Remove AoE caps

Piedplat

Ok no limit target for aoe but cut half all dommage they does.

Introduce assist-target where other member of your group can see your target.

This game is mindless, 360 block + aoe dmg and aoe heal.And they dare saying WE ARE SKILLED !!!!!!!

Columba

agree that uncapped aoes will likely make the problem even worse. reduce the power of aoes instead. they shouldnt have the highest dps in the game.

FENGRUSH

Krinaman wrote: »

synnerman wrote: »

Ok Krinaman, I see you posting against this on every single thread about AoE. Give us the benefit of your wisdom and tell us what will stop the blobs that are making my guildies and other people leave PvP/The game???

I cant wait to see 3 -4 impulse blobs defending the imperial city entrances in the sewers. So
come on tell us whats the answer?

IMO it really doesn't matter what you do, even removing caps won't stop groups from organizing and rolling over less organized groups. Which is what this discussion is really about. You could reduce them stacking right on top of each other by changing the group mechanics. I.E. allowing group members to synergize even when not near, get heals, etc. Of course that just encourages groups to form whereas now players can get group benefits just by being near other players. This would allow players to spread out more and still get the benefits but at the end of the day the easiest way to stay together is stay close.

The best course of action is really just balancing skills so stacked groups aren't so powerful. I.E. fixing the stacked barrier bug greatly reduced the advantage blobs had. Remove smart AOE heals and the benefits of stacking are greatly reduced.

You talk about people quitting over blobs but you don't consider how many will quit over uncapped AOEs. My first PvP experience in this game was watching OP DK/Vamps slaughtering people via uncapped AOEs. I just turned around and left PvP and went back to PvE till they fixed it. I honestly find it amazing that people refer to those days as the "good ole days"

Another MMO I played had 20v20 pvp with uncapped AOEs. All the mages did was stand back cast AOEs at the choke points and easily topped the leaderboard in every match by a large margin. The forums complained about it endlessly and of course people quit over it.

You worry about 3-4 impulse blobs defending the city meanwhile I worry about a stack of players with uncapped AOEs defending the city. A couple of banners and bat swarms and no one will ever get through. You won't even get the luxury of punching more holes. Even with no change it will likely be a huge oil farm requiring people to stack to get through.

Ultimately I oppose uncapped AOEs because it won't fix the problem and it will create even bigger ones.

People died from bats because they were popping them with ult costs as low as 4 and they stacked. Thats more deadly than only holding up 1 uncapped bat swarm through a fight. Stronger chokes will encourage ranged battles.

Same handful of people agreeing with each other on AOE caps needing to stay every time i visit this [snip].

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

Insurrektion

AoE caps are critical. Every single game developer data farms the damage output skills have. If skills are doing far more than intended, a cap is required. Without AoE caps, AoE skills would be the de-facto most powerful skills in the game bar none. Every single point of magicka and stamina would be spent on AoE skills in every single fight with 2+ enemies. When you look at the numbers required to properly capture a keep even without enemy players around, you can see the damage even one defender would do. No AoE caps would make actually fighting to crown an emperor or take a keep or do anything besides roaming the countryside looking for small groups to ambush all but impossible. AoE caps allow pvp to have a healthy environment with more viable build options and more strategy. If you think an impulse group with 20 people is a crap deal to face against, imagine 5 people having just as much of an effect due to damage caps being removed on AoEs. Every single time I see someone complaining about these caps all I really see is some kid who wants to batswarm and impulse into a group of 20+ enemies while using the vamp skill mist form and kill every single one of them.

I've played games that had no AoE caps before. The AoE skills on each class were spammed over and over again. Then the caps were implemented, and people went through some growing pains adjusting their strategies and rotations but ultimately the pvp flourished.

Columba

The people screaming for elimination of aoe caps aren't adequately thinking things through

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

@Insurrektion‌ , you are painfuly wrong.
What you described would happen without caps is the current situation beacause of caps.
I explained it at length else where, but here is a short version:
Caps enforce stacking through providing passive damage mitigation.
Stacking means guaranteed 6 targets
Guaranteed 6 targets means aoe are always the most desirable/potent skills.

Remove the caps, and it means punishment for stacking,
which leads to more spread out fights,
which gives the role of bread and butter to single target abilities with aoes having their natural oportunistic role.

If some aoes end up too strong, there are many ways to keep them in check individualy, read the link in my signature, but blanket solutions like a general arbitrary target cap aren't one.

