In case anyone is wondering why AoE Caps are being removed..Here is the video

Agrippa_Invisus

Francescolg wrote: »

I see by far not enough usage of oil on that video

It's very unlikely that siege would've worked during the events shown in the video. Typically attempting to place a siege results in it bugging out and being unable to be interacted with.

I was in Cyrodiil at the time of this fight and the entire campaign was lagging like crazy. Using the Kill Counter alert that tells us when Apse/Nave flags are flipped, it was crazy watching the flags go back and forth as we just laaaaaaagged and laaaaaaaaagged. We all knew it had to be whatever was happening at Roebeck causing the issue.

frozywozy

Hlaren_shortsheath wrote: »

because it's thier only way of killing other people, they obviously have no skills nor ability to actually use the abilites provided with thier class. instead they spam all thier efforts into one single targetable option and spam it with all thier friends.
thats supose to be considered "fun" and pvp ??

This is large scale open world pvp. If you expect people to get into one on one fight everywhere, you are doing it wrong. If you want 1v1 battles, get into a duelist guild and wait for battlegrounds / arena system.

NordJitsu

I have to wonder if ZOS is too late with this though.

When they first implemented AoE caps there was a huge uproar on the forums. People were threatening to quit over this issue alone.

They should have changed it the day after they announced it.

How many subs were lost because of this? How many of those do you think are never coming back?

ZOS needs to start reacting about 1,000x more quickly to feedback.

krim

Columba wrote: »

krim wrote: »

Huntler wrote: »

krim wrote: »

Im starting to think all AOE skills = impulse. Impulse is the new term for AOE.

Also note, skilless zerg is any group (regardless of the number) that beats the person claiming it was a skilless zerg.

Lets also blame the players using what the game has to offer for causing the lag.

I'd rather just point and laugh at the skellie group that only runs this impulse monkey spam.

All while being ineffective with your hide and seek one dimensional build.

Columba

krim wrote: »

Columba wrote: »

krim wrote: »

Huntler wrote: »

krim wrote: »

Im starting to think all AOE skills = impulse. Impulse is the new term for AOE.

Also note, skilless zerg is any group (regardless of the number) that beats the person claiming it was a skilless zerg.

Lets also blame the players using what the game has to offer for causing the lag.

I'd rather just point and laugh at the skellie group that only runs this impulse monkey spam.

All while being ineffective with your hide and seek one dimensional build.

Works fine for me and is far less mindless than face rolling on the keyboard.

eliisra

Francescolg wrote: »

I see by far not enough usage of oil on that video

It's not working with the lag and the delay in that scenario. Nothing happens when you try to fire the oil or the catapult. You cant even light attack or cast skills half the time. Use Invasion and you're stuck in animation for 5 minutes. Only skills actually working somewhat in that situation are PBAoE like Impulse and Bats, ironically lol. Shields and Heals also work just fine, another reason why no one is dying.

Agrippa_Invisus

eliisra wrote: »

Francescolg wrote: »

I see by far not enough usage of oil on that video

It's not working with the lag and the delay in that scenario. Nothing happens when you try to fire the oil or the catapult. You cant even light attack or cast skills half the time. Use Invasion and you're stuck in animation for 5 minutes. Only skills actually working somewhat in that situation are PBAoE like Impulse and Bats, ironically lol. Shields and Heals also work just fine, another reason why no one is dying.

In short, for all intents and purposes, the game breaks.

æxæ

@xsorusb14_ESO‌
thanks a lot!

Harnesh

Always like your videos this one obviously for different reasons but if people can't understand the problem after watching this they never will. Did they actually say when the AOE changes will be coming?

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

krim wrote: »

Will AOE caps fix the lag? Are we 100% sure? Once 100 or more people crowd into one keep is it going to be playable?

We are 99% sure it is. Either on paper or in practice, target caps cause lag.

See, instead of selecting all targets and applying damage, the server has to select all target, sort them and only pick 6.
That sorting operation, depending on what the targets are sorted on, can be very costly, and for accurate results, it needs to "lock" the state of characters on the list which delays other operation waiting on them.

