOE caps, theres a lot of small groups that would hit them at the same time/

Rylana wrote: »

briandivisionb16_ESO wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Imagine a non aoe capped Haxus, Vehemence, GoS, KHole or a similar sub-raid sized coordinated group.

Imagine removing the AOE cap and bombgroups have to think and play with equal skill.

Remove the AOE cap and each proxdet from that 12-16man will hit every single person within range for full damage.

Do you not understand how this is a very bad thing? Right now the larger groups are able to win via sheer numbers because they mitigate some of the damage. Take away that mitigation and it actually benefits the paintrains the most. No one but another paintrain would be able to counter them.

Looks like Rylana has been too deeply ingrained in the 'pain train'. Prox det has an 8sec det time. Theres a lot that can happen between those 8 seconds when its clear youre just charging up waiting for the boom. Theres a lot that can happen right after you hit your designated target. The reality is - most of the time youre not booming. The only relevant thing youre fighting is other ball groups you can see, and its literally all you consider. You have seriously been zerging for too long to even remember what else is possible in ESO. Im not even trolling here, this is all you see, and you dont realize how easily an 8 man group lurking behind your 'pain train' killing another ball group will absolutely bend you over without AOE caps covering the initiation burst and skills like negate/nova/standard could play a role in knocking out your one-directional functioning 'pain train'. This is what is wrong with ESO, this is what it has created.

twistedmonk wrote: »

I understand these guys have a very specific personal agenda. Also realize that they only represent less than 1% of the player base.

Part of the limitations of PvP in this game is the technology. Their game engine just can't handle a big zone like Cyodiil. So the developers made compromises.

The alternative solution I think is just to give these guys their structured PvP arenas and let them fight each other. Look at many other past and present MMOs - WoW, GW2, Skyforge, Neverwinter, Warhammer Online - they all have a small group PvP Arena. Even this game had one in beta until they took it out for whatever reason. Or heck , look at any FPS - they are all the same.

The other alternative is I invite these guys to find a game that has what they are looking for instead of trying to make something that isn't. Maybe time for them to move on and play something else.

Read both your replies and theyre very obstinate. Were actually looking for pulling the game back to a way it was, not changing it to be something it isnt or wasnt before.

I stand by the fact that AOE caps aside from all other complaints Ive made actually make the game less enjoyable. I suppose your arguing that you enjoy the game more because there are AOE caps? Or youre happy that at a certain numerical point you dont have to try as much against people you outnumber, despite the fact that you outnumber them?

Your comments are basically 'these guys are elitists and they want more tools to win more easily'. The reality is a lot of people left cyrodiils mass PvP already and it becomes less and less attractive and populated as time goes on. People want AOE caps gone so everyone is on equal footing. Your comments honestly reek of resentment and a general anti-elitist mentality. Unfortunately, my ideas of removing AOE caps is not anti-casual, its to balance out PvP and make sieges more interesting again than simply "oh <X> ball group is here lets find somewhere else to go or something else to do".

Oh and the comments about technology this game has. It ran best at release. It was the lighting patch that changed everything. Here is the lighting patch they refused to roll back for some reason:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irbdQQjVX3o&feature=player_embedded
After that was rolled out, performance was never the same. It took months to even fix that, and was replaced by netcode issues, server having to catchup on battles, and people just standing inside each other pounding AOEs with nothing happening. Ultimately, AOE caps have made fights go on longer than they should and destroyed the games performance. Removing AOE caps = less calculations than we have today. Today everyone still gets hit, but damage is being mitigated as checks are done. Additionally, its much easier for 2 balls to stay alive throwing massive AOE calculations at each other that just burden the server rather than one weighing in over the other sooner rather than later.

Minnesinger · October 2015

twistedmonk wrote: »

I don't support their ideas...they just want to be able to take 4 people and kill 20+...no thanks.

Like I said, they have their own personal agenda which is not in the best interest of the overall game and playerbase. I respect their opinions, but they have a limited perspective and not looking at the big picture.

Didn't we already have uncapped AOE...do you realize what happens when an organized guild group gets uncapped AoE? take that 4-man team and make it 10-20 running barriers/purge, support builds, etc...they are unstoppable.