Samadhi

Insurrektion wrote: »

...
I've played games that had no AoE caps before. The AoE skills on each class were spammed over and over again. Then the caps were implemented, and people went through some growing pains adjusting their strategies and rotations but ultimately the pvp flourished.

By contrast, in ESO when AoE caps were announced it encouraged people to blob up and spam AoE.
Before AoE caps were announced it was much easier for me to find solo roaming PvP. Now it's a mass of blobbing AoE spam, and it is comparatively more difficult to find worthwhile combat as a single-target build.

nicholaspingasb16_ESO

Krinaman wrote: »

synnerman wrote: »

Ok Krinaman, I see you posting against this on every single thread about AoE. Give us the benefit of your wisdom and tell us what will stop the blobs that are making my guildies and other people leave PvP/The game???

I cant wait to see 3 -4 impulse blobs defending the imperial city entrances in the sewers. So
come on tell us whats the answer?

IMO it really doesn't matter what you do, even removing caps won't stop groups from organizing and rolling over less organized groups. Which is what this discussion is really about. You could reduce them stacking right on top of each other by changing the group mechanics. I.E. allowing group members to synergize even when not near, get heals, etc. Of course that just encourages groups to form whereas now players can get group benefits just by being near other players. This would allow players to spread out more and still get the benefits but at the end of the day the easiest way to stay together is stay close.

The best course of action is really just balancing skills so stacked groups aren't so powerful. I.E. fixing the stacked barrier bug greatly reduced the advantage blobs had. Remove smart AOE heals and the benefits of stacking are greatly reduced.

You talk about people quitting over blobs but you don't consider how many will quit over uncapped AOEs. My first PvP experience in this game was watching OP DK/Vamps slaughtering people via uncapped AOEs. I just turned around and left PvP and went back to PvE till they fixed it. I honestly find it amazing that people refer to those days as the "good ole days"

Another MMO I played had 20v20 pvp with uncapped AOEs. All the mages did was stand back cast AOEs at the choke points and easily topped the leaderboard in every match by a large margin. The forums complained about it endlessly and of course people quit over it.

You worry about 3-4 impulse blobs defending the city meanwhile I worry about a stack of players with uncapped AOEs defending the city. A couple of banners and bat swarms and no one will ever get through. You won't even get the luxury of punching more holes. Even with no change it will likely be a huge oil farm requiring people to stack to get through.

Ultimately I oppose uncapped AOEs because it won't fix the problem and it will create even bigger ones.

So then severely reduce the damage of ALL AOE abilities and uncap. Problem solved.

hamon

Insurrektion wrote: »

AoE caps are critical. Every single game developer data farms the damage output skills have. If skills are doing far more than intended, a cap is required. Without AoE caps, AoE skills would be the de-facto most powerful skills in the game bar none. Every single point of magicka and stamina would be spent on AoE skills in every single fight with 2+ enemies.

I've played games that had no AoE caps before. The AoE skills on each class were spammed over and over again. Then the caps were implemented, and people went through some growing pains adjusting their strategies and rotations but ultimately the pvp flourished.

as opposed to how it is now with aoe skills being the de-facto most powerfull skills in the game bar none.

and every class spamming impulse and bats over and over again? yes that would be terrible if it turned out like that eh.

Krinaman

nicholaspingasb16_ESO wrote: »

So then severely reduce the damage of ALL AOE abilities and uncap. Problem solved.

Then AOE's become useless and people still stack because of all the benefits of doing so.

reften

Siege vendors sell meatbag catapults. They're fun.

krim

Samadhi wrote: »

Insurrektion wrote: »

...
I've played games that had no AoE caps before. The AoE skills on each class were spammed over and over again. Then the caps were implemented, and people went through some growing pains adjusting their strategies and rotations but ultimately the pvp flourished.

By contrast, in ESO when AoE caps were announced it encouraged people to blob up and spam AoE.
Before AoE caps were announced it was much easier for me to find solo roaming PvP. Now it's a mass of blobbing AoE spam, and it is comparatively more difficult to find worthwhile combat as a single-target build.

Thats because no one knew what the hell they were doing.. Still dont.

yeso112860

To dissipate blobs I can think of either increase efficiency of disease based attacks (meatbag catapults to be exact), or remove the cap from at least zero damage aoe's.

First, even if they make catapult to prevent all healing it is hard to hit fast moving blobs even harder to use (at least for me) due to bloody camera FOV bugs. This can make some other siege equipment obsolete, not so bad in my opinion.

