Area-of-Effect Abilities - Maximum Target Cap Clarification

Inalisss

Change the behavior of the NPCs instead!!!

AoE Caps don't make sense at all... neither AvA nor PvE! Caps strongly encourage blobbing, are artificial and break immersion. If the ground is on fire... don't go there or dodge out of it.

If this all is about PvE farming? How about changing the behavior of the NPCs instead? If there is large number of mobs on one target... let them run back were they came from immediately... problem solved!!!

This wont break immersion in any way, as it would be natural that not a whole squad tries to hunt down that single person just because he ran along...

Random NPC: "Ah ney... those 8 will kill him anyway... I rather go back on my watch..."

NO AOE CAP... thank you!

valkaneer2b14_ESO

fantom wrote: »

Anyone that unsubs from this game because they can't hit or heal 100 people per second with 0 cooldown abilities is just being a cry-baby.

It's not good game design for 1 person to be able to kill 20 in an open field. And in most cases, they ALREADY can't. But you whiners are so bad that you didn't even notice.

If you're so obsessed with killing 30 players with one, man a siege engine. That's what they're designed for, and they have no AOE cap. They can kill as many people as you want.

Then you have not been reading any of the post. Refusal to answer direct questions before release on AoE, deception in the tool tips, knowing the game will turn into Zerg vs Zerg with this ruleset, Lack of communication by ZOS, careful wordings by ZOS employes to make sure they let people who thought there would be no caps keep believe there would be no caps.. Having to paying a sub that has the same PvP rule set as free games like GW2, That is more like it.

Bashev

People say that nothing changes and AoE cap was already in the game but they cannot understand that the only way to destroy a zerg now is using either dragon standard with burning talons or bat swarm. Now this abilities will have a cap so no more small coordinated groups will destroy uncoordinated zergs. So this is a big negative change.

Daendur

bad bad decision.
really sad this crap is hitting ESO after GW2.

really thinking of unsubbing

ps. i don't use AoE ...

Larira

fantom wrote: »

Anyone that unsubs from this game because they can't hit or heal 100 people per second with 0 cooldown abilities is just being a cry-baby.

I guess, it is not the case. The point is, now you can wipe a 100 player zerg with 8 - 10 people if you know what you are doing and you know how to play. With a cap you can only kill a 100 player zerg when you have a 120 player zerg. The zerg size will be the only thing that matters.

I'm not a pvp player but even for me it is a very suboptimal game design.


Greetings

kriz.jirb16_ESO

Thanks AOE cap, we support zerg a destroy chance for small groups.

fabsley

Dear Jessica Folsom,

what about the ultimate ability of the Vampire - bat swarm. It also hits more than 6 players, but you didnt mention it at all.
You may be correct at the fact, that AOE caps have always been there for most of the abilities, and that the only real change is the knowledge about it. But this is the most important aspect. Players didnt realize how the system actually worked, and therefore behaved as if it was different. They tried not to "blob" in order to avoid AOE dmg. Now, 1 month after early access, that we finally know "the truth", zergs will start to "turtle". Maybe it wont happen today, or the next week, but you will eventually see a change in behavior, leading probably to an experience very similiar to GW2 - at least thats what some people are afraid of, and why shouldn't they.

Some others may argue: those "AOE cap haters" are just a minority, most players dont care about caps. ... The same logic also implies, that when everyone is a Vampire, no one will care about balance issues with that skill line (others than it being bugged in a negative way for the vamps). The result would be flying bats all around Cyrodiil - which we already can see from time to time. I dont know if that is how you guys at ZOS want your game to be like, bats and turtles all over the place.. If you do, the current changes are probably the right approach.

For me, and probably some other parts of this minority (which actual size will have turn out yet), it is not. I really like the game, and I also like the PvP behavior as it is right now... Yes, sometimes your raid group gets killed by a significantly smaller group. But taking away this possibility doesnt make the game better, it just makes it shallow.