This game PvP is not balanced and fair....level, classes, gear, builds, champion points all combine to make pvp unfair.

These guys all want to 1vX = and that is only successful against what they call "bad" players - ie people that have inferior gear/builds/classes/levels/experience. sorry 1vX was never a good thing for the game and shouldn't be encouraged.

You do realize that people in groups are running group/support builds right? so yeah, when you catch a guy alone running a support build vs a person running a specific pvp solo build = yeah of course you are going to have a huge advantage. that's what these guys are counting on...

put in a pvp arena and be done with it....

cyrodiil is large scale battles...What cyrodiil needs is more team-based objectives like a MOBA and make it more group friendly and team oriented. how about a commander icon like GW2 that helps solo players go to the action, taking keeps/resources gets old...its a huge zone...add more pvp-focused content...capture tower X and boss spawns, add more guild-oriented content - claim a keep and you get guild perks - being able to port to it anytime, crafting stations that you can make unique pvp items, etc.

but...to change the game to support a very vocal minority who want to 1vX or "zerg" bust because they think people that group with others in a MMO are skill-less/talent-less and all deserve to die for zerging, ie grouping/socializing. have you seen the coordination/patience it takes to lead a group of players in a MMO? not many can do it.

no to their ideas...that's the wrong direction to take this game.

Like @Zheg said...you need to think this through.

I completely disagree. Not any 4 man group would be able to kill a zerg. It takes a lot of dedication to be geared and polishing of skills to complete such a deed. Been running in small/ medium sized groups against large zergs. Most of the times these zergs are, say, decent players who seek defence in numbers. They aren´t geared nor using whatever tools the game has to be good players. Yet they are the ones who go and complete these "team-based" objectives.Think of the situation that there are no enemies to defend the map. It becomes pvdooring. What these guys ask is that by removing game mechanics like AoE caps, these large zergs become vulnerable to good enemies. Otherwise nothing can be done until there is another zerg against a zerg. AoE caps are a made-up mechanic that isn´t suitable for the environment of Cyrodiil.

twistedmonk · October 2015

You guys have your opinions and I respect that. I just don't agree with them.

I want more group vs group fights, not small scale pvp in cyrodiil.

Last thing I want to see is a group of steel tornado spammers/meteor ults running around in cyrodiil with no aoe caps. (running barrier/purge/rapid maneuvers, etc the usual group support skills as wel) (used to be block holding/ impulse spammers until that got nerfed).

you want pvp skill based game...I fail to see how spamming an aoe (and one that acts like an aoe excecute on top of that) that can hit unlimited targets is skill...that just sounds horrible

unless they reduce all aoe down to 6meters...then okay. maybe we can talk.

Zenimax can certainly have skills work one way in Cyrodiil and other way in PvE. so you get an AoE range debuff while in PvP zone.

for small scale pvp, put in a 1v1, 3v3, 6v6 arenas or something for that.

OtarTheMad · October 2015

The problem may lie with some guilds that are unwilling to invite an unknown person into their organized group. At least that may be some of the problem. So all of these pugs just group with one another with little knowledge of how to successfully defend or take a keep but with numbers they can just rush it. That is just a guess from months of looking at zone chat and seeing "lfg" over and over and over until usually the person starts their own group and then you see a ton of ungrouped players joining.

If people are willing to open up their guilds, invite some of these new players and teach them how to PvP maybe we will have a better experience.

While uncapped AOE's might open up a new can of worms with the more experienced guilds out therr like Haxus and VE and Decibel (still around?) etc. It may be worth a try, maybe in one of the campaigns make it uncapped and test it. It's not going to hurt anything to test it out, maybe even on PTS and invite these guilds in to try it out and see if it's something to go forward with. Heck, it doesn't even have to be on every campaign. Maybe make campaigns more unique, like one has a very low CP cap (as mentioned by someone in the Twitch stream), one has uncapped AOE's, another has keeps with more guards and real tough generals (think of banner bosses in terms of difficulty) you have to defeat to get a keep/resource (making it a tough campaign, even add guards back at the scroll gates and on the way up to the temple) etc. Spice up PvP.