Also, the cap combined with smart healing increases the survivability of such groups, which means that two large grousp could share the same physical space, all spamming aoes non stop, without ever stopping.

If the same situation occured without caps, the fight would be resolved much sooner, so less sustained calculations for the server.
I'd even argue that this situation wouldn't even occur as it is a bad strategic choice and people would avoid it by fighting more outside of the keep and get on the flag only when all opposition is gone.

Nidwin wrote: »

Flynch wrote: »

Remove AoE caps - turn all AoE skill into a 30-45 degree cone-based attack and cost a fortune in magicka.

Problem with removing AoE caps is in choke situations, running through a breech in the outer wall, stairs, inner keeps, ...

That's not a problem but a plus.

Right now, we might as well fight in an infinite flat plain because landscape has nearly no impact on combat. With chokepoints getting a purpose, then it increases the set of available tools for organized groups.

For instance, a keep is built for its defensive advantage, but it also has no respawn possibilities. The combat wouldn't be about staying on the flag and surviving until the switch, but about fighting the enemies, clearing them out and get the reward once the battle has been actually won.

This is an overall improvement over the current meta game.

Gilvoth

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

krim wrote: »

Will AOE caps fix the lag? Are we 100% sure? Once 100 or more people crowd into one keep is it going to be playable?

If the same situation occured without caps, the fight would be resolved much sooner, so less sustained calculations for the server.
I'd even argue that this situation wouldn't even occur as it is a bad strategic choice and people would avoid it by fighting more outside of the keep and get on the flag only when all opposition is gone.

and that can Easily be solved by getting rid of tents and camps completely

Agrippa_Invisus

Hlaren_shortsheath wrote: »

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

krim wrote: »

Will AOE caps fix the lag? Are we 100% sure? Once 100 or more people crowd into one keep is it going to be playable?

If the same situation occured without caps, the fight would be resolved much sooner, so less sustained calculations for the server.
I'd even argue that this situation wouldn't even occur as it is a bad strategic choice and people would avoid it by fighting more outside of the keep and get on the flag only when all opposition is gone.

and that can Easily be solved by getting rid of tents and camps completely

Camps don't need to be removed, but they do need extreme changes --

Limit rezzes to camp radius (kills tentaporting/blood gating)
Add rez sickness debuff to users (50% less damage, reduced max HP).

Armitas

Hey Xsorub. Since you have Red dragon blood could you tell me what the listed armor/spell resist is on it? esohead never updates values like that.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

Hlaren_shortsheath wrote: »

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

krim wrote: »

Will AOE caps fix the lag? Are we 100% sure? Once 100 or more people crowd into one keep is it going to be playable?

If the same situation occured without caps, the fight would be resolved much sooner, so less sustained calculations for the server.
I'd even argue that this situation wouldn't even occur as it is a bad strategic choice and people would avoid it by fighting more outside of the keep and get on the flag only when all opposition is gone.

and that can Easily be solved by getting rid of tents and camps completely

This is not an endorsment of Forward Camps, I'd rather not have them in the game too, but you are bringing them up in the wrong context.

Camps don't even enter the equation.
That's the point of exploiting the target cap, those groups stacking either get wiped all at once, when their "tank breaks", or none of them die.
If you don't need respawns, you don't need camps.

Without target caps, people will die more often, which is an indirect nerf to camps and the frontline sustainability they provide.
It would at the very least increase the attrition aspect of maintaining such a front and make them more situational. Like saving up to capture the last keep for emperorship rather than using camps all the time.
It would also cause more people to be in the world in between objectives.

Kosar

what i see in that video is a fight lagged to death that 10 AD couldn't win against 50+ opponents.

what you are proposing is making it so the 10 AD CAN take a keep from 50 defenders. unreasonable and unrealistic.

99% of the reason nothing is taking damage in certain parts of that fight is BECAUSE EVERYONE IS SPAMMING AOE
causing lag and nothing to be hit.
so the proposed counter to this is
UNCAP AOE SO WE CAN ALL STAND AND SPAM MORE.

listen to yourselves and stop.
fix the servers and people will take damage and fights will work appropriately.