You always compared the PvP mechanic to DAoC. But dont you remember how people got bombed in the early days, maybe even months? Sticked zergs got mezzed and bombed in 5 seconds.
What followed wasnt an AOE cap, but the implementation of abilities that helped the players to gain control of the fight. Purge, demezz, and the information about whats going on, gave the "zerg" the ability to counter those bomb tactics.

What you appearently are about to do is the exact opposite. Instead of broaden the field of possibilities, you compress it. Instead of allowing multiple tactics available to choose from (the thrill of action and reaction is a key element in PvP imho), you reduce them to not even a handful.

The most tragic part is that now, while hiding in their turtle formation, people will begin to spam even more AOE, even more mindlessly.

I am very well aware that my few concerned words wont change anything. But I like this game so very much, I dont even care about the obvious betrayel when it comes to your information politic (dont show players whats going on, so they cant complain about what may be wrong). I just dont wanted to blindly accept the current course of the game. It is always easy to quit a game and say "nah, eso sucked, ZOS ruined it and didnt listen", when you didnt even try or atleast shared your opinion.

Thank you for your time.

valkaneer2b14_ESO

There is no target system In ESO. So with these new AoE caps how are you going to kill the healers that are stacked in a large zerg??? Siege equipement can't hit everything nor can they target all areas

Daendur

Dear Jessica Folsom,

you said: "All AoE effect abilities in ESO have a max target limit of six, and always have."

I would like to ask a simple question:

why this choice was made?

We, players, are writing opinions and we are trying to explain why this is a good/bad game design.
You are just saying "this is it", so I reiterate my question: "Why?"

Thank you.

Tanthul

Siege equipment can hit everything and target all areas if you know how/where to place them properly and which ones to use. Exception to this is highly elevated terrains but this only affects keep sieges. Learn how to use each different piece of siege equipment, use strategy, protect siege users if out in the open, use siege shield, etc etc. This is not only about character vs character. It's about strategy and tactics first of all. Run in the middle of a zerg to spam aoe hopping to kill every bad player that decides to not get outside your PBAOE range and snipe you to death is not something anyone should depend on. And since I see comments about DAoC, it was bad there as well. AOE mezz anyone? Uncapped AOE is a bad idea unless it has serious drawbacks. And siege engines is just that, uncapped AOE for loss of mobility. There must always be scissors for the paper, paper for the rock, rock for the scissors.

Who ever thinks they can blob up because of AOE max target limits you're absolutely wrong. You will be oneshot by emperors or 2-3 organized players using focused timed siege fire. We are doing it currently..imagine the amount of dead bodies if people decide to blob lol. This is how it's supposed to be. Stop crying about everything please and if you think you can blob now, go ahead please.. as long as you're not fighting for my alliance

Beshaba Tanthul, Leader of the Dark Moon PVP guild (EU Scourge AD)
Author of "Cyrodiil Alert" addon.

Yshaar

Larira wrote: »

The point is, now you can wipe a 100 player zerg with 8 - 10 people if you know what you are doing and you know how to play. With a cap you can only kill a 100 player zerg when you have a 120 player zerg. The zerg size will be the only thing that matters.

You mean "now" with the already implemented AOE limitation people are able to wipe a zerg and after changing 2 abilities, this is not possible anymore.

And people now all of sudden CHANGE their behavior and all will cuddle up, now that everyone and their mother knows that AOE is capped?!? Yeah, sounds about right. NOT.

So many misinformation here, it is getting ridiculous.

My favorite part here is the statistics discussion about the poll. @ValenWoody‌ is really trying nicely to convey to you all that every internet poll is just rubbish. He is just right and my hero for staying so calm.

vranek_gaboreb17_ESO

Tanthul the very same thing happened in GW2. First they limit your aoe abilities and when people turn to use siege weapons to fight the blob, the developers limit the siege weapons as well.

We will see what's going to happen next, but right now this is a huge hit to AvA if you ask me.

Yshaar

vranek_gaboreb17_ESO wrote: »

Tanthul the very same thing happened in GW2. First they limit your aoe abilities and when people turn to use siege weapons to fight the blob, the developers limit the siege weapons as well.