The problem is that a lot of defenses don't stand a chance, or at least have little chance. For example, the other day on Haderus blues were making a huge push, which was fun to defend against, however at one point we had 5-6 oils dumping on them (they were sieging the inner front door) and it did nothing. "Back in the day" if you sieged the front and got that many oils dumped on you, you were probably going to die and your group would need to back off, adjust and rethink strategy because purge only did so much. Now however people can just stand under the oil and a dedicated purger or a Templar will keep them alive pretty much guaranteed. I think that this has led some players to just letting keeps fall and just taking them back later, not much of a PvP experience.

I prefer PvP in this game and want to see it go on.

Olivierko · October 2015

Pretty much all of the points, suggestions and thoughts brought up during the podcast summarize the current state of the game and what needs to be addressed PvP wise.

I really hope this will get some official recognition as soon as possible.

Thanks for putting this together @Sypher

WarrioroftheWind_ESO · October 2015

OtarTheMad wrote: »

The problem may lie with some guilds that are unwilling to invite an unknown person into their organized group. At least that may be some of the problem. So all of these pugs just group with one another with little knowledge of how to successfully defend or take a keep but with numbers they can just rush it. That is just a guess from months of looking at zone chat and seeing "lfg" over and over and over until usually the person starts their own group and then you see a ton of ungrouped players joining.

If people are willing to open up their guilds, invite some of these new players and teach them how to PvP maybe we will have a better experience.

While uncapped AOE's might open up a new can of worms with the more experienced guilds out therr like Haxus and VE and Decibel (still around?) etc. It may be worth a try, maybe in one of the campaigns make it uncapped and test it. It's not going to hurt anything to test it out, maybe even on PTS and invite these guilds in to try it out and see if it's something to go forward with. Heck, it doesn't even have to be on every campaign. Maybe make campaigns more unique, like one has a very low CP cap (as mentioned by someone in the Twitch stream), one has uncapped AOE's, another has keeps with more guards and real tough generals (think of banner bosses in terms of difficulty) you have to defeat to get a keep/resource (making it a tough campaign, even add guards back at the scroll gates and on the way up to the temple) etc. Spice up PvP.

The problem is that a lot of defenses don't stand a chance, or at least have little chance. For example, the other day on Haderus blues were making a huge push, which was fun to defend against, however at one point we had 5-6 oils dumping on them (they were sieging the inner front door) and it did nothing. "Back in the day" if you sieged the front and got that many oils dumped on you, you were probably going to die and your group would need to back off, adjust and rethink strategy because purge only did so much. Now however people can just stand under the oil and a dedicated purger or a Templar will keep them alive pretty much guaranteed. I think that this has led some players to just letting keeps fall and just taking them back later, not much of a PvP experience.

I prefer PvP in this game and want to see it go on.

I saw this happen alot on Azura's previous cycle, and sometimes it isn't the fault of a guild per se, but some players just don't WANT to work in an organized manner or adopt decent tactics. They refuse to learn and that turns off alot of major groups from inviting random people and trying to teach these players. If a person spams LFG LFG LFG x6 then begins yelling "WHY YOU NO INVITE ME", well of course he won't be a desirable in any group situation.

Also the siege issue, I saw this too when EP were sieging an outpost (Nikel I think?) and DC were putting up a decent fight. They had the entire top deck ringed with oils, and it just didn't do spit because of healing being splooged all over plus dmg reduction. I don't think siege bubbles were up on the ground either. These days I see siege kill other siege much faster than players. Maybe instead of nerfing disease effects they should buff them back to vanilla levels and either increase siege dmg to compensate for BS buff or designate siege dmg as a separate category from that. Force people to fall back if debuffed or engage at a different angle.

rfennell_ESO · October 2015

Zheg wrote: »

To avoid conflicts of interest and tooting our own horn, you're telling me that people in haxus, GoS, and the long-lost Deci weren't skilled? Have you ever even caught one of them alone or with just a few others? What's that? You don't remember because they beat you so badly you've blocked out the memory of the encounter? Well, I'll take some pity on you then.

Hahaha, truth is they are easy kills when you catch them alone or with a few others.

You do understand that by the nature of the zergball they basically don't have single target abilities or that setup at hand, nor are they particularly skilled at small scale combat.

Most of the time they either try to go into a defensive "I'm not letting go of block until my buddies save me" mode or they run.

