Area-of-Effect Abilities - Maximum Target Cap Clarification

Shaun98ca2 · May 2014

So I haven't read ANY of this thread but it seems like the game has been playing fine with these caps that had already been in place.

But I do understand the dilemma that yes if your 10 people and they bring 120 there is no way to win the battle. But at the same time hasn't that already happened and been happening.

And now if you look on the forums you can find in pvp there are complaints about the abilities that are going to be capped.

Does it make sense for 1 person to be able to wipe a blob of 100,000 people stacked in his nice little circle?

The game has BEEN favoring small groups vs large groups. But at the same time theres has been a noticed issue as well....some abilities the ones mentioned are out of wack with single person wiping entirely large groups of people almost untouchable.

prana33b14_ESO · May 2014

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

So I haven't read ANY of this thread but ...

/facepalm

Xaei · May 2014

Shaun98ca2 wrote: »

So I haven't read ANY of this thread but it seems like the game has been playing fine with these caps that had already been in place.

But I do understand the dilemma that yes if your 10 people and they bring 120 there is no way to win the battle. But at the same time hasn't that already happened and been happening.

And now if you look on the forums you can find in pvp there are complaints about the abilities that are going to be capped.

Does it make sense for 1 person to be able to wipe a blob of 100,000 people stacked in his nice little circle?

The game has BEEN favoring small groups vs large groups. But at the same time theres has been a noticed issue as well....some abilities the ones mentioned are out of wack with single person wiping entirely large groups of people almost untouchable.

The problem you mentioned comes down to a few skills (dark talons and bat swamp, although I haven't tried the latter because I'm not a vampire), its a skill balancing problem, not a problem with the mechanics of AoEs.

And yes, if 100,000 people decided to all stack up in a tight little group and just stand in AoEs, then of course they should get killed, because they're playing like sheep.

RivenEsq · May 2014

Draconiuos wrote: »

You are right I brought a tactic that makes the healers useless. Also, if you read the entire thread I did offer a solution that would allow both capped aoes and uncapped aoes. The fact it was ignored shows me most here don't won't any compromise. The game has had the AOE cap since launch and it didn't matter until it was pointed out and they said they were fixing abilities that were wrongfully breaking the cap.

What tactic that makes healers useless? You do know that with "smart heals" your focus fire would have to be perfect to kill just one person. I say this because, for example, mutagen, steadfast ward, and every "heal other" spell prioritizes lowest health targets. If you propose bursting through tanks one by one is going to yield you a victory and even assume that you can burst through the tanks, then you are disregarding the "burst" nature of healing in this game. Not to mention that those tanks are probably DKs with pulls. And, if your ranged damage is close enough to hit them, they are probably close enough to get chain pulled and wipe your group faster. Again, begetting the question as to how you intend to focus fire high value targets? (i.e. HEALERS and RANGED DPS)

As to your "fix", it solves nothing. If you choose to have caps, then you are useless against a stack. If you choose to be uncapped and lay a good AoE, you punish the caster of the ability by costing them literally all of their resources and that might not even hit everything in the radius! Punishing the player who made a good placement of an ability seems counter-intuitive if you want PvP to be skill based.

You mentioned that I'm stubborn and unwilling to compromise. That is completely false. I already suggested capping positive effects of AoE on the caster such as heals/armor/damage/shields/spell resist/resource return per target hit to a cap of X amount of players based on the ability's power level. It seems to me that most of the issue here isn't the damage, but the utility of some of these AoE abilities, for example: the ability for a DK to sustain infinitely with Bat Swarm in a group of 50 because it heals off of everyone. It's not that AoE can kill people in one spot, it's that one person can run in to a group of people and not be punished because they are CC immune, absorb spells, and are tanky as hell, which wouldn't be a problem if they didn't have unlimited Health and Magicka because of Inhale/Bat Swarm, etc. I also suggested that they make AoEs do more damage at the center and less on the outside raising the skill level of AoE use and punishing people for stacking tighter if placed properly.

PLEASE read my suggestions here, @Draconiuos and realize that they would be the best things for the game. I am advocating balance of each individual skill and not a blanket nerf that destroys the very reason many PvPers bought this game.

paradoxorganisationb16_ESO · May 2014

There is absolutely no reason why a game should have a cap on aoe abilities. I mean if i set fire to an 8 meter radius around me everyone in said area would burn and not just a small number. Ok that was a retional point and i know this is a game and what it does is:

Discourage smaller and stuctured pvp and pve where skills and smart setup is replaced by zerging and yes this goes for pve too.