We will see what's going to happen next, but right now this is a huge hit to AvA if you ask me.

nearly nothing changed. Didn't you get it?

Zargorius

Yshaar wrote: »

Larira wrote: »

The point is, now you can wipe a 100 player zerg with 8 - 10 people if you know what you are doing and you know how to play. With a cap you can only kill a 100 player zerg when you have a 120 player zerg. The zerg size will be the only thing that matters.

You mean "now" with the already implemented AOE limitation people are able to wipe a zerg and after changing 2 abilities, this is not possible anymore.

And people now all of sudden CHANGE their behavior and all will cuddle up, now that everyone and their mother knows that AOE is capped?!? Yeah, sounds about right. NOT.

So many misinformation here, it is getting ridiculous.

My favorite part here is the statistics discussion about the poll. @ValenWoody‌ is really trying nicely to convey to you all that every internet poll is just rubbish. He is just right and my hero for staying so calm.

People base their behaviour on their perceptions. Guess what is happening now? People's perception is changing and it will inevitably lead to a change in PVP behaviour.

Not to mention the fact that Zenimax never clarified there was a cap nor stated it ANYWHERE in the game.

Semel

No rational person is arguing that pulsar and bat swarm don't need some adjustments.

Sure, sure.

Impulse is a perfectly fine and balanced spell but SOME degenerates think otherwise.

Only moron would want to nerf a PBAOE(!) ability with a short range and a mediocre damage( 210-240 per hit) that puts a caster in grave danger of being aggro-magnet and getting gangraped to death.

Impulse, adjust the damage and make it cost more.

Are you high? The damage is already quite mediocre.(see above).
Mobs at veteran level has loads of HP. 3-4k+ and more.


I suggest that ZOS take a look at GW2 and what happened after introducing AOE caps.

Daendur

Yshaar wrote: »

nearly nothing changed. Didn't you get it?

You obviously have a very little experience of open field PvP, and clrearly no arguments.

Yshaar

Zargorius wrote: »

Yshaar wrote: »

Larira wrote: »

The point is, now you can wipe a 100 player zerg with 8 - 10 people if you know what you are doing and you know how to play. With a cap you can only kill a 100 player zerg when you have a 120 player zerg. The zerg size will be the only thing that matters.

You mean "now" with the already implemented AOE limitation people are able to wipe a zerg and after changing 2 abilities, this is not possible anymore.

And people now all of sudden CHANGE their behavior and all will cuddle up, now that everyone and their mother knows that AOE is capped?!? Yeah, sounds about right. NOT.

So many misinformation here, it is getting ridiculous.

My favorite part here is the statistics discussion about the poll. @ValenWoody‌ is really trying nicely to convey to you all that every internet poll is just rubbish. He is just right and my hero for staying so calm.

People base their behaviour on their perceptions. Guess what is happening now? People's perception is changing and it will inevitably lead to a change in PVP behaviour.

Not to mention the fact that Zenimax never clarified there was a cap nor stated it ANYWHERE in the game.

Does it? And you know that because....? It happened in GW2 before? Cannot compare those pvp setups, several arguments were already dropped about why that is the case, do I need to repeat them?
There will be different tactics and certain setups that will be popular, thats how gaming life is. I could rebel as much as I could about the stubborn ways the meta is played in LoL, nothing helped those brick heads (the brick heads were right btw.). Are you really THAT frightened that from now one there will be only blobs meeting? Really really really?

You know that nearly no one actually playing is around here in the forums? It is just us weirdos.

Tanthul

vranek_gaboreb17_ESO wrote: »

Tanthul the very same thing happened in GW2. First they limit your aoe abilities and when people turn to use siege weapons to fight the blob, the developers limit the siege weapons as well.

We will see what's going to happen next, but right now this is a huge hit to AvA if you ask me.

