AoE Caps Discussion

Merlight

Joy_Division wrote: »

I hate to break it to everyone, but @Wrobel has already answered us and he told us why AoE caps are staying. He just didn't do it explicitly.

What he told us was cunningly crafted to allow for a little bit of interpretation. My favourite part is this:

Wrobel wrote: »

The two avenues of attack we are perusing are buffing siege weapons and investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players.

And I eagerly fell for the trick, because I read the bolded part as: exempt from AoE damage caps/falloff. That'd be a good start.

Manoekin

Sureshawt wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Erondil wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

andypappb16_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I hate to break it to everyone, but @Wrobel has already answered us and he told us why AoE caps are staying. He just didn't do it explicitly.

@Joy_Division
I clearly Missed that..where/what did he say...

Wrobel wrote in this thread:

We want PvP fights to be tactical, involving player positioning as a key element of engagements. We don’t want 2 huge masses of players mindlessly bumping into each other while spamming 1 ability. Part of the issue currently is that damaging PBAoE abilities are very powerful, and there are not a lot of effective options to combat this strategy from range. The two avenues of attack we are perusing are buffing siege weapons and investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players.

Wheeler is making significant adjustments to siege weapons. You can view and comment on these new changes here. As siege already hits an unlimited number of targets and has an effective cooldown, it’s the perfect tool to get players to spread out.

On the ability side we’ve got a number of changes planned. PBAoE abilities such as Steel Tornado and purge are much too powerful and cause players to want to stack together to make sure they can all hit the same targets and be purged by the same ally. We’ll be reducing the radius of Steel Tornado so it’s not so much more effective at dealing AoE damage relative to the other abilities in the game. Also, we are reducing the initial damage of Magicka Detonation so it’s less effective vs a single target. To compensate, both the bonus damage per target and the max size of this bonus is increasing. In addition to this we’re looking into making other ranged class abilities deal effective AoE damage.

The implication is that they recognize PBAoE is already to strong and encourages stacking/blobbing. Thus they would not make it stronger by raising the caps. They have other solutions in mind for blob/stack busting that do not involve raising AoE caps.

Thankfully we have objective Devs looking out the best interests of the game for everyone versus some players that want to further increase their ability to mindless spam PBAoE and mow down large groups of players.

What you and many others don't understand (including @Wrobel ) is that the removal of dmg AoE caps will incentivize people to spread out. Right now a group of 24 is better of to stack so they can benefit from 37.5% damages reduction (its more mitigation than any ultimate of the game) with AoE smart heals (the 6 taking 100% damages will always be healed first). Now if you remove dmg AoE caps, those groups will want to spread out a bit more, to balance the damage increase. Thus, single target will become more important because an AoE wont hit more than 6 people as often as now. With a removal of AoE caps, you will most likely see AoE less used because people wont stack as much as now, and an AoE is not worth using if it hits less than 4 people.
I will repeat once again, dmg AoE doesnt encourage stacking alone, dmg AoE are meant to do the contrary (look at daoc) but the virtual 37.5% mitigation does. Simply because it makes AoE heals stronger than AoE damages.

I've experienced games where PBAoE without caps has dominated PvP play. Everyone running around in bomb groups mindlessly spamming uncapped AoE ...rinse ....repeat...boring.

Fortunately we dont have this today!

The only true fun fights I have in this game right now are in the open field where AoE button mash groups can be mostly avoided. Inside enclosed areas well that's where the button mashing AoE lagfest hell starts.

Which is why I support the efforts of ZoS to tone down PBAoE mechanics as it is too strong already and not make it worse by simply removing the caps. I know you would like to just run around and kill even larger numbers of players faster with mindless AoE button mashing but thankfully it isn't going to happen.

You missed his point, or you're just avoiding it.

You're trying to say uncapping AOE will lead to something. The reality is though, that "something" is already here, and it's here specifically because of AOE caps. I don't understand how people making this argument figured out how to use these forums in the first place. It's basic common sense.

FENGRUSH

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Erondil wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

andypappb16_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I hate to break it to everyone, but @Wrobel has already answered us and he told us why AoE caps are staying. He just didn't do it explicitly.

@Joy_Division
I clearly Missed that..where/what did he say...

Wrobel wrote in this thread:

We want PvP fights to be tactical, involving player positioning as a key element of engagements. We don’t want 2 huge masses of players mindlessly bumping into each other while spamming 1 ability. Part of the issue currently is that damaging PBAoE abilities are very powerful, and there are not a lot of effective options to combat this strategy from range. The two avenues of attack we are perusing are buffing siege weapons and investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players.

Wheeler is making significant adjustments to siege weapons. You can view and comment on these new changes here. As siege already hits an unlimited number of targets and has an effective cooldown, it’s the perfect tool to get players to spread out.

On the ability side we’ve got a number of changes planned. PBAoE abilities such as Steel Tornado and purge are much too powerful and cause players to want to stack together to make sure they can all hit the same targets and be purged by the same ally. We’ll be reducing the radius of Steel Tornado so it’s not so much more effective at dealing AoE damage relative to the other abilities in the game. Also, we are reducing the initial damage of Magicka Detonation so it’s less effective vs a single target. To compensate, both the bonus damage per target and the max size of this bonus is increasing. In addition to this we’re looking into making other ranged class abilities deal effective AoE damage.

The implication is that they recognize PBAoE is already to strong and encourages stacking/blobbing. Thus they would not make it stronger by raising the caps. They have other solutions in mind for blob/stack busting that do not involve raising AoE caps.

Thankfully we have objective Devs looking out the best interests of the game for everyone versus some players that want to further increase their ability to mindless spam PBAoE and mow down large groups of players.

What you and many others don't understand (including @Wrobel ) is that the removal of dmg AoE caps will incentivize people to spread out. Right now a group of 24 is better of to stack so they can benefit from 37.5% damages reduction (its more mitigation than any ultimate of the game) with AoE smart heals (the 6 taking 100% damages will always be healed first). Now if you remove dmg AoE caps, those groups will want to spread out a bit more, to balance the damage increase. Thus, single target will become more important because an AoE wont hit more than 6 people as often as now. With a removal of AoE caps, you will most likely see AoE less used because people wont stack as much as now, and an AoE is not worth using if it hits less than 4 people.
I will repeat once again, dmg AoE doesnt encourage stacking alone, dmg AoE are meant to do the contrary (look at daoc) but the virtual 37.5% mitigation does. Simply because it makes AoE heals stronger than AoE damages.

I've experienced games where PBAoE without caps has dominated PvP play. Everyone running around in bomb groups mindlessly spamming uncapped AoE ...rinse ....repeat...boring.

Fortunately we dont have this today!

The only true fun fights I have in this game right now are in the open field where AoE button mash groups can be mostly avoided. Inside enclosed areas well that's where the button mashing AoE lagfest hell starts.

Which is why I support the efforts of ZoS to tone down PBAoE mechanics as it is too strong already and not make it worse by simply removing the caps. I know you would like to just run around and kill even larger numbers of players faster with mindless AoE button mashing but thankfully it isn't going to happen.

You missed his point, or you're just avoiding it.

You're trying to say uncapping AOE will lead to something. The reality is though, that "something" is already here, and it's here specifically because of AOE caps. I don't understand how people making this argument figured out how to use these forums in the first place. It's basic common sense.

Haha - awesome

Vorc

Vâo wrote: »

kicked

He told you: deguild or be kicked for playing ald side while still guilded on dc side.
So you quit before being kicked... logic. Now you also got kicked of your previous guild if I remember. credibility.

I laughed so much you attacked his group

Everyone in the group laugh when you get chain killed man... without steel tornadoe haha

Essiaga

I don't think most people are aware of how large of a number of people can be effected WITH the caps ...

@Wrobel wrote:

Healing abilities currently cap at 6 targets, where damage can hit up to 60 targets (100% to the first 6, 50% to the next 24, and 25% to the last 30) ...

Remember that a group of 5 players is not going to be able to kill a group of 20 players in most situations. It is possible if you catch the group completely off guard or funnel them into a tight space, but in a straight up 5 on 20, the larger numbers are going to win most times.

I thought (and idk why) it was limited to 16 targets to limit processes on the server and prevent lag. That sorta cap would at least make a little sense.

This reducing damage across 60 just seems silly. Groups are healing just in case they are caught off guard which causes lag. ZOS doesn't want large groups wiped by smaller groups. The only reason I can see for this kind of cap is the stack on flag to change possession of keeps and resources. With up coming siege changes this is were siege is going to shine.

Wonder what effect a lower cap party size would have. Maybe 8 to 12. It might create some separation in the ball groups. Stacking on crown would be a little harder if there's more then one crown and they can't see only their crown.

I still want to see Alliance Skill lines removed or disabled, even if only on 1 campaign if possible. See if that helps with lag and breaks zergs. I don't see small man groups taking resources let alone keeps with upcoming siege changes. 1 guy and guards will be able to defend a resource since they turn fast with more people on the flag.

Essiaga

How about a poison effect like in SO where you can cast it on someone and then it will get caught on others? That will get peps bail out the balls ... then again Purge is an AOE ... that [snip] needs to go.

[edited for profanity bypass]

Erondil

Sureshawt wrote: »

Erondil wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

andypappb16_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I hate to break it to everyone, but @Wrobel has already answered us and he told us why AoE caps are staying. He just didn't do it explicitly.

@Joy_Division
I clearly Missed that..where/what did he say...

Wrobel wrote in this thread:

We want PvP fights to be tactical, involving player positioning as a key element of engagements. We don’t want 2 huge masses of players mindlessly bumping into each other while spamming 1 ability. Part of the issue currently is that damaging PBAoE abilities are very powerful, and there are not a lot of effective options to combat this strategy from range. The two avenues of attack we are perusing are buffing siege weapons and investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players.

Wheeler is making significant adjustments to siege weapons. You can view and comment on these new changes here. As siege already hits an unlimited number of targets and has an effective cooldown, it’s the perfect tool to get players to spread out.

On the ability side we’ve got a number of changes planned. PBAoE abilities such as Steel Tornado and purge are much too powerful and cause players to want to stack together to make sure they can all hit the same targets and be purged by the same ally. We’ll be reducing the radius of Steel Tornado so it’s not so much more effective at dealing AoE damage relative to the other abilities in the game. Also, we are reducing the initial damage of Magicka Detonation so it’s less effective vs a single target. To compensate, both the bonus damage per target and the max size of this bonus is increasing. In addition to this we’re looking into making other ranged class abilities deal effective AoE damage.

The implication is that they recognize PBAoE is already to strong and encourages stacking/blobbing. Thus they would not make it stronger by raising the caps. They have other solutions in mind for blob/stack busting that do not involve raising AoE caps.

Thankfully we have objective Devs looking out the best interests of the game for everyone versus some players that want to further increase their ability to mindless spam PBAoE and mow down large groups of players.

What you and many others don't understand (including @Wrobel ) is that the removal of dmg AoE caps will incentivize people to spread out. Right now a group of 24 is better of to stack so they can benefit from 37.5% damages reduction (its more mitigation than any ultimate of the game) with AoE smart heals (the 6 taking 100% damages will always be healed first). Now if you remove dmg AoE caps, those groups will want to spread out a bit more, to balance the damage increase. Thus, single target will become more important because an AoE wont hit more than 6 people as often as now. With a removal of AoE caps, you will most likely see AoE less used because people wont stack as much as now, and an AoE is not worth using if it hits less than 4 people.
I will repeat once again, dmg AoE doesnt encourage stacking alone, dmg AoE are meant to do the contrary (look at daoc) but the virtual 37.5% mitigation does. Simply because it makes AoE heals stronger than AoE damages.