Anyways I and many others could probably list a bunch of reasons why this is a horrible idea but i haven't had my coffee yet and cba.

Overall this is just terrible.

patrikblb16_ESO · May 2014

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

I'll pose a question for you, and the ZoS developer team.

Why do you have AoE caps in place at all?

You do know that ZoS stands for Zenimax Online Support right?
And there are no developers working at the support.

steveb16_ESO46 · May 2014

ZoS stands for Zenimax Online Studio, genius.

Studios in fact.

Tankqull · May 2014

Digerati wrote: »

AoE cap+ smart heals = zergs rule.

this and nothing else.

rkejserh89 · May 2014

I have a question regarding AoE abilities for the developers. Why isnt there any AoE taunting spells for tanking? Or is it just me that doesnt seem to figure out game mechanics? And will this be developed in the future?

Xaei · May 2014

There's no AoE taunts because as a tank, you and your team are supposed to use CC/silence as well to keep mobs at bay.

fabsley · May 2014

ZENIMAX, its such an evidence of incapacity you dont even consider "fixing" the worst aoe ability of all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucmjldufa6U

shame on you.. i actually mean it.

Nickdorlandb16_ESO · May 2014

fabsley wrote: »

ZENIMAX, its such an evidence of incapacity you dont even consider "fixing" the worst aoe ability of all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucmjldufa6U

shame on you.. i actually mean it.

THIS !!! WHAT THE HELL !?, How can they even miss this ???? I mean REALLY !?!?!?!?!?

NicoleOnyxheart · May 2014

fabsley wrote: »

ZENIMAX, its such an evidence of incapacity you dont even consider "fixing" the worst aoe ability of all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucmjldufa6U

shame on you.. i actually mean it.

this is not a problem with the aoe ability itself (that is obviously a bug btw, seeing as there isn't even a momentary interruption between activations of the ultimate) that's a problem with ultimate reduction from a combination of racial abilities/armor sets/class abilities.

the problem with ult spamming is due to that...now if they had a ult reduction soft cap like they do with most other stats...

i also want to say i'm completely against these aoe changes and aoe caps in general. they make it very VERY hard for small tactical groups to stand up to a large unorganized zerg without resorting to siege weaponry.

my guild runs smallish groups a lot on raids to take enemy resources and take out enemy reinforcements. aoe is the only thing that allows us to damage large groups of enemies and kill them as a small group. capping this forces us to gather into larger groups....thereby destroying player choice in how we play the game in pvp.

Chryos · May 2014

Cant make everyone happy should be the title of this thread!

tim_barteneb17_ESO · May 2014

fabsley wrote: »

ZENIMAX, its such an evidence of incapacity you dont even consider "fixing" the worst aoe ability of all:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucmjldufa6U

shame on you.. i actually mean it.

OMG NO LAG AND NO 20 FPS!!!!!

Rainingblood · May 2014

Maybe someone can clarify something for me.

So AoEs cap at six people. That's six targets for one person's spell right? And with the "smart targeting" mechanic in-game, if say there is a group of 12 players and 2 players of an opposing faction both drop an AoE on the group, would one player's attack hit six and the other player's attack hit the other six that were not affected by the different AoE?

Xaei · May 2014

Chryos wrote: »

Cant make everyone happy should be the title of this thread!

You can't make everyone happy but you should make as many people happy as possible.

You can argue about selective bias and problems with open selection as much as you want, but there's very strong evidence of resentment for an AoE cap based both on player opinions here on the forums, and what's basically a simulated result of what happens when you put AoE caps in over in GW2's WvW, which is very similar to AvA.

On the other hand, there's relatively few players that support the cap on the forums.

You can argue that the forums consists of a small proportion of players, but without holding a poll in-game with incentives in participating in that poll, which developers apart from Jagex just refuses to do, any poll you take is going to consist of a small proportion of players.