Second only zero damage aoe's I know are sorcerer class skill - ultimate and that ultimate has potential to destroy blobs and then some. But as it is now it is useless against many targets (6+) and not worth against 1-3 targets (unless they are batman), not like other "fire - forget" ultimates and not even close to be as effective as batman + impulse. This can cause some grieving, not so bad in my opinion.

ZOS_BrianWheeler

Moved this thread to Combat & Skill Lines.

rendolpheb16_ESO

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Moved this thread to Combat & Skill Lines.

Better move this into Priority !!!

ThyIronFist

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Moved this thread to Combat & Skill Lines.

lol

I'm sorry, but this is all I can say.

just lol

Thanks for your feedback Brian. I hope you watched my videos and noticed that Cyrodiil is in the best shape that's its ever been in.

synnerman

Cant actually believe that this is all you can do on this thread Brian....Thanks for the feedback

Morostyle

@ZOS_BrianWheeler‌

Moved this thread to combat and skill lines?

Dude, ur failing the costumers SO hard by ignoring this topic.

Boomjackal

Just goes to show they dont give a crap, they moved a thread without a comment about the topic, slowest response time in fixes i have ever seen.

reften

nm

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

@ZOS_BrianWheeler‌ , soo, how are the discusion going?
Do you have an estimates of when we can get an update?

Even if you can't yet talk about your future decision, can you please ask permission to enlighten us on your original decision?
Why did you implement target caps in the first place?

Thanks in advance. It's understandable that you want to take your time, but,
a lot of people are getting frustrated, so good luck dealing with the hate.

Cody

Krinaman wrote: »

Didn't say it was like the video. Just pointing out that FPS drops occur whenever you have players around each other. The video shows a lot more people than in the typical town so not so surprisingly the FPS dropped even more.

The point being that trying to blame a single skill for the problem is just silly. Put a bunch of people near each other whether in a zergball or spread out in a keep casting skills and the game can't handle it. Removing AOE caps will do nothing to stop that unless it results in a large number of people quitting PvP.

funny. I don't lag in a town:( no matter how many players are in it. and I was in several good sized keep battles in the non-vet campaign yesterday, no lag on my end. there was no Impulse blobing going on at all. Now, when I go to thornblade, to where the impulse blobs are, the lag starts up.

c0rp

ZOS_BrianWheeler wrote: »

Moved this thread to Combat & Skill Lines.

I just spit out my mouth at my office because I just laughed so hard....wow.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

NookyZooky wrote: »

Krinaman wrote: »

Didn't say it was like the video. Just pointing out that FPS drops occur whenever you have players around each other. The video shows a lot more people than in the typical town so not so surprisingly the FPS dropped even more.

The point being that trying to blame a single skill for the problem is just silly. Put a bunch of people near each other whether in a zergball or spread out in a keep casting skills and the game can't handle it. Removing AOE caps will do nothing to stop that unless it results in a large number of people quitting PvP.

funny. I don't lag in a town:( no matter how many players are in it. and I was in several good sized keep battles in the non-vet campaign yesterday, no lag on my end. there was no Impulse blobing going on at all. Now, when I go to thornblade, to where the impulse blobs are, the lag starts up.

I think it's just a confusion between fps lag and networking lag/latency.

As you said, similar numbers without stacking don't have as many lags or latency issues.

Even with 500 players models, eso would still have pretty decent frame rate on most computers.

What makes the servers and client lag is all the extra calculation due to the target caps: the target selection overhead combined with the behaviour of players encouraged to spam aoes because of it.
Depending on how tolerant of error they are, the server blocks the stats of all users involved waiting for the target selection and damage results and then has extra syncs it needs to do with all the clients.
And networking really is the kicker here for client cpus to lag, combined with server processing time slowing down the action.

DrimacusMeleth

In to support this thread.

ThyIronFist

Ah well, I am losing interest very quickly with this game. PvP is a mess and the devs don't care. They are too busy working on Upper Grindlorn, timed PvE trials that nobody cares about, VR14 and an arena...

OMG AN ARENA... Finally some PvP cont-

Ah right, it's a PvE arena... just wonderful... /sigh

Anyway, PvP is going full vampire bat and impulse spam now, that along with the zergballing and many other issues will make me unsub very soon. I don't really want to leave this game cause it has so much potential. But if I look at my own videos... there is no future in PvP unless this gets fixed.