I can't figure out whether you really can't understand the destructive result of simply raising AoE caps (especially on damage) or if you think the devs and other players are dumb enough to buy this argument for your own personal entertainment.

I've experienced games where PBAoE without caps has dominated PvP play. Everyone running around in bomb groups mindlessly spamming uncapped AoE ...rinse ....repeat...boring.

I will not play a game completely dominated by running with a group mashing the same button over and over hoping my AoEs wreck the enemy group before theirs do it to mine. It is bad enough right now as it is. AoE should be used tactically in certain situations not spammed every PvP encounter.

Thankfully we have Devs that recognize the danger and are actively seeking other solutions to blobbing/stacking otherwise I'd have to find another game.

I'm not gonna bother writing yet another essay for someone that completely ignore about everything I've said, beside the point that I'm agaisnt damages AoE cap.

Sureshawt

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Erondil wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

andypappb16_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I hate to break it to everyone, but @Wrobel has already answered us and he told us why AoE caps are staying. He just didn't do it explicitly.

@Joy_Division
I clearly Missed that..where/what did he say...

Wrobel wrote in this thread:

We want PvP fights to be tactical, involving player positioning as a key element of engagements. We don’t want 2 huge masses of players mindlessly bumping into each other while spamming 1 ability. Part of the issue currently is that damaging PBAoE abilities are very powerful, and there are not a lot of effective options to combat this strategy from range. The two avenues of attack we are perusing are buffing siege weapons and investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players.

Wheeler is making significant adjustments to siege weapons. You can view and comment on these new changes here. As siege already hits an unlimited number of targets and has an effective cooldown, it’s the perfect tool to get players to spread out.

On the ability side we’ve got a number of changes planned. PBAoE abilities such as Steel Tornado and purge are much too powerful and cause players to want to stack together to make sure they can all hit the same targets and be purged by the same ally. We’ll be reducing the radius of Steel Tornado so it’s not so much more effective at dealing AoE damage relative to the other abilities in the game. Also, we are reducing the initial damage of Magicka Detonation so it’s less effective vs a single target. To compensate, both the bonus damage per target and the max size of this bonus is increasing. In addition to this we’re looking into making other ranged class abilities deal effective AoE damage.

The implication is that they recognize PBAoE is already to strong and encourages stacking/blobbing. Thus they would not make it stronger by raising the caps. They have other solutions in mind for blob/stack busting that do not involve raising AoE caps.

Thankfully we have objective Devs looking out the best interests of the game for everyone versus some players that want to further increase their ability to mindless spam PBAoE and mow down large groups of players.

What you and many others don't understand (including @Wrobel ) is that the removal of dmg AoE caps will incentivize people to spread out. Right now a group of 24 is better of to stack so they can benefit from 37.5% damages reduction (its more mitigation than any ultimate of the game) with AoE smart heals (the 6 taking 100% damages will always be healed first). Now if you remove dmg AoE caps, those groups will want to spread out a bit more, to balance the damage increase. Thus, single target will become more important because an AoE wont hit more than 6 people as often as now. With a removal of AoE caps, you will most likely see AoE less used because people wont stack as much as now, and an AoE is not worth using if it hits less than 4 people.
I will repeat once again, dmg AoE doesnt encourage stacking alone, dmg AoE are meant to do the contrary (look at daoc) but the virtual 37.5% mitigation does. Simply because it makes AoE heals stronger than AoE damages.

I've experienced games where PBAoE without caps has dominated PvP play. Everyone running around in bomb groups mindlessly spamming uncapped AoE ...rinse ....repeat...boring.

Fortunately we dont have this today!

The only true fun fights I have in this game right now are in the open field where AoE button mash groups can be mostly avoided. Inside enclosed areas well that's where the button mashing AoE lagfest hell starts.

Which is why I support the efforts of ZoS to tone down PBAoE mechanics as it is too strong already and not make it worse by simply removing the caps. I know you would like to just run around and kill even larger numbers of players faster with mindless AoE button mashing but thankfully it isn't going to happen.

You missed his point, or you're just avoiding it.

You're trying to say uncapping AOE will lead to something. The reality is though, that "something" is already here, and it's here specifically because of AOE caps. I don't understand how people making this argument figured out how to use these forums in the first place. It's basic common sense.

I guess common sense isn't so common. I wanna fix the underlying problem of AoE being the dominant tactic that encourages balling up as does ZoS.

I get that it is already here (I stated that already and so does ZoS). I see it used extensively in any enclosed area or cap areas and sometimes even in the open field.

This idea though that removing AoE caps will make ball groups spread out is pure nonsense because in enclosed areas you can't spread out unlike the open field. Also taking objectives require you to ball up inside the ring to take it.

Simply removing the AoE caps without changing the underlying mechanics first will just result in more of the same except death will come faster for more players.

Is this what you consider compelling game play? Because running around in ball groups spamming AoEs hoping my groups AoEs kill theirs first is not what i consider fun. AoE should be useful when used tactically in certain situations but NOT spammed in every encounter until the cows come home (especially when taking objectives).

IF the underlying mechanics (to either AoE itself or how objectives are captured) are changed AND working as intended then we can discuss removing AoE caps.

I've been down this road before in other games and you don't have to be a genius to figure out how it will end if you simply remove AoE caps without fixing the underlying issues that cause a ball up in the first place.

PainfulFAFA

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Erondil wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

andypappb16_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I hate to break it to everyone, but @Wrobel has already answered us and he told us why AoE caps are staying. He just didn't do it explicitly.

@Joy_Division
I clearly Missed that..where/what did he say...

Wrobel wrote in this thread:

We want PvP fights to be tactical, involving player positioning as a key element of engagements. We don’t want 2 huge masses of players mindlessly bumping into each other while spamming 1 ability. Part of the issue currently is that damaging PBAoE abilities are very powerful, and there are not a lot of effective options to combat this strategy from range. The two avenues of attack we are perusing are buffing siege weapons and investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players.

Wheeler is making significant adjustments to siege weapons. You can view and comment on these new changes here. As siege already hits an unlimited number of targets and has an effective cooldown, it’s the perfect tool to get players to spread out.

On the ability side we’ve got a number of changes planned. PBAoE abilities such as Steel Tornado and purge are much too powerful and cause players to want to stack together to make sure they can all hit the same targets and be purged by the same ally. We’ll be reducing the radius of Steel Tornado so it’s not so much more effective at dealing AoE damage relative to the other abilities in the game. Also, we are reducing the initial damage of Magicka Detonation so it’s less effective vs a single target. To compensate, both the bonus damage per target and the max size of this bonus is increasing. In addition to this we’re looking into making other ranged class abilities deal effective AoE damage.

The implication is that they recognize PBAoE is already to strong and encourages stacking/blobbing. Thus they would not make it stronger by raising the caps. They have other solutions in mind for blob/stack busting that do not involve raising AoE caps.

Thankfully we have objective Devs looking out the best interests of the game for everyone versus some players that want to further increase their ability to mindless spam PBAoE and mow down large groups of players.

What you and many others don't understand (including @Wrobel ) is that the removal of dmg AoE caps will incentivize people to spread out. Right now a group of 24 is better of to stack so they can benefit from 37.5% damages reduction (its more mitigation than any ultimate of the game) with AoE smart heals (the 6 taking 100% damages will always be healed first). Now if you remove dmg AoE caps, those groups will want to spread out a bit more, to balance the damage increase. Thus, single target will become more important because an AoE wont hit more than 6 people as often as now. With a removal of AoE caps, you will most likely see AoE less used because people wont stack as much as now, and an AoE is not worth using if it hits less than 4 people.
I will repeat once again, dmg AoE doesnt encourage stacking alone, dmg AoE are meant to do the contrary (look at daoc) but the virtual 37.5% mitigation does. Simply because it makes AoE heals stronger than AoE damages.

I've experienced games where PBAoE without caps has dominated PvP play. Everyone running around in bomb groups mindlessly spamming uncapped AoE ...rinse ....repeat...boring.

Fortunately we dont have this today!

The only true fun fights I have in this game right now are in the open field where AoE button mash groups can be mostly avoided. Inside enclosed areas well that's where the button mashing AoE lagfest hell starts.

Which is why I support the efforts of ZoS to tone down PBAoE mechanics as it is too strong already and not make it worse by simply removing the caps. I know you would like to just run around and kill even larger numbers of players faster with mindless AoE button mashing but thankfully it isn't going to happen.

You missed his point, or you're just avoiding it.

You're trying to say uncapping AOE will lead to something. The reality is though, that "something" is already here, and it's here specifically because of AOE caps. I don't understand how people making this argument figured out how to use these forums in the first place. It's basic common sense.

I guess common sense isn't so common. I wanna fix the underlying problem of AoE being the dominant tactic that encourages balling up as does ZoS.

I get that it is already here (I stated that already and so does ZoS). I see it used extensively in any enclosed area or cap areas and sometimes even in the open field.

This idea though that removing AoE caps will make ball groups spread out is pure nonsense because in enclosed areas you can't spread out unlike the open field. Also taking objectives require you to ball up inside the ring to take it.

Simply removing the AoE caps without changing the underlying mechanics first will just result in more of the same except death will come faster for more players.

Is this what you consider compelling game play? Because running around in ball groups spamming AoEs hoping my groups AoEs kill theirs first is not what i consider fun. AoE should be useful when used tactically in certain situations but NOT spammed in every encounter until the cows come home (especially when taking objectives).

IF the underlying mechanics (to either AoE itself or how objectives are captured) are changed AND working as intended then we can discuss removing AoE caps.

I've been down this road before in other games and you don't have to be a genius to figure out how it will end if you simply remove AoE caps without fixing the underlying issues that cause a ball up in the first place.

Shhh shhh.... just go to sleep... plz.

Manoekin

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Erondil wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

andypappb16_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I hate to break it to everyone, but @Wrobel has already answered us and he told us why AoE caps are staying. He just didn't do it explicitly.

@Joy_Division
I clearly Missed that..where/what did he say...

Wrobel wrote in this thread:

We want PvP fights to be tactical, involving player positioning as a key element of engagements. We don’t want 2 huge masses of players mindlessly bumping into each other while spamming 1 ability. Part of the issue currently is that damaging PBAoE abilities are very powerful, and there are not a lot of effective options to combat this strategy from range. The two avenues of attack we are perusing are buffing siege weapons and investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players.

Wheeler is making significant adjustments to siege weapons. You can view and comment on these new changes here. As siege already hits an unlimited number of targets and has an effective cooldown, it’s the perfect tool to get players to spread out.

On the ability side we’ve got a number of changes planned. PBAoE abilities such as Steel Tornado and purge are much too powerful and cause players to want to stack together to make sure they can all hit the same targets and be purged by the same ally. We’ll be reducing the radius of Steel Tornado so it’s not so much more effective at dealing AoE damage relative to the other abilities in the game. Also, we are reducing the initial damage of Magicka Detonation so it’s less effective vs a single target. To compensate, both the bonus damage per target and the max size of this bonus is increasing. In addition to this we’re looking into making other ranged class abilities deal effective AoE damage.