As long as you don't have very strong reasons to suspect heavy bias in your evidence and as long as your sample at least somewhat represents the whole population, its better to take feedback from that evidence than going blind.

frwinters_ESO · May 2014

Trayyacakes wrote: »

Some abilities need to be balanced. AOE damage does not need to be capped ever. If 2 DK's wreck your group of 20 it is a L2P issue. If it is a group of pugs... They should try to learn from it not cry about an AOE cap. If it is a guild group, I suggest you have a seminar on dodge rolls, focus targets, and not standing in fire. The vampire issue has to do with the ultimate cost reduction which has been mentioned and needs to be fixed. I would be surprised if someone isn't working on it now.

This comment is silly. If a DK can hold off 20 people by himself its not a L2P issue less we want everyone in the game to roll DK's so we all have that benefit and everyone is dropping standards. And AGAIN the aoe cap has ALWAYS BEEN THERE except for a few abilities, like this standard, that were broken. It was only supposed to affect 6 people and that is it.

frwinters_ESO · May 2014

Catches_the_Sun wrote: »

So only 5 abilities, which were bugged and therefore not hitting the limit, are being adjusted...and we're crying foul, saying the sky is falling. I don't see this having much of an impact.

If i could hit the agree button more then once, I would. This is getting ridiculous. 5 abilities are being changed because they were broken. They were supposed to be following the 6 man AoE cap which has been here always. I bet everyone who is complaining is a DK who has been spamming this ability over and over and will no longer be bale to hold off legions.

NordJitsu · May 2014

Rainingblood wrote: »

Maybe someone can clarify something for me.

So AoEs cap at six people. That's six targets for one person's spell right? And with the "smart targeting" mechanic in-game, if say there is a group of 12 players and 2 players of an opposing faction both drop an AoE on the group, would one player's attack hit six and the other player's attack hit the other six that were not affected by the different AoE?

One would hope. The two AoE's should hit 6 different people, so all 12 would get hit.

If this is the case, I personally think there's no problem with the capping. It just means you can't take out a group more than 6 times your size (which is reasonable enough.)

If its totally random though, meaning some targets could escape, we have a problem.

Trayyacakes · May 2014

frwinters_ESO wrote: »

Trayyacakes wrote: »

Some abilities need to be balanced. AOE damage does not need to be capped ever. If 2 DK's wreck your group of 20 it is a L2P issue. If it is a group of pugs... They should try to learn from it not cry about an AOE cap. If it is a guild group, I suggest you have a seminar on dodge rolls, focus targets, and not standing in fire. The vampire issue has to do with the ultimate cost reduction which has been mentioned and needs to be fixed. I would be surprised if someone isn't working on it now.

This comment is silly. If a DK can hold off 20 people by himself its not a L2P issue less we want everyone in the game to roll DK's so we all have that benefit and everyone is dropping standards. And AGAIN the aoe cap has ALWAYS BEEN THERE except for a few abilities, like this standard, that were broken. It was only supposed to affect 6 people and that is it.

If you can't roll out of talans and get out of the small standard circle and nuke the dk it is a L2P issue. How can rolling out of a root and not standing in the RED circle not be a L2P issue? I'm not talking about vamps which i said are broken. If anything your comment is silly. I'm sorry your group of 20 tried to turtle together got rooted and burned in a standard, but that doesn't mean cap the AOE. It means SPREAD OUT!!! AOE's are less effective if you aren't clumped together. Thank you for pointing yourself out as someone who wants to turtle bubble to victory.

TheBonesXXX · May 2014

My suggestions to benefit PvP since I do not care for the Cap. Unsubbing isn't the correct response either, because it's not professional or productive.

As many and myself before, a bombs strongest point is the point of impact and outward of the "Kill Area" so if the red ring has indicators of where it is strongest in it's placement, that would work for PvP.

All skills to be assessed, (which Matt Frior today stated they will be looking at individual skills, kudos Zenimax)

Mark target a bigger, brighter beam of red so that person can be taken down. There's no excuse for any Guild Leader or Master Nightblade not to be able to pick out a Healer, that's true Field Awareness and PvP Prowess.

Increase Chains length on Dragon Knights, while I think Dragon Knights are already plenty powerful they surely don't need any buffs or nerfs, Focused Aim + SLeash have a greater distance. Allowing meat grinding to be a powerful standard tactic.

A multi-chain pull would be *fantastic* for busting up the blob over the length currently, I am aware that a longer chain pull would result in mass wall pulls and you would have to raise the height of walls.