Gilvoth

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Hlaren_shortsheath wrote: »

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

krim wrote: »

Will AOE caps fix the lag? Are we 100% sure? Once 100 or more people crowd into one keep is it going to be playable?

If the same situation occured without caps, the fight would be resolved much sooner, so less sustained calculations for the server.
I'd even argue that this situation wouldn't even occur as it is a bad strategic choice and people would avoid it by fighting more outside of the keep and get on the flag only when all opposition is gone.

and that can Easily be solved by getting rid of tents and camps completely

Camps don't need to be removed, but they do need extreme changes --

Limit rezzes to camp radius (kills tentaporting/blood gating)
Add rez sickness debuff to users (50% less damage, reduced max HP).

no, this has been discussed to death on other threads. those camps are not doing any good for cryodiil at all, infact those camps are most of the reason for alot of greef in many situations and Lagg, people suiciding for insta travel use them to get to keeps in an instant and that in itself is cheating and causes lagg because 200+ people show up in a small area within the same exact time and everyone starts lagging baddly, and thats just the tip of this iceberg on camps. the issues and problems with troll camps and this list goes on and on.
the only real solution is to just remove camps completely. if they do that then this will solve a lot of problems and cause alot less stress on the server and may even fix alot of the lagg problems completely.

Dreyloch

I was in this battle too.

The lag was present well before the walls came down and ppl poured into the keep. Once that happened it just gets compounded by the AE spammers on the flags. The only way ppl could think to counter that was to AE spam too. Further perpetuating the cycle and making the server just give up on calculating properly.

AE caps that ppl want removed is only going to make some DK vamp emp "all powerful" again like the start of the game and ppl will complain about one guy taking on 50 and not dying. Raining out banners like skittles from the rainbow.

I think this is more about the lag of having soo many players in one place and the server not being able to keep up, than it is about the AE caps.My abilites were taking well over 30 seconds to fire.(BEFORE I GOT IN THAT MESS)

This just isn't working when all 3 factions are capped. However, Lagblade resets today. Will be an interesting weekend to see who stays and who goes to Azura Star.

There is no reason for people to stay now. Azura came online in the middle of this Thornblade run. That's why no one left.That's why there's soo much lag.

Kosar

this video also very explicitly displays why culling shouldn't exist. you can't see any spells or skills. guy in the video gets hit a handful of times with no visual indication besides his health bar as to why. half the npcs are clearly aiming spells at something but you can't tell if its attacks or heals. everything on the outskirts of what is actually a very tiny battle in regards to square feet inside goes in and out of view.

a lot of this lag is hundreds of algorithms and decisions being made to load and unload models, effects, etc. the constant load/unload is an absolutely unnecessary burden on a cpu already working hard. videos games are made to be seen...and fights like this just prove how culling takes away from the vast majority of what makes epic battles enjoyable....

this video and many of the discussions has made me too sad this morning....

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

effinshiddy wrote: »

what i see in that video is a fight lagged to death that 10 AD couldn't win against 50+ opponents.

what you are proposing is making it so the 10 AD CAN take a keep from 50 defenders. unreasonable and unrealistic.

This is not what this change will bring.

Those 10 may be able to wipe out the 50 in one shot, but this is only "potential" damage if the 50 are stacked on top of each other.
In reality, a focus fire will impact at most 2 to 6 targets due to how aoe are limited by a radius.
This require timing and ground targeted aiming.

On the other hand, the 50 can use instant cast no aiming single target skills at the 10 and come out on top by a large margin.

The 50+ may lose 10% of their group, which is the intent, to create attrition in larger groups, but they will never lose to 10.

Also, take into account that a keep is suposed to be the last stand, if those 50 are cornered in a keep by a group of 10, they have already lost, with or without getting one shotted.

And finaly, if yo uwant to talk about unreasonable and unrealistic, how about a supernova that spans the size of a room and that damages only 6 people in it?

effinshiddy wrote: »

99% of the reason nothing is taking damage in certain parts of that fight is BECAUSE EVERYONE IS SPAMMING AOE
causing lag and nothing to be hit.
so the proposed counter to this is
UNCAP AOE SO WE CAN ALL STAND AND SPAM MORE.