I know about GW2 but nowhere has Zenimax stated that they plan any caps on siege engines. In fact they have not mentioned any change at all other than fixing a few skills that defied the cap.
They clearly said that uncapped == siege engines. And it makes perfect sense. It was and is your best tool to fight the blob. And those of us who had used combat log addon and did a bit of number crunching/analysis of combat logs, we already knew about the caps on AOE skills and which ones were not working like the others:) This is not news to me or my guild. The only thing that we did not know was that it was not intended for said skills.

If they make such a change for siege weapons, I would understand crying foul. But currently the system is fine. Use your sieges, learn the firing angles of different engine types and side angles on placements. There are literally only a couple of blind spots around a keep that can not be reached by siege engines and those can be directly hit from ranged players on walls. Out in the open siege engines can hit anything. And they're much better than running into a zerg for PBAOE hoping everyone will stick around and take it or won't break roots etc...Plus they also have their vulnerabilities as they're supposed to. People should try to outsmart a good opponent, not hope their opponent is dumb enough:p

Beshaba Tanthul, Leader of the Dark Moon PVP guild (EU Scourge AD)
Author of "Cyrodiil Alert" addon.

philip.ploegerb16_ESO

AoE-cap is ridiculous.

When small numbers are fighting large numbers, the small numbers already are in a bad situation.

What you're doing, is making this worse.

To make it very clear: AoE-caps = wrong, unnecessary choice, that favours large numbers which already are favoured by themselves.

maru

prana33b14_ESO wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Thanks for the informative post and thanks for bringing the last few remaining AoE abilities in line with the rest.

To the very small but very vocal minority acting like they speak on behalf of the ESO community: Please don't.

I suggest you see the poll in the AvA forum section. Over 90% say no caps. Minority lolz.

the hardcore types love to post of the forums, forum posters are probably less than 5% of the gamebase. AOE caps need to be in there for balance.

Mephane

maru wrote: »

prana33b14_ESO wrote: »

Lava_Croft wrote: »

Thanks for the informative post and thanks for bringing the last few remaining AoE abilities in line with the rest.

To the very small but very vocal minority acting like they speak on behalf of the ESO community: Please don't.

I suggest you see the poll in the AvA forum section. Over 90% say no caps. Minority lolz.

the hardcore types love to post of the forums, forum posters are probably less than 5% of the gamebase. AOE caps need to be in there for balance.

Go on, we are listening. In which way are AoE target caps needed for balance, what will they improve, and how will the downsides be mitigated?

RivenEsq

I don't think people that are crying out for AoE caps understand what "balance" is.

Also, when the game is being played like there is no AoE cap and several majorly impactful abilities had no AoE cap, then PvP is fine. Now that ZOS has come out and stated there was an AoE cap (Tanthul, I call BS that your guild "knew" other than anything that was specified in the tooltip), the gameplay will change drastically.

PvP players will do everything to play the most optimum strategy in a game. In this instance, stacking up mitigates the most damage across your entire force because the AoE is distributed amongst those in the stack. For stacks to be "immortal", they need more players. To combat these stacks with more players, you need more players on your side. You all assume that "siege can conquer all", when you are terribly wrong. Siege is slow firing and displays a circle long before it hits. No organized force is going to stand in slow-firing, slow-reloading siege fire. They are going to stay on the move and wreck anything that doesn't have equal or greater numbers than they do.

That's what the changes to these abilities and the admission of an AoE cap has done. It has completely warped the way that this game will be played and I am sorely disappointed that they would take this route rather than performing actual balancing on the abilities that were wreaking the most havoc. There doesn't need to be an AoE cap, just balancing on abilities. If you want, I will go through and balance every ability in the game for you, ZOS. I'll even pay you 15 bucks a month to let me do it. Because I really enjoy this game, but when it heads down this road, you can count on not having my money in your wallet every month.

Why trivialize PvP even more and effectively lower the skillcap? AoE caps are notorious for this. As a first time development team for an MMO, I can't imagine you didn't learn from other titles and what they did right and wrong.

When you could spend a little bit of extra time to balance abilities around having no AoE cap, why would you not do that? You have the budget, you have the manpower, and you are charging a subscription fee for this game every month. You owe it to your player base to put in the effort and not take the "easy way out" from your continuously paying customers as you are with this decision.