The only thing that doesn't change is they still talk smack, even while lying dead on the ground after being spanked 1v1.

90% of them are 1vX fodder when caught unzerged.

SkylarkAU · October 2015

Whatever happens in the future I think any changes need to be very carefully planned designed and tested.. the logic in the thoughts presented on the podcast are very clear and on the surface seem perfectly reasonable but (as we've seen in many other patches) there are always interdependent factors both in terms of raw numbers and player behavior that will inevitably influence the broader dynamic of pvp and the overall health of the game long term.

I think that larger groups should certainly have a clear advantage over smaller ones - that is just common sense. I also think that smaller groups shouldn't be unfairly handicapped against larger groups due to the mechanics inherent in the game.

That aside. What I think now personally, having digested the podcast, the forum and in-game discussions around this topic is that the straight up removal of aoe caps from the game serves to benefit the top players and groups first and foremost and in the back of my mind it bothers me that this is coming to the fore after the 'great equalizer' patch that was 1.7.

Don't get me wrong, I've played with many exceptionally talented pvp'ers, run with some excellent groups and have put a huge amount of time in to my own game and had some pretty good successes. That said I've also jumped in to campaigns where AD is critically flat lining against a highly organised groups every single day and rounded up pug groups full of players who are new or alone in the game and generated a positive pvp experience for them.. and you know what, those players come back the next day.. and they know a little bit more about pvp than they did the day before.

What I'm suggesting here - to Fengrush and others, is that there are a ton of new players in the game now, or at the very least new pvp'ers. If we revert back to some of the mechanics of 1.4-1.5 where a small group of elite players can chew through unskilled players endlessly and dominate campaigns (particularly outside of prime time) then the number of players playing on, improving there game and ultimately becoming legitimate competition on the field will be lessened. Doesn't that ultimately run contrary to the long term health of the game you and I want to play?

Where this needs to land in my opinion is not one or the other i.e. leave them in (which is unfair), or rip them out (which will be detrimental to the game), but to find some adjustment or new mechanic that realizes the necessary balance in the unique mmo combat experience that is eso.

cheers.

briandivisionb16_ESO · October 2015

If your group is bigger than 6 gain 50% damage reduction.

Write this on the back of your box and see how many sales you get.

J2JMC · October 2015

Nijjion wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

briandivisionb16_ESO wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Imagine a non aoe capped Haxus, Vehemence, GoS, KHole or a similar sub-raid sized coordinated group.

Imagine removing the AOE cap and bombgroups have to think and play with equal skill.

Remove the AOE cap and each proxdet from that 12-16man will hit every single person within range for full damage.

Do you not understand how this is a very bad thing? Right now the larger groups are able to win via sheer numbers because they mitigate some of the damage. Take away that mitigation and it actually benefits the paintrains the most. No one but another paintrain would be able to counter them.

Maybe they should not clump up together and take all the damage together?... that's a player skill issue not an ability OP issue... they should be penalised to ALL taking damage from 1 skill if they are that close to 1 skill... that's how MMOs have worked for bloody 15 years.

sure maybe some skills like proxy don't need the increase any more... but with the damage cap it wasn't doing much before anyway.

Darnathian wrote: »

Why cater to 4 customers instead of catering to 24 customers that came to this game for large scale PVP and not elitists?

You would get a game like Call of Duty then which skill doesn't mean anyway (no incentive to get better or change a bad play style). That's just bad game design in general.

You want a game like Counter Strike where skilled people can exceed but lower people skill in skill can still progress/have fun as well.

@Nijjion I know this isn't the thread for this, but I'm genuinely curious as to what makes CSGO more skillful than CoD? If you were comparing CoD to an RTS or MOBA I could understand. But another low ttk fps?

Zheg · October 2015

OtarTheMad wrote: »

The problem may lie with some guilds that are unwilling to invite an unknown person into their organized group. At least that may be some of the problem. So all of these pugs just group with one another with little knowledge of how to successfully defend or take a keep but with numbers they can just rush it. That is just a guess from months of looking at zone chat and seeing "lfg" over and over and over until usually the person starts their own group and then you see a ton of ungrouped players joining.