Resource drains, a big part of the problem is that there is currently only resource drain and that's damage. Having a resource drain for mana and stamina was great in other games and there's no reason not to have them here. But again, I am under the impression poison comes with Thieves and DB.

RaZaddha · May 2014

frwinters_ESO wrote: »

Catches_the_Sun wrote: »

So only 5 abilities, which were bugged and therefore not hitting the limit, are being adjusted...and we're crying foul, saying the sky is falling. I don't see this having much of an impact.

If i could hit the agree button more then once, I would. This is getting ridiculous. 5 abilities are being changed because they were broken. They were supposed to be following the 6 man AoE cap which has been here always. I bet everyone who is complaining is a DK who has been spamming this ability over and over and will no longer be bale to hold off legions.

Oh... My... God... READ.THE.THREAD.READ.THE.THREAD. The discussion changed from many pages ago, if you skip all those posts, then please, dont post.
And for you and anyone else that skipped this whole thread, read this.

Rainingblood · May 2014

NordJitsu wrote: »

Rainingblood wrote: »

Maybe someone can clarify something for me.

So AoEs cap at six people. That's six targets for one person's spell right? And with the "smart targeting" mechanic in-game, if say there is a group of 12 players and 2 players of an opposing faction both drop an AoE on the group, would one player's attack hit six and the other player's attack hit the other six that were not affected by the different AoE?

One would hope. The two AoE's should hit 6 different people, so all 12 would get hit.

If this is the case, I personally think there's no problem with the capping. It just means you can't take out a group more than 6 times your size (which is reasonable enough.)

If its totally random though, meaning some targets could escape, we have a problem.

Yes, that's what I was thinking. If each person hits up to 6 additional targets, that would be a big difference.

@ZOS_JessicaFolsom‌ Would it be possible to get a clarification on how this works when multiple players cast AoE spells on groups of more than 6?

Kalman · May 2014

AOE caps are bad but until they entirely rewrite current system they are needed. They need to put in diminished damage/healing based on distance from epicenter of AOE. As is stands right now if there was no AOE cap people would complain more. Anyone remember DAOC when some AOE didn't have this? It was a nightmare (for the people on the receiving end). They also have to fix the amount of ultimate gained by AOE.

RivenEsq · May 2014

LOL at anyone who thinks "it's only 5 abilities".

Those five abilities have effectively stopped people from stacking up, ever. Period. End of discussion.

Without those abilities hitting unlimited targets, there is no practical way to fight against any force that is larger than you. Siege does not work either for those of your advocating for Elder Siege Online, just look at Pryda's video for further evidence.

Xaei · May 2014

Kalman wrote: »

AOE caps are bad but until they entirely rewrite current system they are needed. They need to put in diminished damage/healing based on distance from epicenter of AOE. As is stands right now if there was no AOE cap people would complain more. Anyone remember DAOC when some AOE didn't have this? It was a nightmare (for the people on the receiving end). They also have to fix the amount of ultimate gained by AOE.

Well, just looking at these forums, I think people would complain more IF AoE caps are added....

RaZaddha · May 2014

Xaei wrote: »

Kalman wrote: »

AOE caps are bad but until they entirely rewrite current system they are needed. They need to put in diminished damage/healing based on distance from epicenter of AOE. As is stands right now if there was no AOE cap people would complain more. Anyone remember DAOC when some AOE didn't have this? It was a nightmare (for the people on the receiving end). They also have to fix the amount of ultimate gained by AOE.

Well, just looking at these forums, I think people would complain more IF AoE caps are added....

The cap was always there, tooltips and etc. fooled us.

Xsorus · May 2014

So....ZOS does an AMA on reddit, multiple people ask about AoE cap, but its ignored by ZOS..

Just like this thread...

Just like the poll...

valkaneer2b14_ESO · May 2014

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

So....ZOS does an AMA on reddit, multiple people ask about AoE cap, but its ignored by ZOS..

Just like this thread...

Just like the poll...

There are a few reasons I unsubed. ZOS ingorning the AoE cap question in multiple forums, is to much a coincidence for me to believe it was not done on purpose just to keep people from not buying the game.. Also knowing the NB a passives are horribly bugged and broken and yet here we are at the coming of 1.1 and hardly any of them are getting fixed.

When they fix the NB I will be back. But I am not paying for month after month for a class that is as broken as the NB is.