The implication is that they recognize PBAoE is already to strong and encourages stacking/blobbing. Thus they would not make it stronger by raising the caps. They have other solutions in mind for blob/stack busting that do not involve raising AoE caps.

Thankfully we have objective Devs looking out the best interests of the game for everyone versus some players that want to further increase their ability to mindless spam PBAoE and mow down large groups of players.

What you and many others don't understand (including @Wrobel ) is that the removal of dmg AoE caps will incentivize people to spread out. Right now a group of 24 is better of to stack so they can benefit from 37.5% damages reduction (its more mitigation than any ultimate of the game) with AoE smart heals (the 6 taking 100% damages will always be healed first). Now if you remove dmg AoE caps, those groups will want to spread out a bit more, to balance the damage increase. Thus, single target will become more important because an AoE wont hit more than 6 people as often as now. With a removal of AoE caps, you will most likely see AoE less used because people wont stack as much as now, and an AoE is not worth using if it hits less than 4 people.
I will repeat once again, dmg AoE doesnt encourage stacking alone, dmg AoE are meant to do the contrary (look at daoc) but the virtual 37.5% mitigation does. Simply because it makes AoE heals stronger than AoE damages.

I've experienced games where PBAoE without caps has dominated PvP play. Everyone running around in bomb groups mindlessly spamming uncapped AoE ...rinse ....repeat...boring.

Fortunately we dont have this today!

The only true fun fights I have in this game right now are in the open field where AoE button mash groups can be mostly avoided. Inside enclosed areas well that's where the button mashing AoE lagfest hell starts.

Which is why I support the efforts of ZoS to tone down PBAoE mechanics as it is too strong already and not make it worse by simply removing the caps. I know you would like to just run around and kill even larger numbers of players faster with mindless AoE button mashing but thankfully it isn't going to happen.

You missed his point, or you're just avoiding it.

You're trying to say uncapping AOE will lead to something. The reality is though, that "something" is already here, and it's here specifically because of AOE caps. I don't understand how people making this argument figured out how to use these forums in the first place. It's basic common sense.

I guess common sense isn't so common. I wanna fix the underlying problem of AoE being the dominant tactic that encourages balling up as does ZoS.

I get that it is already here (I stated that already and so does ZoS). I see it used extensively in any enclosed area or cap areas and sometimes even in the open field.

This idea though that removing AoE caps will make ball groups spread out is pure nonsense because in enclosed areas you can't spread out unlike the open field. Also taking objectives require you to ball up inside the ring to take it.

Simply removing the AoE caps without changing the underlying mechanics first will just result in more of the same except death will come faster for more players.

Is this what you consider compelling game play? Because running around in ball groups spamming AoEs hoping my groups AoEs kill theirs first is not what i consider fun. AoE should be useful when used tactically in certain situations but NOT spammed in every encounter until the cows come home (especially when taking objectives).

IF the underlying mechanics (to either AoE itself or how objectives are captured) are changed AND working as intended then we can discuss removing AoE caps.

I've been down this road before in other games and you don't have to be a genius to figure out how it will end if you simply remove AoE caps without fixing the underlying issues that cause a ball up in the first place.

People aren't balling up because AOE is too strong. If AOE was too strong, people wouldn't ball up because they'd die easily. People ball up because it's the best way to survive due to game mechanics favoring that type of behavior. ZOS wants to encourage people to spread out, but everything they've done and that I've heard in this thread tells me they want the exact opposite.

The underlying issue is AOE caps and don't forget that. That's the main issue at the heart of this discussion. When I come up on some lazy group just standing around afk and we drop a few ultimates and AOE them, and only half of the group dies while the other half lives solely due to RNG factors you have a problem. That's when you're not promoting tactical gameplay. I don't go, "oh man I wish my volley hit harder.. they really need to buff ranged AOE's", or "wow why couldn't we single target that afk group down fast enough they weren't even paying attention". If you want people to spread out more than they do now and encourage smart play there's really only one way to do it. Anything else is just dodging the issue trying to keep it together with bandaids here and there.

You say it will bring death faster and for more players. I say bring it on. People should die faster if they play stupid. People that continue playing in the same fashion will have a hard time. Good luck to them. I remember the days when you used to have to move out of AOE's, and now people just stack up and face tank them. ZOS has moved the game in a direction where we can't go back to that without removing AOE caps. They've shown by increasing the cap that they should be open to this idea. The only other option would be to rebalance the game with softcaps, but that's not happening because of the champion system.

Sureshawt

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Erondil wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

andypappb16_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I hate to break it to everyone, but @Wrobel has already answered us and he told us why AoE caps are staying. He just didn't do it explicitly.

@Joy_Division
I clearly Missed that..where/what did he say...

Wrobel wrote in this thread:

We want PvP fights to be tactical, involving player positioning as a key element of engagements. We don’t want 2 huge masses of players mindlessly bumping into each other while spamming 1 ability. Part of the issue currently is that damaging PBAoE abilities are very powerful, and there are not a lot of effective options to combat this strategy from range. The two avenues of attack we are perusing are buffing siege weapons and investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players.

Wheeler is making significant adjustments to siege weapons. You can view and comment on these new changes here. As siege already hits an unlimited number of targets and has an effective cooldown, it’s the perfect tool to get players to spread out.

On the ability side we’ve got a number of changes planned. PBAoE abilities such as Steel Tornado and purge are much too powerful and cause players to want to stack together to make sure they can all hit the same targets and be purged by the same ally. We’ll be reducing the radius of Steel Tornado so it’s not so much more effective at dealing AoE damage relative to the other abilities in the game. Also, we are reducing the initial damage of Magicka Detonation so it’s less effective vs a single target. To compensate, both the bonus damage per target and the max size of this bonus is increasing. In addition to this we’re looking into making other ranged class abilities deal effective AoE damage.

The implication is that they recognize PBAoE is already to strong and encourages stacking/blobbing. Thus they would not make it stronger by raising the caps. They have other solutions in mind for blob/stack busting that do not involve raising AoE caps.

Thankfully we have objective Devs looking out the best interests of the game for everyone versus some players that want to further increase their ability to mindless spam PBAoE and mow down large groups of players.

What you and many others don't understand (including @Wrobel ) is that the removal of dmg AoE caps will incentivize people to spread out. Right now a group of 24 is better of to stack so they can benefit from 37.5% damages reduction (its more mitigation than any ultimate of the game) with AoE smart heals (the 6 taking 100% damages will always be healed first). Now if you remove dmg AoE caps, those groups will want to spread out a bit more, to balance the damage increase. Thus, single target will become more important because an AoE wont hit more than 6 people as often as now. With a removal of AoE caps, you will most likely see AoE less used because people wont stack as much as now, and an AoE is not worth using if it hits less than 4 people.
I will repeat once again, dmg AoE doesnt encourage stacking alone, dmg AoE are meant to do the contrary (look at daoc) but the virtual 37.5% mitigation does. Simply because it makes AoE heals stronger than AoE damages.

I've experienced games where PBAoE without caps has dominated PvP play. Everyone running around in bomb groups mindlessly spamming uncapped AoE ...rinse ....repeat...boring.

Fortunately we dont have this today!

The only true fun fights I have in this game right now are in the open field where AoE button mash groups can be mostly avoided. Inside enclosed areas well that's where the button mashing AoE lagfest hell starts.

Which is why I support the efforts of ZoS to tone down PBAoE mechanics as it is too strong already and not make it worse by simply removing the caps. I know you would like to just run around and kill even larger numbers of players faster with mindless AoE button mashing but thankfully it isn't going to happen.

You missed his point, or you're just avoiding it.

You're trying to say uncapping AOE will lead to something. The reality is though, that "something" is already here, and it's here specifically because of AOE caps. I don't understand how people making this argument figured out how to use these forums in the first place. It's basic common sense.

I guess common sense isn't so common. I wanna fix the underlying problem of AoE being the dominant tactic that encourages balling up as does ZoS.

I get that it is already here (I stated that already and so does ZoS). I see it used extensively in any enclosed area or cap areas and sometimes even in the open field.

This idea though that removing AoE caps will make ball groups spread out is pure nonsense because in enclosed areas you can't spread out unlike the open field. Also taking objectives require you to ball up inside the ring to take it.

Simply removing the AoE caps without changing the underlying mechanics first will just result in more of the same except death will come faster for more players.

Is this what you consider compelling game play? Because running around in ball groups spamming AoEs hoping my groups AoEs kill theirs first is not what i consider fun. AoE should be useful when used tactically in certain situations but NOT spammed in every encounter until the cows come home (especially when taking objectives).

IF the underlying mechanics (to either AoE itself or how objectives are captured) are changed AND working as intended then we can discuss removing AoE caps.

I've been down this road before in other games and you don't have to be a genius to figure out how it will end if you simply remove AoE caps without fixing the underlying issues that cause a ball up in the first place.

People aren't balling up because AOE is too strong. If AOE was too strong, people wouldn't ball up because they'd die easily. People ball up because it's the best way to survive due to game mechanics favoring that type of behavior. ZOS wants to encourage people to spread out, but everything they've done and that I've heard in this thread tells me they want the exact opposite.

The underlying issue is AOE caps and don't forget that. That's the main issue at the heart of this discussion. When I come up on some lazy group just standing around afk and we drop a few ultimates and AOE them, and only half of the group dies while the other half lives solely due to RNG factors you have a problem. That's when you're not promoting tactical gameplay. I don't go, "oh man I wish my volley hit harder.. they really need to buff ranged AOE's", or "wow why couldn't we single target that afk group down fast enough they weren't even paying attention". If you want people to spread out more than they do now and encourage smart play there's really only one way to do it. Anything else is just dodging the issue trying to keep it together with bandaids here and there.

You say it will bring death faster and for more players. I say bring it on. People should die faster if they play stupid. People that continue playing in the same fashion will have a hard time. Good luck to them. I remember the days when you used to have to move out of AOE's, and now people just stack up and face tank them. ZOS has moved the game in a direction where we can't go back to that without removing AOE caps. They've shown by increasing the cap that they should be open to this idea. The only other option would be to rebalance the game with softcaps, but that's not happening because of the champion system.

People don't ball up for the single reason of reducing damage and you must know that.

People ball up to reduce damage with the AoE cap but they also do so for the all these reasons as well:

-People ball up to maximize damage/kills with AoE
-People ball up to get AoE purges/heals/shields
-Objective capturing requires players to ball up inside a ring

If you simply raise AoE caps without addressing ALL theses underlying issues that encourage balling up then people will still ball up not because of stupid game play but because the mechanics encourage and in some cases dictate it.

There are plenty of ways to try to address these issues before making an already strong mechanic even stronger particularly one that is already a major contributor in the first place.

ToRelax

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Erondil wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

andypappb16_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I hate to break it to everyone, but @Wrobel has already answered us and he told us why AoE caps are staying. He just didn't do it explicitly.

@Joy_Division
I clearly Missed that..where/what did he say...

Wrobel wrote in this thread:

We want PvP fights to be tactical, involving player positioning as a key element of engagements. We don’t want 2 huge masses of players mindlessly bumping into each other while spamming 1 ability. Part of the issue currently is that damaging PBAoE abilities are very powerful, and there are not a lot of effective options to combat this strategy from range. The two avenues of attack we are perusing are buffing siege weapons and investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players.