Tankqull

Azmodeus wrote: »

I have a feeling this is not because they want to limit AOE spells, but they have to. If the server only has to send out 6 packets to 6 players, it greatly reduces the amount of traffic coming out of the server rather than having to send it to 100. This I believe is being done to enhance big pvp battle synchronization.

this was no problem 14 years ago in DAoC why should it be now? do all programmer become *** since then being unable to deliver a worthwhile netcode?

Starkles

Just adding my voice in desperate hope that the developers respond to real community needs not just the facade that they listen to us and then do the exact opposite or what they believe will make them more money. If this AOE cap patch goes again I shall be not be renewing my subscription to the game

KerinKor

philip.ploegerb16_ESO wrote: »

that favours large numbers which already are favoured by themselves.

Well, since ZOS' plan is that PVP in ESO is LARGE SCALE, it seems they're tailoring the mechanics to fit that vision.

Good for them, the world doesn't need yet another 'arena' type of PVP game.

psufan5

AOE cap should go, however, if you attack a number of targets greater than 6, damage should start to decline or start to split.

psufan5

tankqullb16_ESO wrote: »

Azmodeus wrote: »

I have a feeling this is not because they want to limit AOE spells, but they have to. If the server only has to send out 6 packets to 6 players, it greatly reduces the amount of traffic coming out of the server rather than having to send it to 100. This I believe is being done to enhance big pvp battle synchronization.

this was no problem 14 years ago in DAoC why should it be now? do all programmer become *** since then being unable to deliver a worthwhile netcode?

You obviously were never on a 200 man relic raid with 6 rams on the door, people gathered around the ram ready to rush, and 2 Hibernian enchanters would destroy them all because you couldnt interrupt them, and they hit everyone dead in 3 seconds.

I dont know if it was the AOE, or the abilities they could use that made the AOE too powerful. They had insane casting speed also so there was not much you could do.

Tankqull

fabsley wrote: »

You always compared the PvP mechanic to DAoC. But dont you remember how people got bombed in the early days, maybe even months? Sticked zergs got mezzed and bombed in 5 seconds.
What followed wasnt an AOE cap, but the implementation of abilities that helped the players to gain control of the fight. Purge, demezz, and the information about whats going on, gave the "zerg" the ability to counter those bomb tactics.

as a hint how evolution works and to underline your statement: beeing slaughtered because of lack of knowledge, inexpiriences and pure dumbness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIRY8VantWw
evolves into players beeing aware of whats going on
http://www.darkageofcamelot.com/sites/daoc/files/images/sshot3.jpg

chimneyswift_ESO

I'll be honest here but I can't see the point of capping any AOE ability. If you're swinging a sword IRL with 12 people around you, you aren't just gonna hit 6 max. Lame example sure but why should any AOE be limited?

Take DK Standard ultimate for example, you mean to say that if a group is inside that circle of freaking FIRE only 6 people will get hit?! I don't get it. If I'm an enemy (PvE) or enemy player (in PvP) and I'm standing inside that circle like an idiot, I deserve to take damage. And as the caster I wanna know that as I worked hard to get enough ultimate points, I will be rewarded by getting to wreck any fool dumb enough to stand inside that AOE ability.

What determines who gets hit and who doesn't? Capping any AOE ability (regular or ultimate) will just cause big massive groups to flood someone using AOE cause hey, I might just be lucky enough not to be one of those 6 getting hit. Doesn't make sense to me at all. Just wanted to leave my opinion and let you know that I'm seriously disappointed by this decision.

nathan_bri

Sharee wrote: »

You might want the check the total number of votes for that poll.

Over 3000. Real-life election polls where i live usually go with 1000-1200 to get a 95% accuracy(in a country with about 5 million voters).

So while it's a minority compared to the total game population, the results are certainly statistically significant.

The results of that poll are skewed by selection bias and thus can be tossed. The only reliable way to poll is to randomly select those being polled, not allow those with the biggest gripes to self-select.