Insurrektion

hamon wrote: »

Insurrektion wrote: »

AoE caps are critical. Every single game developer data farms the damage output skills have. If skills are doing far more than intended, a cap is required. Without AoE caps, AoE skills would be the de-facto most powerful skills in the game bar none. Every single point of magicka and stamina would be spent on AoE skills in every single fight with 2+ enemies.

I've played games that had no AoE caps before. The AoE skills on each class were spammed over and over again. Then the caps were implemented, and people went through some growing pains adjusting their strategies and rotations but ultimately the pvp flourished.

as opposed to how it is now with aoe skills being the de-facto most powerfull skills in the game bar none.

and every class spamming impulse and bats over and over again? yes that would be terrible if it turned out like that eh.

You got me there. Now imagine it being worse. At least with AoE caps there's the possibility of balance, since without them there's no telling how much damage a skill can do. You can complain about blobs. Removing the AoE caps removes blobs because the blobs would get blown up. Then taking a tower would be near impossible and you've created more problems than you've fixed since you would have made pvp stale because it'd be all about who can spam the aoe spells the fastest.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

Insurrektion wrote: »

hamon wrote: »

Insurrektion wrote: »

AoE caps are critical. Every single game developer data farms the damage output skills have. If skills are doing far more than intended, a cap is required. Without AoE caps, AoE skills would be the de-facto most powerful skills in the game bar none. Every single point of magicka and stamina would be spent on AoE skills in every single fight with 2+ enemies.

I've played games that had no AoE caps before. The AoE skills on each class were spammed over and over again. Then the caps were implemented, and people went through some growing pains adjusting their strategies and rotations but ultimately the pvp flourished.

as opposed to how it is now with aoe skills being the de-facto most powerfull skills in the game bar none.

and every class spamming impulse and bats over and over again? yes that would be terrible if it turned out like that eh.

You got me there. Now imagine it being worse. At least with AoE caps there's the possibility of balance, since without them there's no telling how much damage a skill can do. You can complain about blobs. Removing the AoE caps removes blobs because the blobs would get blown up. Then taking a tower would be near impossible and you've created more problems than you've fixed since you would have made pvp stale because it'd be all about who can spam the aoe spells the fastest.

Have you been reading this thread? Or any similar ones?
You are displaying many of the misconception that have been addressed many times over.

It cannot be worst. Aoe caps don't give any possibility for balance as they are the source of the imbalance. Hear me out:

You can unlimit the target hits by an aoe, that doesn't mean it will hit an infinite amount of targets. All aoe have a radius and an activation time.
In "normal" situations, they can barely hit 4-6 people.

But with the aoe cap, the best solution to defend from aoe is to stack, so indirectly, it buffs aoe by making them the only viable solution.
People stack, so you have 6 guaranteed targets, much better than using single target abilities.
Remove the caps means removing the stacking which in turns buffs single target abilities.

And that's only one of several positive changes removing the target cap would do.

Also, as for making towers be impossible to take, it's quite the opposite.
Right now defending is easy, you just stack and soak up damage. And in the context of a kepp or an outpost, as defenders you are pretty muched forced to stack anyway. It also indirectly buff oil by making it safe to use.

Without a target cap, attackers could just carpet bomb the place before charging in. And that wouldn't even be necessary as charging in would just mean attackers are now at the same disadvantage than defenders, no less, no more.

A more valid worry would be to be afraid that defending would be too hard without target caps. But that's something we'll have to see for the sake of making the game more balanced.
Keep could be redesigned, for instance, with easier oil position and more exit locations for defenders to flank the attackers.

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO

i just dont understand how removing the cap will be good. it will just make vamp impulse groups able to be just as effective at quarter the size. the pvp was designed for large scale battles that essentially are going to draw a lot of players into one spot to take or remove empé, get scrolls etc. so remove caps and 4 guys can stop a zerg. seems nice, but tactically it will be better to have a group take them on but still have [snip] more guys to spill in after and take the keep.
all that will happen is that the offensive spammers will just go defensive and farm keeps resources and scroll locations. it will be even worse.

what you would end up with is 5 times more people having barrier up. stack zerg take turns casting barrier, because that is the only way to beat the group of 4 uncaped aoe players defending a choke point. result a zerg.

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

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

Dude, you could have read , or at least skimmed the thread a bit before posting.
Especially when the post just before yours could have been addressed to you.