It is counter intuitive, but perfectly logical.
Aoe get spammed nowadays because there are only situations where aoes are needed. And those situation exist only because of the target cap.

Even when capped, using an aoe on a stacked group is a guaranteed 6 targets hit, which is far better than using single target abilities.
But with the way the smart healing work, groups have a much higher survavibility meaning that a lot of spam occurs on both ends, heals and damage.

If you remove that unnatural survavibility, the spamming is reduced.
People won't be stacked, so aoes have less viability and single targets, with their instant and auto aim abilities, become preferable.
In turn, groups take less absolute damage, and there is less healing required.

And in the case of a chokepoint, a timely reactio ncan ensure a swift victory, which obviously cuts down on the lagging.
But there are tools in game to mitigate that, like the retreating maneuver, or barriers, which really breaks down things to which group has the best coordination.

effinshiddy wrote: »

listen to yourselves and stop.
fix the servers and people will take damage and fights will work appropriately.

I recommend you follow your own suggestion and try to read up more on the issue.
You're obviously very new to the discussion and a lot of the misconception you show have been addressed many times over in the past few months.
Perhaps there is an argument to be made in favor of target caps, but I have yet to see one. Perhaps with a bit more knowledge, you'd be able to change that.

But as it stands, the caps are cause of the most important issues both gameplay wise and technical wise.
The spectrum of available tactics is reduced to a very narrow band, and these behaviors cause a server load that the game wasn't designed to handle.

MorHawk

NordJitsu wrote: »

I have to wonder if ZOS is too late with this though.

When they first implemented AoE caps there was a huge uproar on the forums. People were threatening to quit over this issue alone.

They should have changed it the day after they announced it.

How many subs were lost because of this? How many of those do you think are never coming back?

ZOS needs to start reacting about 1,000x more quickly to feedback.

1. Agreed, as much as I love ESO, it was clearly a bad decision right from the word go (though, by all accounts, it was there at launch, it just took time for us to notice). We should not have been in a situation where we're only talking about fixing it 6 months later.
2. Good to see you still around NJ!

Rune_Relic

So you thinking removing aoe caps will make people less likely to use aoe ?
Genuine question.

Gecko

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

The game is otherwise well designed, I have been in battles where both sides didn't know about the caps, and it worked great. Without target caps, you can see other tactics appearing and getting used, natural line of skrimage and melee/range/healer lines forming organically.

I look forward to the future without caps.

The lowbie campaign has mostly non-blob fights when it is busy. Most people do not have the aoe to be capable to get a large enough group together so it turns into skirmishes etc. It actually is exceedingly fun and tends to work really well.

Gecko

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

Camps don't need to be removed, but they do need extreme changes --

Limit rezzes to camp radius (kills tentaporting/blood gating)
Add rez sickness debuff to users (50% less damage, reduced max HP).

Also, cannot put a camp withing a certain distance of a friendly keep being sieged. Removing the aoe caps and letting defenders keep popping FCs inside the keep walls would make things a little too favorable to the defenders imho. With the AoE caps removed, the natural choke points would allow a suitable defense to be mounted and make for supply lines and avenues for reinforcement to be important. Essentially the PvP would be like it was for the first week or so, before certain things were realized and tested.

Harnesh

Rune_Relic wrote: »

So you thinking removing aoe caps will make people less likely to use aoe ?
Genuine question.

Not necessarily cause people not to use AOE but it will make them think before they "blob". Just to use easy math say a group of 12 jump a group of 6 the advantage is that you have 6 more players and thats fine. But with the game mechanics the way they are if the 12 stack on top of each other half of their group has pseudo invulnerability.

What it will do is make people spread out.

AOE caps give a large group an artificial defensive bonus, bunch closer together and you can't be hit it's so counter intuitive.

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO

Rune_Relic wrote: »

So you thinking removing aoe caps will make people less likely to use aoe ?
Genuine question.

Yes.

I explained it in my previous post, and I assume that's what you were reacting too. Both on paper and through experience, this is the logical conclusion.