Wheeler is making significant adjustments to siege weapons. You can view and comment on these new changes here. As siege already hits an unlimited number of targets and has an effective cooldown, it’s the perfect tool to get players to spread out.

On the ability side we’ve got a number of changes planned. PBAoE abilities such as Steel Tornado and purge are much too powerful and cause players to want to stack together to make sure they can all hit the same targets and be purged by the same ally. We’ll be reducing the radius of Steel Tornado so it’s not so much more effective at dealing AoE damage relative to the other abilities in the game. Also, we are reducing the initial damage of Magicka Detonation so it’s less effective vs a single target. To compensate, both the bonus damage per target and the max size of this bonus is increasing. In addition to this we’re looking into making other ranged class abilities deal effective AoE damage.

The implication is that they recognize PBAoE is already to strong and encourages stacking/blobbing. Thus they would not make it stronger by raising the caps. They have other solutions in mind for blob/stack busting that do not involve raising AoE caps.

Thankfully we have objective Devs looking out the best interests of the game for everyone versus some players that want to further increase their ability to mindless spam PBAoE and mow down large groups of players.

What you and many others don't understand (including @Wrobel ) is that the removal of dmg AoE caps will incentivize people to spread out. Right now a group of 24 is better of to stack so they can benefit from 37.5% damages reduction (its more mitigation than any ultimate of the game) with AoE smart heals (the 6 taking 100% damages will always be healed first). Now if you remove dmg AoE caps, those groups will want to spread out a bit more, to balance the damage increase. Thus, single target will become more important because an AoE wont hit more than 6 people as often as now. With a removal of AoE caps, you will most likely see AoE less used because people wont stack as much as now, and an AoE is not worth using if it hits less than 4 people.
I will repeat once again, dmg AoE doesnt encourage stacking alone, dmg AoE are meant to do the contrary (look at daoc) but the virtual 37.5% mitigation does. Simply because it makes AoE heals stronger than AoE damages.

I've experienced games where PBAoE without caps has dominated PvP play. Everyone running around in bomb groups mindlessly spamming uncapped AoE ...rinse ....repeat...boring.

Fortunately we dont have this today!

The only true fun fights I have in this game right now are in the open field where AoE button mash groups can be mostly avoided. Inside enclosed areas well that's where the button mashing AoE lagfest hell starts.

Which is why I support the efforts of ZoS to tone down PBAoE mechanics as it is too strong already and not make it worse by simply removing the caps. I know you would like to just run around and kill even larger numbers of players faster with mindless AoE button mashing but thankfully it isn't going to happen.

You missed his point, or you're just avoiding it.

You're trying to say uncapping AOE will lead to something. The reality is though, that "something" is already here, and it's here specifically because of AOE caps. I don't understand how people making this argument figured out how to use these forums in the first place. It's basic common sense.

I guess common sense isn't so common. I wanna fix the underlying problem of AoE being the dominant tactic that encourages balling up as does ZoS.

I get that it is already here (I stated that already and so does ZoS). I see it used extensively in any enclosed area or cap areas and sometimes even in the open field.

This idea though that removing AoE caps will make ball groups spread out is pure nonsense because in enclosed areas you can't spread out unlike the open field. Also taking objectives require you to ball up inside the ring to take it.

Simply removing the AoE caps without changing the underlying mechanics first will just result in more of the same except death will come faster for more players.

Is this what you consider compelling game play? Because running around in ball groups spamming AoEs hoping my groups AoEs kill theirs first is not what i consider fun. AoE should be useful when used tactically in certain situations but NOT spammed in every encounter until the cows come home (especially when taking objectives).

IF the underlying mechanics (to either AoE itself or how objectives are captured) are changed AND working as intended then we can discuss removing AoE caps.

I've been down this road before in other games and you don't have to be a genius to figure out how it will end if you simply remove AoE caps without fixing the underlying issues that cause a ball up in the first place.

People aren't balling up because AOE is too strong. If AOE was too strong, people wouldn't ball up because they'd die easily. People ball up because it's the best way to survive due to game mechanics favoring that type of behavior. ZOS wants to encourage people to spread out, but everything they've done and that I've heard in this thread tells me they want the exact opposite.

The underlying issue is AOE caps and don't forget that. That's the main issue at the heart of this discussion. When I come up on some lazy group just standing around afk and we drop a few ultimates and AOE them, and only half of the group dies while the other half lives solely due to RNG factors you have a problem. That's when you're not promoting tactical gameplay. I don't go, "oh man I wish my volley hit harder.. they really need to buff ranged AOE's", or "wow why couldn't we single target that afk group down fast enough they weren't even paying attention". If you want people to spread out more than they do now and encourage smart play there's really only one way to do it. Anything else is just dodging the issue trying to keep it together with bandaids here and there.

You say it will bring death faster and for more players. I say bring it on. People should die faster if they play stupid. People that continue playing in the same fashion will have a hard time. Good luck to them. I remember the days when you used to have to move out of AOE's, and now people just stack up and face tank them. ZOS has moved the game in a direction where we can't go back to that without removing AOE caps. They've shown by increasing the cap that they should be open to this idea. The only other option would be to rebalance the game with softcaps, but that's not happening because of the champion system.

People don't ball up for the single reason of reducing damage and you must know that.

People ball up to reduce damage with the AoE cap but they also do so for the all these reasons as well:

-People ball up to maximize damage/kills with AoE
-People ball up to get AoE purges/heals/shields
-Objective capturing requires players to ball up inside a ring

If you simply raise AoE caps without addressing ALL theses underlying issues that encourage balling up then people will still ball up not because of stupid game play but because the mechanics encourage and in some cases dictate it.

There are plenty of ways to try to address these issues before making an already strong mechanic even stronger particularly one that is already a major contributor in the first place.

So how exactly does removal of AoE caps make them stronger for the stacked up group? Only in the case their enemy does the same. And you don't want to argue now the fight should take longer rather than shorter when both raids make themselves as vulnerable as possible, do you?
In every other scenario, AoE caps are only helping the group that already is spamming PBAoE. Maybe it's a good thing to buff ranged AoEs for example, but it makes little sense doing it before removing the AoE caps. Because that has to happen anyway.

Sureshawt

ToRelax wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Erondil wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

andypappb16_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I hate to break it to everyone, but @Wrobel has already answered us and he told us why AoE caps are staying. He just didn't do it explicitly.

@Joy_Division
I clearly Missed that..where/what did he say...

Wrobel wrote in this thread:

We want PvP fights to be tactical, involving player positioning as a key element of engagements. We don’t want 2 huge masses of players mindlessly bumping into each other while spamming 1 ability. Part of the issue currently is that damaging PBAoE abilities are very powerful, and there are not a lot of effective options to combat this strategy from range. The two avenues of attack we are perusing are buffing siege weapons and investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players.

Wheeler is making significant adjustments to siege weapons. You can view and comment on these new changes here. As siege already hits an unlimited number of targets and has an effective cooldown, it’s the perfect tool to get players to spread out.

On the ability side we’ve got a number of changes planned. PBAoE abilities such as Steel Tornado and purge are much too powerful and cause players to want to stack together to make sure they can all hit the same targets and be purged by the same ally. We’ll be reducing the radius of Steel Tornado so it’s not so much more effective at dealing AoE damage relative to the other abilities in the game. Also, we are reducing the initial damage of Magicka Detonation so it’s less effective vs a single target. To compensate, both the bonus damage per target and the max size of this bonus is increasing. In addition to this we’re looking into making other ranged class abilities deal effective AoE damage.

The implication is that they recognize PBAoE is already to strong and encourages stacking/blobbing. Thus they would not make it stronger by raising the caps. They have other solutions in mind for blob/stack busting that do not involve raising AoE caps.

Thankfully we have objective Devs looking out the best interests of the game for everyone versus some players that want to further increase their ability to mindless spam PBAoE and mow down large groups of players.

What you and many others don't understand (including @Wrobel ) is that the removal of dmg AoE caps will incentivize people to spread out. Right now a group of 24 is better of to stack so they can benefit from 37.5% damages reduction (its more mitigation than any ultimate of the game) with AoE smart heals (the 6 taking 100% damages will always be healed first). Now if you remove dmg AoE caps, those groups will want to spread out a bit more, to balance the damage increase. Thus, single target will become more important because an AoE wont hit more than 6 people as often as now. With a removal of AoE caps, you will most likely see AoE less used because people wont stack as much as now, and an AoE is not worth using if it hits less than 4 people.
I will repeat once again, dmg AoE doesnt encourage stacking alone, dmg AoE are meant to do the contrary (look at daoc) but the virtual 37.5% mitigation does. Simply because it makes AoE heals stronger than AoE damages.

I've experienced games where PBAoE without caps has dominated PvP play. Everyone running around in bomb groups mindlessly spamming uncapped AoE ...rinse ....repeat...boring.

Fortunately we dont have this today!

The only true fun fights I have in this game right now are in the open field where AoE button mash groups can be mostly avoided. Inside enclosed areas well that's where the button mashing AoE lagfest hell starts.

Which is why I support the efforts of ZoS to tone down PBAoE mechanics as it is too strong already and not make it worse by simply removing the caps. I know you would like to just run around and kill even larger numbers of players faster with mindless AoE button mashing but thankfully it isn't going to happen.

You missed his point, or you're just avoiding it.

You're trying to say uncapping AOE will lead to something. The reality is though, that "something" is already here, and it's here specifically because of AOE caps. I don't understand how people making this argument figured out how to use these forums in the first place. It's basic common sense.

I guess common sense isn't so common. I wanna fix the underlying problem of AoE being the dominant tactic that encourages balling up as does ZoS.

I get that it is already here (I stated that already and so does ZoS). I see it used extensively in any enclosed area or cap areas and sometimes even in the open field.

This idea though that removing AoE caps will make ball groups spread out is pure nonsense because in enclosed areas you can't spread out unlike the open field. Also taking objectives require you to ball up inside the ring to take it.

Simply removing the AoE caps without changing the underlying mechanics first will just result in more of the same except death will come faster for more players.

Is this what you consider compelling game play? Because running around in ball groups spamming AoEs hoping my groups AoEs kill theirs first is not what i consider fun. AoE should be useful when used tactically in certain situations but NOT spammed in every encounter until the cows come home (especially when taking objectives).

IF the underlying mechanics (to either AoE itself or how objectives are captured) are changed AND working as intended then we can discuss removing AoE caps.

I've been down this road before in other games and you don't have to be a genius to figure out how it will end if you simply remove AoE caps without fixing the underlying issues that cause a ball up in the first place.

People aren't balling up because AOE is too strong. If AOE was too strong, people wouldn't ball up because they'd die easily. People ball up because it's the best way to survive due to game mechanics favoring that type of behavior. ZOS wants to encourage people to spread out, but everything they've done and that I've heard in this thread tells me they want the exact opposite.

The underlying issue is AOE caps and don't forget that. That's the main issue at the heart of this discussion. When I come up on some lazy group just standing around afk and we drop a few ultimates and AOE them, and only half of the group dies while the other half lives solely due to RNG factors you have a problem. That's when you're not promoting tactical gameplay. I don't go, "oh man I wish my volley hit harder.. they really need to buff ranged AOE's", or "wow why couldn't we single target that afk group down fast enough they weren't even paying attention". If you want people to spread out more than they do now and encourage smart play there's really only one way to do it. Anything else is just dodging the issue trying to keep it together with bandaids here and there.