If people are willing to open up their guilds, invite some of these new players and teach them how to PvP maybe we will have a better experience.

While uncapped AOE's might open up a new can of worms with the more experienced guilds out therr like Haxus and VE and Decibel (still around?) etc. It may be worth a try, maybe in one of the campaigns make it uncapped and test it. It's not going to hurt anything to test it out, maybe even on PTS and invite these guilds in to try it out and see if it's something to go forward with. Heck, it doesn't even have to be on every campaign. Maybe make campaigns more unique, like one has a very low CP cap (as mentioned by someone in the Twitch stream), one has uncapped AOE's, another has keeps with more guards and real tough generals (think of banner bosses in terms of difficulty) you have to defeat to get a keep/resource (making it a tough campaign, even add guards back at the scroll gates and on the way up to the temple) etc. Spice up PvP.

The problem is that a lot of defenses don't stand a chance, or at least have little chance. For example, the other day on Haderus blues were making a huge push, which was fun to defend against, however at one point we had 5-6 oils dumping on them (they were sieging the inner front door) and it did nothing. "Back in the day" if you sieged the front and got that many oils dumped on you, you were probably going to die and your group would need to back off, adjust and rethink strategy because purge only did so much. Now however people can just stand under the oil and a dedicated purger or a Templar will keep them alive pretty much guaranteed. I think that this has led some players to just letting keeps fall and just taking them back later, not much of a PvP experience.

I prefer PvP in this game and want to see it go on.

I know for us, we'll sometimes grab a random pug that's following us, dropping siege, etc., or if they have an awesome name. Unfortunately, many don't want to get in ts, and aren't open to running certain specs, and that's required. But it's not just the pvp guilds, when was the last time and of these guys from the vid brought in random pugs? Exactly. At least on dc NA PC, one of our biggest problems has been that some of our best pvp players run in small clicks and do little to train new players or invite different people. I find it hypocritical that these guys complain about one set of pvp issues but are a root cause for another set of issues. Having random pugs or a few more in group detracts from their ability to stream themselves 1vXing the very same untrained players they won't allow into group though.

Muizer · October 2015

@FENGRUSH

Do you think removing the AoE cap will make it possible for a handful of average players with moderate coordination to beat a zerg?

Because, if they cannot, the zerg will remain as prevalent as ever and it is only the few pro players working in close coordination who may survive end even farm the zerg occasionally.

I'm asking because there's clearly some doubt about whether you and your friends are arguing for the removal of the AoE cap for the benefit of the community, or only for the benefit of a few who meet your high standards of play.

Suppose AoE caps are removed and zergs still persist, even though they get beat occasionally. Will you admit the measure failed, or will you just say it's people's fault for not being as good as you?

twistedmonk · October 2015

Muizer wrote: »

@FENGRUSH
Do you think removing the AoE cap will make it possible for a handful of average players with moderate coordination to beat a zerg?

so you are saying if an average group of lets say 5 goes up against an average group of players 20-30, they can beat them?

that should never ever happen...the only way that could happen is if the game is so unbalanced that whoever attacked first would always win.

and I've played that game...that was the original Dark Age of Camelot where a group of 4 midgard would kill groups of 20-30 people because they had AoE mez/stun abilties that lasted over a minute and no way to break them...and so the game came down to whoever pressed the aoe mez button first would always win.

no thanks

In this game, you already die in 3-4 hit as it is...(up from 1-2 hits from last patch)

Muizer · October 2015

twistedmonk wrote: »

Muizer wrote: »

@FENGRUSH
Do you think removing the AoE cap will make it possible for a handful of average players with moderate coordination to beat a zerg?

so you are saying if an average group of lets say 5-10 goes up against an average group of players 20-30, they can beat them?

Well, in order to get rid of zerging........that would have to be the case, would it not? If it is only a few elite players who can on occasion beat a zerg, that won't change the pattern of gameplay for 90% of us, inside our outside of the zerg.

And that is what's being suggested: that lifting the AoE cap will change the pattern of gameplay.

As Cicero famously asked...."cui bono?". Who benefits?

P.S. I personally think lifting the AoE cap will change very little for most players. It's not a bad thing per se. It's just not going to change the pattern of gameplay. We'll see a few more 1vX movies that's all.