See, when a group is spread out, it has a much lesser player density so aoes with their limited radius can only hit a smaller subset of players, and require much more effort to aim.
Not having 6 guaranteed targets to hit really hinders the efficiency of AoE abilities.

In comparison, single target abilities are more sustainable and require much less effort to use. They also have a longer range when they are ranged.
They can be used more effectively by group leaders. Calling a focus fire on a character is easier that calling it on an area.
(Even though you could use characters as "markers")

Single damage abilities are also much more reliable when fighting against a spread out group as there are less chances that the targeting jumps to another character. A drastic change compared to nowadays blur.

These factors can also be observed in game.
If you're lucky enough to be in a large fight(40v40) where neither group are aware of the target cap, you'd witness my arguments in action.

Gecko wrote: »

frosth.darkomenb16_ESO wrote: »

The game is otherwise well designed, I have been in battles where both sides didn't know about the caps, and it worked great. Without target caps, you can see other tactics appearing and getting used, natural line of skrimage and melee/range/healer lines forming organically.

I look forward to the future without caps.

The lowbie campaign has mostly non-blob fights when it is busy. Most people do not have the aoe to be capable to get a large enough group together so it turns into skirmishes etc. It actually is exceedingly fun and tends to work really well.

It used to be the same on backwaters campaigns like haderus.
Aoe availability isn't really a factor, but just general noobitude.

This is the best of what the game has to offer.

smacx250

They didn't really say that AoE caps were being removed - they said the AoE cap mechanism was being changed from a target cap to a damage cap. It is my understanding that today, up to six targets of an AoE take "full" damage, and the other targets get none. With the indicated change, all targets of an AoE will take damage, but each target's individual damage will scale down from the "full" damage as the total number of targets increases - effectively capping the damage of a given AoE depending on the number of targets. AFAIK, the details of the scaling haven't been revealed.

Even with such a change, on an individual basis, there may still be some benefit of being bunched up if hit with an AoE - the individual's damage may be less than if caught alone. However, the total damage done to all targets by an AoE may be greater than it is with today's caps - but it really all depends on the (yet unknown) scaling algorithm.

In theory, this seems like a more reasonable cap than what is currently in place. I guess we'll have to wait and see if it actually works better in practice.

Nox_Aeterna

All i can say is that took them long enough.

Just another of their stupid calls , there is a long list of things they have to "fix" caused by their own incompetence.

Asgari

Agrippa_Invisus wrote: »

This video.

And people wonder why I've been less interested in playing lately.

It is no wonder why many of my Guild have left the game. It is very unfortunate because we were mediocrely good according to many

darkdruidssb14_ESO

Basically what will happen is what people learned to do to combat vamp ults.... spread the F out! The more spread out you are the less effective AOE SHOULD be.

The problem right now in ESO is that the more bunched up a large group is the LESS effective AOE is against them because of the low AOE hit caps. The more people that stack together the less likely your single AOE even hits a quarter of the enemies you see. Then factor in the smart healing and AOE healing hit caps... you start healing only the select few people that were actually hit by a players AOE.

Take off the limited hit caps and then all of a sudden your AOE could hit all those bunched up players... even if there is damage fall off based on the number of players hit.. that will still be better than your AOEs not hitting everyone. Then add to that they are NOT increasing healing AOE hit caps.. which means your heals will NOT be able to keep the group topped off since more people will be taking damage than you can hit with a single cast.

It will make all AOE fearful, which is what AOE is supposed to do. Your not supposed to sit in your protective group bubble that prevents you from taking all the damage you should be. So if people learn to fear AOE then they will spread the F out!... making single target abilities much more utilized out side of specific situations like flag defense or breech defense.

Also if people die more then that means there will be less AOE spam overall because people that die can't spam AOE. Even though the servers will initially have to make more calculations on players hit.. the load won't stay high because players will die off.

Xsorus

Armitas wrote: »

Hey Xsorub. Since you have Red dragon blood could you tell me what the listed armor/spell resist is on it? esohead never updates values like that.

1500ish i believe for like 3 seconds.