You say it will bring death faster and for more players. I say bring it on. People should die faster if they play stupid. People that continue playing in the same fashion will have a hard time. Good luck to them. I remember the days when you used to have to move out of AOE's, and now people just stack up and face tank them. ZOS has moved the game in a direction where we can't go back to that without removing AOE caps. They've shown by increasing the cap that they should be open to this idea. The only other option would be to rebalance the game with softcaps, but that's not happening because of the champion system.

People don't ball up for the single reason of reducing damage and you must know that.

People ball up to reduce damage with the AoE cap but they also do so for the all these reasons as well:

-People ball up to maximize damage/kills with AoE
-People ball up to get AoE purges/heals/shields
-Objective capturing requires players to ball up inside a ring

If you simply raise AoE caps without addressing ALL theses underlying issues that encourage balling up then people will still ball up not because of stupid game play but because the mechanics encourage and in some cases dictate it.

There are plenty of ways to try to address these issues before making an already strong mechanic even stronger particularly one that is already a major contributor in the first place.

So how exactly does removal of AoE caps make them stronger for the stacked up group? Only in the case their enemy does the same. And you don't want to argue now the fight should take longer rather than shorter when both raids make themselves as vulnerable as possible, do you?
In every other scenario, AoE caps are only helping the group that already is spamming PBAoE. Maybe it's a good thing to buff ranged AoEs for example, but it makes little sense doing it before removing the AoE caps. Because that has to happen anyway.

Removing AoE caps makes all AoE mechanics stronger in general. I'm not sure how anyone could even fathom that it wouldn't. I never said it would make them stronger for the stacked group per say. Now obviously more players spamming AoE equals more overall damage output but that's a result of multiplicative math.

What you all seem to gloss over every time is the fact that removing the AoE cap will not force people to spread out because they will still ball up for these reasons which raising the cap does not resolve.

-People ball up to maximize damage/kills with AoE
-People ball up to get AoE purges/heals/shields
-Objective capturing requires players to ball up inside a ring


I mean is the issue "We wan't to be able to do damage to more people with AoE spam'
or
is the issue 'We want to encourage players to spread out and not ball up'

I'm starting to sense that people in favor of raising AoE caps are really not interested in resolving the balling up issue but instead just want mash a single button to kill large numbers of players faster to feed their online egos.

ToRelax

Sureshawt wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Erondil wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

andypappb16_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I hate to break it to everyone, but @Wrobel has already answered us and he told us why AoE caps are staying. He just didn't do it explicitly.

@Joy_Division
I clearly Missed that..where/what did he say...

Wrobel wrote in this thread:

We want PvP fights to be tactical, involving player positioning as a key element of engagements. We don’t want 2 huge masses of players mindlessly bumping into each other while spamming 1 ability. Part of the issue currently is that damaging PBAoE abilities are very powerful, and there are not a lot of effective options to combat this strategy from range. The two avenues of attack we are perusing are buffing siege weapons and investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players.

Wheeler is making significant adjustments to siege weapons. You can view and comment on these new changes here. As siege already hits an unlimited number of targets and has an effective cooldown, it’s the perfect tool to get players to spread out.

On the ability side we’ve got a number of changes planned. PBAoE abilities such as Steel Tornado and purge are much too powerful and cause players to want to stack together to make sure they can all hit the same targets and be purged by the same ally. We’ll be reducing the radius of Steel Tornado so it’s not so much more effective at dealing AoE damage relative to the other abilities in the game. Also, we are reducing the initial damage of Magicka Detonation so it’s less effective vs a single target. To compensate, both the bonus damage per target and the max size of this bonus is increasing. In addition to this we’re looking into making other ranged class abilities deal effective AoE damage.

The implication is that they recognize PBAoE is already to strong and encourages stacking/blobbing. Thus they would not make it stronger by raising the caps. They have other solutions in mind for blob/stack busting that do not involve raising AoE caps.

Thankfully we have objective Devs looking out the best interests of the game for everyone versus some players that want to further increase their ability to mindless spam PBAoE and mow down large groups of players.

What you and many others don't understand (including @Wrobel ) is that the removal of dmg AoE caps will incentivize people to spread out. Right now a group of 24 is better of to stack so they can benefit from 37.5% damages reduction (its more mitigation than any ultimate of the game) with AoE smart heals (the 6 taking 100% damages will always be healed first). Now if you remove dmg AoE caps, those groups will want to spread out a bit more, to balance the damage increase. Thus, single target will become more important because an AoE wont hit more than 6 people as often as now. With a removal of AoE caps, you will most likely see AoE less used because people wont stack as much as now, and an AoE is not worth using if it hits less than 4 people.
I will repeat once again, dmg AoE doesnt encourage stacking alone, dmg AoE are meant to do the contrary (look at daoc) but the virtual 37.5% mitigation does. Simply because it makes AoE heals stronger than AoE damages.

I've experienced games where PBAoE without caps has dominated PvP play. Everyone running around in bomb groups mindlessly spamming uncapped AoE ...rinse ....repeat...boring.

Fortunately we dont have this today!

The only true fun fights I have in this game right now are in the open field where AoE button mash groups can be mostly avoided. Inside enclosed areas well that's where the button mashing AoE lagfest hell starts.

Which is why I support the efforts of ZoS to tone down PBAoE mechanics as it is too strong already and not make it worse by simply removing the caps. I know you would like to just run around and kill even larger numbers of players faster with mindless AoE button mashing but thankfully it isn't going to happen.

You missed his point, or you're just avoiding it.

You're trying to say uncapping AOE will lead to something. The reality is though, that "something" is already here, and it's here specifically because of AOE caps. I don't understand how people making this argument figured out how to use these forums in the first place. It's basic common sense.

I guess common sense isn't so common. I wanna fix the underlying problem of AoE being the dominant tactic that encourages balling up as does ZoS.

I get that it is already here (I stated that already and so does ZoS). I see it used extensively in any enclosed area or cap areas and sometimes even in the open field.

This idea though that removing AoE caps will make ball groups spread out is pure nonsense because in enclosed areas you can't spread out unlike the open field. Also taking objectives require you to ball up inside the ring to take it.

Simply removing the AoE caps without changing the underlying mechanics first will just result in more of the same except death will come faster for more players.

Is this what you consider compelling game play? Because running around in ball groups spamming AoEs hoping my groups AoEs kill theirs first is not what i consider fun. AoE should be useful when used tactically in certain situations but NOT spammed in every encounter until the cows come home (especially when taking objectives).

IF the underlying mechanics (to either AoE itself or how objectives are captured) are changed AND working as intended then we can discuss removing AoE caps.

I've been down this road before in other games and you don't have to be a genius to figure out how it will end if you simply remove AoE caps without fixing the underlying issues that cause a ball up in the first place.

People aren't balling up because AOE is too strong. If AOE was too strong, people wouldn't ball up because they'd die easily. People ball up because it's the best way to survive due to game mechanics favoring that type of behavior. ZOS wants to encourage people to spread out, but everything they've done and that I've heard in this thread tells me they want the exact opposite.

The underlying issue is AOE caps and don't forget that. That's the main issue at the heart of this discussion. When I come up on some lazy group just standing around afk and we drop a few ultimates and AOE them, and only half of the group dies while the other half lives solely due to RNG factors you have a problem. That's when you're not promoting tactical gameplay. I don't go, "oh man I wish my volley hit harder.. they really need to buff ranged AOE's", or "wow why couldn't we single target that afk group down fast enough they weren't even paying attention". If you want people to spread out more than they do now and encourage smart play there's really only one way to do it. Anything else is just dodging the issue trying to keep it together with bandaids here and there.

You say it will bring death faster and for more players. I say bring it on. People should die faster if they play stupid. People that continue playing in the same fashion will have a hard time. Good luck to them. I remember the days when you used to have to move out of AOE's, and now people just stack up and face tank them. ZOS has moved the game in a direction where we can't go back to that without removing AOE caps. They've shown by increasing the cap that they should be open to this idea. The only other option would be to rebalance the game with softcaps, but that's not happening because of the champion system.

People don't ball up for the single reason of reducing damage and you must know that.

People ball up to reduce damage with the AoE cap but they also do so for the all these reasons as well:

-People ball up to maximize damage/kills with AoE
-People ball up to get AoE purges/heals/shields
-Objective capturing requires players to ball up inside a ring

If you simply raise AoE caps without addressing ALL theses underlying issues that encourage balling up then people will still ball up not because of stupid game play but because the mechanics encourage and in some cases dictate it.

There are plenty of ways to try to address these issues before making an already strong mechanic even stronger particularly one that is already a major contributor in the first place.

So how exactly does removal of AoE caps make them stronger for the stacked up group? Only in the case their enemy does the same. And you don't want to argue now the fight should take longer rather than shorter when both raids make themselves as vulnerable as possible, do you?
In every other scenario, AoE caps are only helping the group that already is spamming PBAoE. Maybe it's a good thing to buff ranged AoEs for example, but it makes little sense doing it before removing the AoE caps. Because that has to happen anyway.

Removing AoE caps makes all AoE mechanics stronger in general. I'm not sure how anyone could even fathom that it wouldn't. I never said it would make them stronger for the stacked group per say. Now obviously more players spamming AoE equals more overall damage output but that's a result of multiplicative math.

What you all seem to gloss over every time is the fact that removing the AoE cap will not force people to spread out because they will still ball up for these reasons which raising the cap does not resolve.

-People ball up to maximize damage/kills with AoE
-People ball up to get AoE purges/heals/shields
-Objective capturing requires players to ball up inside a ring


I mean is the issue "We wan't to be able to do damage to more people with AoE spam'
or
is the issue 'We want to encourage players to spread out and not ball up'

I'm starting to sense that people in favor of raising AoE caps are really not interested in resolving the balling up issue but instead just want mash a single button to kill large numbers of players faster to feed their online egos.

You mention 3 points that have been talked about a lot already and in part will definitely be addressed. Removing AoE caps just should be among the first changes, because they more than any other mechanic give an unfair advantage to a specific playstyle.

Sureshawt

ToRelax wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Erondil wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

andypappb16_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I hate to break it to everyone, but @Wrobel has already answered us and he told us why AoE caps are staying. He just didn't do it explicitly.

@Joy_Division
I clearly Missed that..where/what did he say...

Wrobel wrote in this thread:

We want PvP fights to be tactical, involving player positioning as a key element of engagements. We don’t want 2 huge masses of players mindlessly bumping into each other while spamming 1 ability. Part of the issue currently is that damaging PBAoE abilities are very powerful, and there are not a lot of effective options to combat this strategy from range. The two avenues of attack we are perusing are buffing siege weapons and investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players.

Wheeler is making significant adjustments to siege weapons. You can view and comment on these new changes here. As siege already hits an unlimited number of targets and has an effective cooldown, it’s the perfect tool to get players to spread out.

On the ability side we’ve got a number of changes planned. PBAoE abilities such as Steel Tornado and purge are much too powerful and cause players to want to stack together to make sure they can all hit the same targets and be purged by the same ally. We’ll be reducing the radius of Steel Tornado so it’s not so much more effective at dealing AoE damage relative to the other abilities in the game. Also, we are reducing the initial damage of Magicka Detonation so it’s less effective vs a single target. To compensate, both the bonus damage per target and the max size of this bonus is increasing. In addition to this we’re looking into making other ranged class abilities deal effective AoE damage.

The implication is that they recognize PBAoE is already to strong and encourages stacking/blobbing. Thus they would not make it stronger by raising the caps. They have other solutions in mind for blob/stack busting that do not involve raising AoE caps.

Thankfully we have objective Devs looking out the best interests of the game for everyone versus some players that want to further increase their ability to mindless spam PBAoE and mow down large groups of players.

What you and many others don't understand (including @Wrobel ) is that the removal of dmg AoE caps will incentivize people to spread out. Right now a group of 24 is better of to stack so they can benefit from 37.5% damages reduction (its more mitigation than any ultimate of the game) with AoE smart heals (the 6 taking 100% damages will always be healed first). Now if you remove dmg AoE caps, those groups will want to spread out a bit more, to balance the damage increase. Thus, single target will become more important because an AoE wont hit more than 6 people as often as now. With a removal of AoE caps, you will most likely see AoE less used because people wont stack as much as now, and an AoE is not worth using if it hits less than 4 people.
I will repeat once again, dmg AoE doesnt encourage stacking alone, dmg AoE are meant to do the contrary (look at daoc) but the virtual 37.5% mitigation does. Simply because it makes AoE heals stronger than AoE damages.

I've experienced games where PBAoE without caps has dominated PvP play. Everyone running around in bomb groups mindlessly spamming uncapped AoE ...rinse ....repeat...boring.

Fortunately we dont have this today!

The only true fun fights I have in this game right now are in the open field where AoE button mash groups can be mostly avoided. Inside enclosed areas well that's where the button mashing AoE lagfest hell starts.

Which is why I support the efforts of ZoS to tone down PBAoE mechanics as it is too strong already and not make it worse by simply removing the caps. I know you would like to just run around and kill even larger numbers of players faster with mindless AoE button mashing but thankfully it isn't going to happen.

You missed his point, or you're just avoiding it.

You're trying to say uncapping AOE will lead to something. The reality is though, that "something" is already here, and it's here specifically because of AOE caps. I don't understand how people making this argument figured out how to use these forums in the first place. It's basic common sense.

I guess common sense isn't so common. I wanna fix the underlying problem of AoE being the dominant tactic that encourages balling up as does ZoS.

I get that it is already here (I stated that already and so does ZoS). I see it used extensively in any enclosed area or cap areas and sometimes even in the open field.

This idea though that removing AoE caps will make ball groups spread out is pure nonsense because in enclosed areas you can't spread out unlike the open field. Also taking objectives require you to ball up inside the ring to take it.

Simply removing the AoE caps without changing the underlying mechanics first will just result in more of the same except death will come faster for more players.

Is this what you consider compelling game play? Because running around in ball groups spamming AoEs hoping my groups AoEs kill theirs first is not what i consider fun. AoE should be useful when used tactically in certain situations but NOT spammed in every encounter until the cows come home (especially when taking objectives).

IF the underlying mechanics (to either AoE itself or how objectives are captured) are changed AND working as intended then we can discuss removing AoE caps.

I've been down this road before in other games and you don't have to be a genius to figure out how it will end if you simply remove AoE caps without fixing the underlying issues that cause a ball up in the first place.

People aren't balling up because AOE is too strong. If AOE was too strong, people wouldn't ball up because they'd die easily. People ball up because it's the best way to survive due to game mechanics favoring that type of behavior. ZOS wants to encourage people to spread out, but everything they've done and that I've heard in this thread tells me they want the exact opposite.

The underlying issue is AOE caps and don't forget that. That's the main issue at the heart of this discussion. When I come up on some lazy group just standing around afk and we drop a few ultimates and AOE them, and only half of the group dies while the other half lives solely due to RNG factors you have a problem. That's when you're not promoting tactical gameplay. I don't go, "oh man I wish my volley hit harder.. they really need to buff ranged AOE's", or "wow why couldn't we single target that afk group down fast enough they weren't even paying attention". If you want people to spread out more than they do now and encourage smart play there's really only one way to do it. Anything else is just dodging the issue trying to keep it together with bandaids here and there.

You say it will bring death faster and for more players. I say bring it on. People should die faster if they play stupid. People that continue playing in the same fashion will have a hard time. Good luck to them. I remember the days when you used to have to move out of AOE's, and now people just stack up and face tank them. ZOS has moved the game in a direction where we can't go back to that without removing AOE caps. They've shown by increasing the cap that they should be open to this idea. The only other option would be to rebalance the game with softcaps, but that's not happening because of the champion system.

People don't ball up for the single reason of reducing damage and you must know that.

People ball up to reduce damage with the AoE cap but they also do so for the all these reasons as well:

-People ball up to maximize damage/kills with AoE
-People ball up to get AoE purges/heals/shields
-Objective capturing requires players to ball up inside a ring

If you simply raise AoE caps without addressing ALL theses underlying issues that encourage balling up then people will still ball up not because of stupid game play but because the mechanics encourage and in some cases dictate it.

There are plenty of ways to try to address these issues before making an already strong mechanic even stronger particularly one that is already a major contributor in the first place.

So how exactly does removal of AoE caps make them stronger for the stacked up group? Only in the case their enemy does the same. And you don't want to argue now the fight should take longer rather than shorter when both raids make themselves as vulnerable as possible, do you?
In every other scenario, AoE caps are only helping the group that already is spamming PBAoE. Maybe it's a good thing to buff ranged AoEs for example, but it makes little sense doing it before removing the AoE caps. Because that has to happen anyway.

Removing AoE caps makes all AoE mechanics stronger in general. I'm not sure how anyone could even fathom that it wouldn't. I never said it would make them stronger for the stacked group per say. Now obviously more players spamming AoE equals more overall damage output but that's a result of multiplicative math.

What you all seem to gloss over every time is the fact that removing the AoE cap will not force people to spread out because they will still ball up for these reasons which raising the cap does not resolve.

-People ball up to maximize damage/kills with AoE
-People ball up to get AoE purges/heals/shields
-Objective capturing requires players to ball up inside a ring


I mean is the issue "We wan't to be able to do damage to more people with AoE spam'
or
is the issue 'We want to encourage players to spread out and not ball up'

I'm starting to sense that people in favor of raising AoE caps are really not interested in resolving the balling up issue but instead just want mash a single button to kill large numbers of players faster to feed their online egos.

You mention 3 points that have been talked about a lot already and in part will definitely be addressed. Removing AoE caps just should be among the first changes, because they more than any other mechanic give an unfair advantage to a specific playstyle.

So you propose to remove the AoE caps first before addressing those 3 points....seriously? That is the definition of putting the cart before the horse.

I would love to have links to these discussions on all these 3 points that you claim have been talked about a lot and will be addressed. Other then the ones ZoS developers have addressed in this thread which they plan to implement BEFORE any raising of the AoE caps I haven't seen any.

I have not seen anything regarding changing up the tight circles required to capture objectives but I could have missed it.

MisterBigglesworth

1. Yes, remove the AOE damage cap (or at the very least raise it to 100% damage on up to 60 targets, since we know they are already capable of making this calculation).

2. Change all AOE heals to be 3-second HOTs rather than instanteous. These would be buffs and would not stack. In addition, give each AOE heal a total amount it can heal for and divide that evenly among targets hit. Therefore a 10k AOE heal that hits 2 targets heals them for 5k... but a 10k AOE heal that hits 6 targets only heals each person for 1.6k. This would further reward smaller groups by given them slightly better sustain than a larger group (remember, large group would still have more people healing, but it would not scale up linearly, i.e. 6x more healers would NOT equate 6x the amount of healing, but slightly less, maybe 4x the amount of healing)

Essiaga

Sureshawt wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Erondil wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

andypappb16_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I hate to break it to everyone, but @Wrobel has already answered us and he told us why AoE caps are staying. He just didn't do it explicitly.

@Joy_Division
I clearly Missed that..where/what did he say...

Wrobel wrote in this thread:

We want PvP fights to be tactical, involving player positioning as a key element of engagements. We don’t want 2 huge masses of players mindlessly bumping into each other while spamming 1 ability. Part of the issue currently is that damaging PBAoE abilities are very powerful, and there are not a lot of effective options to combat this strategy from range. The two avenues of attack we are perusing are buffing siege weapons and investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players.

Wheeler is making significant adjustments to siege weapons. You can view and comment on these new changes here. As siege already hits an unlimited number of targets and has an effective cooldown, it’s the perfect tool to get players to spread out.

On the ability side we’ve got a number of changes planned. PBAoE abilities such as Steel Tornado and purge are much too powerful and cause players to want to stack together to make sure they can all hit the same targets and be purged by the same ally. We’ll be reducing the radius of Steel Tornado so it’s not so much more effective at dealing AoE damage relative to the other abilities in the game. Also, we are reducing the initial damage of Magicka Detonation so it’s less effective vs a single target. To compensate, both the bonus damage per target and the max size of this bonus is increasing. In addition to this we’re looking into making other ranged class abilities deal effective AoE damage.

The implication is that they recognize PBAoE is already to strong and encourages stacking/blobbing. Thus they would not make it stronger by raising the caps. They have other solutions in mind for blob/stack busting that do not involve raising AoE caps.

Thankfully we have objective Devs looking out the best interests of the game for everyone versus some players that want to further increase their ability to mindless spam PBAoE and mow down large groups of players.

What you and many others don't understand (including @Wrobel ) is that the removal of dmg AoE caps will incentivize people to spread out. Right now a group of 24 is better of to stack so they can benefit from 37.5% damages reduction (its more mitigation than any ultimate of the game) with AoE smart heals (the 6 taking 100% damages will always be healed first). Now if you remove dmg AoE caps, those groups will want to spread out a bit more, to balance the damage increase. Thus, single target will become more important because an AoE wont hit more than 6 people as often as now. With a removal of AoE caps, you will most likely see AoE less used because people wont stack as much as now, and an AoE is not worth using if it hits less than 4 people.
I will repeat once again, dmg AoE doesnt encourage stacking alone, dmg AoE are meant to do the contrary (look at daoc) but the virtual 37.5% mitigation does. Simply because it makes AoE heals stronger than AoE damages.

I've experienced games where PBAoE without caps has dominated PvP play. Everyone running around in bomb groups mindlessly spamming uncapped AoE ...rinse ....repeat...boring.

Fortunately we dont have this today!

The only true fun fights I have in this game right now are in the open field where AoE button mash groups can be mostly avoided. Inside enclosed areas well that's where the button mashing AoE lagfest hell starts.

Which is why I support the efforts of ZoS to tone down PBAoE mechanics as it is too strong already and not make it worse by simply removing the caps. I know you would like to just run around and kill even larger numbers of players faster with mindless AoE button mashing but thankfully it isn't going to happen.

You missed his point, or you're just avoiding it.

You're trying to say uncapping AOE will lead to something. The reality is though, that "something" is already here, and it's here specifically because of AOE caps. I don't understand how people making this argument figured out how to use these forums in the first place. It's basic common sense.

I guess common sense isn't so common. I wanna fix the underlying problem of AoE being the dominant tactic that encourages balling up as does ZoS.

I get that it is already here (I stated that already and so does ZoS). I see it used extensively in any enclosed area or cap areas and sometimes even in the open field.

This idea though that removing AoE caps will make ball groups spread out is pure nonsense because in enclosed areas you can't spread out unlike the open field. Also taking objectives require you to ball up inside the ring to take it.

Simply removing the AoE caps without changing the underlying mechanics first will just result in more of the same except death will come faster for more players.

Is this what you consider compelling game play? Because running around in ball groups spamming AoEs hoping my groups AoEs kill theirs first is not what i consider fun. AoE should be useful when used tactically in certain situations but NOT spammed in every encounter until the cows come home (especially when taking objectives).

IF the underlying mechanics (to either AoE itself or how objectives are captured) are changed AND working as intended then we can discuss removing AoE caps.

I've been down this road before in other games and you don't have to be a genius to figure out how it will end if you simply remove AoE caps without fixing the underlying issues that cause a ball up in the first place.

People aren't balling up because AOE is too strong. If AOE was too strong, people wouldn't ball up because they'd die easily. People ball up because it's the best way to survive due to game mechanics favoring that type of behavior. ZOS wants to encourage people to spread out, but everything they've done and that I've heard in this thread tells me they want the exact opposite.

The underlying issue is AOE caps and don't forget that. That's the main issue at the heart of this discussion. When I come up on some lazy group just standing around afk and we drop a few ultimates and AOE them, and only half of the group dies while the other half lives solely due to RNG factors you have a problem. That's when you're not promoting tactical gameplay. I don't go, "oh man I wish my volley hit harder.. they really need to buff ranged AOE's", or "wow why couldn't we single target that afk group down fast enough they weren't even paying attention". If you want people to spread out more than they do now and encourage smart play there's really only one way to do it. Anything else is just dodging the issue trying to keep it together with bandaids here and there.

You say it will bring death faster and for more players. I say bring it on. People should die faster if they play stupid. People that continue playing in the same fashion will have a hard time. Good luck to them. I remember the days when you used to have to move out of AOE's, and now people just stack up and face tank them. ZOS has moved the game in a direction where we can't go back to that without removing AOE caps. They've shown by increasing the cap that they should be open to this idea. The only other option would be to rebalance the game with softcaps, but that's not happening because of the champion system.

People don't ball up for the single reason of reducing damage and you must know that.

People ball up to reduce damage with the AoE cap but they also do so for the all these reasons as well:

-People ball up to maximize damage/kills with AoE
-People ball up to get AoE purges/heals/shields
-Objective capturing requires players to ball up inside a ring

If you simply raise AoE caps without addressing ALL theses underlying issues that encourage balling up then people will still ball up not because of stupid game play but because the mechanics encourage and in some cases dictate it.

There are plenty of ways to try to address these issues before making an already strong mechanic even stronger particularly one that is already a major contributor in the first place.

So how exactly does removal of AoE caps make them stronger for the stacked up group? Only in the case their enemy does the same. And you don't want to argue now the fight should take longer rather than shorter when both raids make themselves as vulnerable as possible, do you?
In every other scenario, AoE caps are only helping the group that already is spamming PBAoE. Maybe it's a good thing to buff ranged AoEs for example, but it makes little sense doing it before removing the AoE caps. Because that has to happen anyway.

Removing AoE caps makes all AoE mechanics stronger in general. I'm not sure how anyone could even fathom that it wouldn't. I never said it would make them stronger for the stacked group per say. Now obviously more players spamming AoE equals more overall damage output but that's a result of multiplicative math.

What you all seem to gloss over every time is the fact that removing the AoE cap will not force people to spread out because they will still ball up for these reasons which raising the cap does not resolve.

-People ball up to maximize damage/kills with AoE
-People ball up to get AoE purges/heals/shields
-Objective capturing requires players to ball up inside a ring


I mean is the issue "We wan't to be able to do damage to more people with AoE spam'
or
is the issue 'We want to encourage players to spread out and not ball up'

I'm starting to sense that people in favor of raising AoE caps are really not interested in resolving the balling up issue but instead just want mash a single button to kill large numbers of players faster to feed their online egos.

I'm not disagreeing that there is a larger issue but what is it that you think it is and how do you propose fixing it?

I'd say its friendly collision. If you can't pack 60 people in AOE then AOE caps are moot. The issue is that you CAN. I don't think ZOS can/will add collision therefore remove AOE caps.

I also thing Alliance Skills prop up the ball group and the fact that you can pack the entire campaign in the same spot only make them more powerful.

Remove Alliance Skills and AOE caps ... Or add friendly collision.

What do you got @Sureshawt?

Manoekin

Sureshawt wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

ToRelax wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Erondil wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

andypappb16_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I hate to break it to everyone, but @Wrobel has already answered us and he told us why AoE caps are staying. He just didn't do it explicitly.

@Joy_Division
I clearly Missed that..where/what did he say...

Wrobel wrote in this thread:

We want PvP fights to be tactical, involving player positioning as a key element of engagements. We don’t want 2 huge masses of players mindlessly bumping into each other while spamming 1 ability. Part of the issue currently is that damaging PBAoE abilities are very powerful, and there are not a lot of effective options to combat this strategy from range. The two avenues of attack we are perusing are buffing siege weapons and investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players.

Wheeler is making significant adjustments to siege weapons. You can view and comment on these new changes here. As siege already hits an unlimited number of targets and has an effective cooldown, it’s the perfect tool to get players to spread out.

On the ability side we’ve got a number of changes planned. PBAoE abilities such as Steel Tornado and purge are much too powerful and cause players to want to stack together to make sure they can all hit the same targets and be purged by the same ally. We’ll be reducing the radius of Steel Tornado so it’s not so much more effective at dealing AoE damage relative to the other abilities in the game. Also, we are reducing the initial damage of Magicka Detonation so it’s less effective vs a single target. To compensate, both the bonus damage per target and the max size of this bonus is increasing. In addition to this we’re looking into making other ranged class abilities deal effective AoE damage.

The implication is that they recognize PBAoE is already to strong and encourages stacking/blobbing. Thus they would not make it stronger by raising the caps. They have other solutions in mind for blob/stack busting that do not involve raising AoE caps.

Thankfully we have objective Devs looking out the best interests of the game for everyone versus some players that want to further increase their ability to mindless spam PBAoE and mow down large groups of players.

What you and many others don't understand (including @Wrobel ) is that the removal of dmg AoE caps will incentivize people to spread out. Right now a group of 24 is better of to stack so they can benefit from 37.5% damages reduction (its more mitigation than any ultimate of the game) with AoE smart heals (the 6 taking 100% damages will always be healed first). Now if you remove dmg AoE caps, those groups will want to spread out a bit more, to balance the damage increase. Thus, single target will become more important because an AoE wont hit more than 6 people as often as now. With a removal of AoE caps, you will most likely see AoE less used because people wont stack as much as now, and an AoE is not worth using if it hits less than 4 people.
I will repeat once again, dmg AoE doesnt encourage stacking alone, dmg AoE are meant to do the contrary (look at daoc) but the virtual 37.5% mitigation does. Simply because it makes AoE heals stronger than AoE damages.

I've experienced games where PBAoE without caps has dominated PvP play. Everyone running around in bomb groups mindlessly spamming uncapped AoE ...rinse ....repeat...boring.

Fortunately we dont have this today!

The only true fun fights I have in this game right now are in the open field where AoE button mash groups can be mostly avoided. Inside enclosed areas well that's where the button mashing AoE lagfest hell starts.

Which is why I support the efforts of ZoS to tone down PBAoE mechanics as it is too strong already and not make it worse by simply removing the caps. I know you would like to just run around and kill even larger numbers of players faster with mindless AoE button mashing but thankfully it isn't going to happen.

You missed his point, or you're just avoiding it.

You're trying to say uncapping AOE will lead to something. The reality is though, that "something" is already here, and it's here specifically because of AOE caps. I don't understand how people making this argument figured out how to use these forums in the first place. It's basic common sense.

I guess common sense isn't so common. I wanna fix the underlying problem of AoE being the dominant tactic that encourages balling up as does ZoS.

I get that it is already here (I stated that already and so does ZoS). I see it used extensively in any enclosed area or cap areas and sometimes even in the open field.

This idea though that removing AoE caps will make ball groups spread out is pure nonsense because in enclosed areas you can't spread out unlike the open field. Also taking objectives require you to ball up inside the ring to take it.

Simply removing the AoE caps without changing the underlying mechanics first will just result in more of the same except death will come faster for more players.

Is this what you consider compelling game play? Because running around in ball groups spamming AoEs hoping my groups AoEs kill theirs first is not what i consider fun. AoE should be useful when used tactically in certain situations but NOT spammed in every encounter until the cows come home (especially when taking objectives).

IF the underlying mechanics (to either AoE itself or how objectives are captured) are changed AND working as intended then we can discuss removing AoE caps.

I've been down this road before in other games and you don't have to be a genius to figure out how it will end if you simply remove AoE caps without fixing the underlying issues that cause a ball up in the first place.

People aren't balling up because AOE is too strong. If AOE was too strong, people wouldn't ball up because they'd die easily. People ball up because it's the best way to survive due to game mechanics favoring that type of behavior. ZOS wants to encourage people to spread out, but everything they've done and that I've heard in this thread tells me they want the exact opposite.

The underlying issue is AOE caps and don't forget that. That's the main issue at the heart of this discussion. When I come up on some lazy group just standing around afk and we drop a few ultimates and AOE them, and only half of the group dies while the other half lives solely due to RNG factors you have a problem. That's when you're not promoting tactical gameplay. I don't go, "oh man I wish my volley hit harder.. they really need to buff ranged AOE's", or "wow why couldn't we single target that afk group down fast enough they weren't even paying attention". If you want people to spread out more than they do now and encourage smart play there's really only one way to do it. Anything else is just dodging the issue trying to keep it together with bandaids here and there.

You say it will bring death faster and for more players. I say bring it on. People should die faster if they play stupid. People that continue playing in the same fashion will have a hard time. Good luck to them. I remember the days when you used to have to move out of AOE's, and now people just stack up and face tank them. ZOS has moved the game in a direction where we can't go back to that without removing AOE caps. They've shown by increasing the cap that they should be open to this idea. The only other option would be to rebalance the game with softcaps, but that's not happening because of the champion system.

People don't ball up for the single reason of reducing damage and you must know that.

People ball up to reduce damage with the AoE cap but they also do so for the all these reasons as well:

-People ball up to maximize damage/kills with AoE
-People ball up to get AoE purges/heals/shields
-Objective capturing requires players to ball up inside a ring

If you simply raise AoE caps without addressing ALL theses underlying issues that encourage balling up then people will still ball up not because of stupid game play but because the mechanics encourage and in some cases dictate it.

There are plenty of ways to try to address these issues before making an already strong mechanic even stronger particularly one that is already a major contributor in the first place.

So how exactly does removal of AoE caps make them stronger for the stacked up group? Only in the case their enemy does the same. And you don't want to argue now the fight should take longer rather than shorter when both raids make themselves as vulnerable as possible, do you?
In every other scenario, AoE caps are only helping the group that already is spamming PBAoE. Maybe it's a good thing to buff ranged AoEs for example, but it makes little sense doing it before removing the AoE caps. Because that has to happen anyway.

Removing AoE caps makes all AoE mechanics stronger in general. I'm not sure how anyone could even fathom that it wouldn't. I never said it would make them stronger for the stacked group per say. Now obviously more players spamming AoE equals more overall damage output but that's a result of multiplicative math.

What you all seem to gloss over every time is the fact that removing the AoE cap will not force people to spread out because they will still ball up for these reasons which raising the cap does not resolve.

-People ball up to maximize damage/kills with AoE
-People ball up to get AoE purges/heals/shields
-Objective capturing requires players to ball up inside a ring


I mean is the issue "We wan't to be able to do damage to more people with AoE spam'
or
is the issue 'We want to encourage players to spread out and not ball up'

I'm starting to sense that people in favor of raising AoE caps are really not interested in resolving the balling up issue but instead just want mash a single button to kill large numbers of players faster to feed their online egos.

You mention 3 points that have been talked about a lot already and in part will definitely be addressed. Removing AoE caps just should be among the first changes, because they more than any other mechanic give an unfair advantage to a specific playstyle.

So you propose to remove the AoE caps first before addressing those 3 points....seriously? That is the definition of putting the cart before the horse.

I would love to have links to these discussions on all these 3 points that you claim have been talked about a lot and will be addressed. Other then the ones ZoS developers have addressed in this thread which they plan to implement BEFORE any raising of the AoE caps I haven't seen any.

I have not seen anything regarding changing up the tight circles required to capture objectives but I could have missed it.

The last thing any of us want to see is another sweeping change of how pvp works in this game. I'll go for just removing AOE caps and see where that leaves us before changing the entire game again. No one is saying AOE caps are going to fix all of the problems in the game. Most of us here just tend to agree that it's poor gameplay, and it unfairly limits how you can play the game. The reason it's being singled out is because this is the AOE cap discussion thread. Your point about balling up to maximize damage... well why not? That seems logical. What isn't logical is that you have some godlike power granting you mitigation bonuses for doing so. You should be just as vulnerable to damage as the people you are attacking.

I'm not sure if those other things have been discussed in this thread. What I do know, and what some others in here know, is that they have been talked about in the Alliance War forums. Those threads have had dev responses in them as well. For people actively trying to improve the situation in PvP, even if we don't agree, those would seem like required reading. I don't have time to give you links of everything, but if you check the Alliance War forums it shouldn't take long. Some of what you mention is discussed in the siege/upcoming changes sticky threads, and a few threads made by regular posters have had good discussion in them and dev responses.

Edit: Also, you're almost never going to discourage 1 button spamming in this game regardless of any changes discussed in this thread. One of the core game designs in this game is that skills have no cooldowns. By that alone, people will find the strongest skill and use it over and over. It's not something you can fix unless you make some serious overhauls to the entire skill system.

Merlight

Sureshawt wrote: »

-People ball up to maximize damage/kills with AoE
-People ball up to get AoE purges/heals/shields
-Objective capturing requires players to ball up inside a ring

All these points have one thing in common -- AoE caps give the ball more survivability. Remove AoE caps and balling up will involve a risk instead of free damage mitigation. That's how you address those 3 points (including capturing objectives, it should be dangerous).

Derra

I don´t get how all of you people are still arguing with someone who admittedly died to aoe dmg in daoc on multiple occasions which (as everyone who ever played that game can tell you) is basically admitting they´re playing mmos with a force feedback steering wheel, pedals and a shifter box.

Jhunn

I'm just wondering how long @Wrobel will dodge the topic.

whsprwind

Jhunn wrote: »

I'm just wondering how long @Wrobel will dodge the topic.

Until all the active pvpers are finally gone probably

bowmanz607

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Manoekin wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

FENGRUSH wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

Erondil wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

andypappb16_ESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

I hate to break it to everyone, but @Wrobel has already answered us and he told us why AoE caps are staying. He just didn't do it explicitly.

@Joy_Division
I clearly Missed that..where/what did he say...

Wrobel wrote in this thread:

We want PvP fights to be tactical, involving player positioning as a key element of engagements. We don’t want 2 huge masses of players mindlessly bumping into each other while spamming 1 ability. Part of the issue currently is that damaging PBAoE abilities are very powerful, and there are not a lot of effective options to combat this strategy from range. The two avenues of attack we are perusing are buffing siege weapons and investigating making ranged abilities more effective at damaging large groups of players.

Wheeler is making significant adjustments to siege weapons. You can view and comment on these new changes here. As siege already hits an unlimited number of targets and has an effective cooldown, it’s the perfect tool to get players to spread out.

On the ability side we’ve got a number of changes planned. PBAoE abilities such as Steel Tornado and purge are much too powerful and cause players to want to stack together to make sure they can all hit the same targets and be purged by the same ally. We’ll be reducing the radius of Steel Tornado so it’s not so much more effective at dealing AoE damage relative to the other abilities in the game. Also, we are reducing the initial damage of Magicka Detonation so it’s less effective vs a single target. To compensate, both the bonus damage per target and the max size of this bonus is increasing. In addition to this we’re looking into making other ranged class abilities deal effective AoE damage.

The implication is that they recognize PBAoE is already to strong and encourages stacking/blobbing. Thus they would not make it stronger by raising the caps. They have other solutions in mind for blob/stack busting that do not involve raising AoE caps.

Thankfully we have objective Devs looking out the best interests of the game for everyone versus some players that want to further increase their ability to mindless spam PBAoE and mow down large groups of players.

What you and many others don't understand (including @Wrobel ) is that the removal of dmg AoE caps will incentivize people to spread out. Right now a group of 24 is better of to stack so they can benefit from 37.5% damages reduction (its more mitigation than any ultimate of the game) with AoE smart heals (the 6 taking 100% damages will always be healed first). Now if you remove dmg AoE caps, those groups will want to spread out a bit more, to balance the damage increase. Thus, single target will become more important because an AoE wont hit more than 6 people as often as now. With a removal of AoE caps, you will most likely see AoE less used because people wont stack as much as now, and an AoE is not worth using if it hits less than 4 people.
I will repeat once again, dmg AoE doesnt encourage stacking alone, dmg AoE are meant to do the contrary (look at daoc) but the virtual 37.5% mitigation does. Simply because it makes AoE heals stronger than AoE damages.

I've experienced games where PBAoE without caps has dominated PvP play. Everyone running around in bomb groups mindlessly spamming uncapped AoE ...rinse ....repeat...boring.

Fortunately we dont have this today!

The only true fun fights I have in this game right now are in the open field where AoE button mash groups can be mostly avoided. Inside enclosed areas well that's where the button mashing AoE lagfest hell starts.

Which is why I support the efforts of ZoS to tone down PBAoE mechanics as it is too strong already and not make it worse by simply removing the caps. I know you would like to just run around and kill even larger numbers of players faster with mindless AoE button mashing but thankfully it isn't going to happen.

You missed his point, or you're just avoiding it.

You're trying to say uncapping AOE will lead to something. The reality is though, that "something" is already here, and it's here specifically because of AOE caps. I don't understand how people making this argument figured out how to use these forums in the first place. It's basic common sense.

I guess common sense isn't so common. I wanna fix the underlying problem of AoE being the dominant tactic that encourages balling up as does ZoS.

I get that it is already here (I stated that already and so does ZoS). I see it used extensively in any enclosed area or cap areas and sometimes even in the open field.

This idea though that removing AoE caps will make ball groups spread out is pure nonsense because in enclosed areas you can't spread out unlike the open field. Also taking objectives require you to ball up inside the ring to take it.

Simply removing the AoE caps without changing the underlying mechanics first will just result in more of the same except death will come faster for more players.

Is this what you consider compelling game play? Because running around in ball groups spamming AoEs hoping my groups AoEs kill theirs first is not what i consider fun. AoE should be useful when used tactically in certain situations but NOT spammed in every encounter until the cows come home (especially when taking objectives).

IF the underlying mechanics (to either AoE itself or how objectives are captured) are changed AND working as intended then we can discuss removing AoE caps.

I've been down this road before in other games and you don't have to be a genius to figure out how it will end if you simply remove AoE caps without fixing the underlying issues that cause a ball up in the first place.

People aren't balling up because AOE is too strong. If AOE was too strong, people wouldn't ball up because they'd die easily. People ball up because it's the best way to survive due to game mechanics favoring that type of behavior. ZOS wants to encourage people to spread out, but everything they've done and that I've heard in this thread tells me they want the exact opposite.

The underlying issue is AOE caps and don't forget that. That's the main issue at the heart of this discussion. When I come up on some lazy group just standing around afk and we drop a few ultimates and AOE them, and only half of the group dies while the other half lives solely due to RNG factors you have a problem. That's when you're not promoting tactical gameplay. I don't go, "oh man I wish my volley hit harder.. they really need to buff ranged AOE's", or "wow why couldn't we single target that afk group down fast enough they weren't even paying attention". If you want people to spread out more than they do now and encourage smart play there's really only one way to do it. Anything else is just dodging the issue trying to keep it together with bandaids here and there.

You say it will bring death faster and for more players. I say bring it on. People should die faster if they play stupid. People that continue playing in the same fashion will have a hard time. Good luck to them. I remember the days when you used to have to move out of AOE's, and now people just stack up and face tank them. ZOS has moved the game in a direction where we can't go back to that without removing AOE caps. They've shown by increasing the cap that they should be open to this idea. The only other option would be to rebalance the game with softcaps, but that's not happening because of the champion system.

People don't ball up for the single reason of reducing damage and you must know that.

People ball up to reduce damage with the AoE cap but they also do so for the all these reasons as well:

-People ball up to maximize damage/kills with AoE
-People ball up to get AoE purges/heals/shields
-Objective capturing requires players to ball up inside a ring

If you simply raise AoE caps without addressing ALL theses underlying issues that encourage balling up then people will still ball up not because of stupid game play but because the mechanics encourage and in some cases dictate it.

There are plenty of ways to try to address these issues before making an already strong mechanic even stronger particularly one that is already a major contributor in the first place.

yes but in the days before aoe caps it was "proper" balling. What I mean by that is people used to come together for their sheilds and purges and all that good stuff and then spread out to a certain extent again because balling up to long in the same spot would get you killed. Currently, That is not the case. As has been explained already, balling up now is what keeps you alive. Previously, balling up for extended time would kill you.

Yes people need to ball up to capture objectives and what not. However, before aoe caps that meant strategically clearing a keep (or resource) and getting on the flags once the threat as been eliminated. Currently, it is only necessary to clear a keep if there is another ball group in the keep. A ball group right now can walk in a keep and just stack on the flags then clear it if they so choose to do so.

The point is that yes there are times that people must come together and ball up. However, that is not to say that they should be stacked together at all moments. That means being strategic about when and how the group comes together. That requires coordination, timing, and skill. As it stands now, "stack on crown" does not make the cut.

To steal a line from you "you must know that."

PainfulFAFA

30 days+ and counting...

What will happen with AoeCaps?
Will it stay and will numbers be moved around?
Will it be removed? What ranged abilities are changing?

We still don't know...

tist

Remove the aoe caps

Ball zergs will stop ball zerging
Your game will not lag
People will be happy

xarguideb17_ESO

Make aoe do more damage when more people are caught in it.

xarguideb17_ESO

OR, the best solution, enable friendly fire. No more mindless aoe spamming.

xarguideb17_ESO

And of course remove aoe caps.

CtrlAltDlt

Everytime i see this thread on the first page I enthusiastically and hopeful click on it to see Mr. Wrobel's reply, but instead I find the now inevitable disappointment of one more day without answer

Manoekin

Sticky just got removed from the thread. RIP.

Long live AOE Caps!