Zheg wrote: »

The argument that fights should be over in a second to preserve server performance is an awful one. If you make pvp last a second, what's the point? Seriously? How bored would you be in a week? At that point I could go drop a banner on zombies and grind champ points. Server performance is always on our minds given the lag we've had to put up with, but that doesn't mean pvp should be made pointless because ZOS struggles to deliver on what was promised as far a capabilities.

To hopefully change some of the tone that I myself am guilty of, this shouldn't be a bash fengrush thing, I just see little reality in terms of what most people are under the impression the cap currently does, what removing it will do, and what the ripple effects could be.

The tragedy should not be lost on people that this argument has focused on one of the least relevant of the improvements suggested in the video. Changing how healing works could be incredibly exciting and promote skill over numbers on all fronts, but that's been mentioned maybe 3 times in these 9 pages.

The healing change is the least realistic because this game was never designed to handle it because of consoles. There are a lot of barriers and impediments to making that change. This thread was also solely devoted to this topic, not the entirety of their podcast.

PvP fights also will not last a second, that's a gross exaggeration. I haven't seen a single person advocate for the ability to wipe large numbers of people with AoEs in a second. It's not like this is something new either, people have been advocating for this for a very long time now. We've seen that while their LoS check fix did improve lag, it wasn't the magic bullet. This is another step towards improving performance.

Zheg wrote: »

The argument that fights should be over in a second to preserve server performance is an awful one. If you make pvp last a second, what's the point? Seriously? How bored would you be in a week? At that point I could go drop a banner on zombies and grind champ points. Server performance is always on our minds given the lag we've had to put up with, but that doesn't mean pvp should be made pointless because ZOS struggles to deliver on what was promised as far a capabilities.

To hopefully change some of the tone that I myself am guilty of, this shouldn't be a bash fengrush thing, I just see little reality in terms of what most people are under the impression the cap currently does, what removing it will do, and what the ripple effects could be.

The tragedy should not be lost on people that this argument has focused on one of the least relevant of the improvements suggested in the video. Changing how healing works could be incredibly exciting and promote skill over numbers on all fronts, but that's been mentioned maybe 3 times in these 9 pages.

Not saying fights should last a second. Im saying fights can be much shorter as compared to how it is currently. You can endlessly heal and barrier in a ball. In reality, Id like to not see groups fight as a ball. Thats the meta I want all the guilds to have to adjust to. It will be a different game for everyone - but certain changes can encourage that. That is essentially what should have been done before towards launch, and tweaking numbers such as dynamic ult gen, ult cost, ult damage etc. Instead of doing those things (which they did eventually nerf anyway in addition) they did AOE caps and dynamic ult gen in line with it as well.

Wreuntzylla wrote: »

It's funny to hear people say that unless something is done, the majority of players will leave. The majority is zerging....

While there are some zergs filled with good players, the majority are filled with players that get farmed, day in and day out, outside of a zerg. You can't have a significant number of players with 10:1 kill ratios without other players having 1:10 kill ratios.

Many people here are essentially arguing that they deserve to farm mediocre players because they are more "skilled." Setting aside the definition of "skilled" for this debate, this may be true, from a purely libertarian point of view. However, MMO history has shown that very few people will stick around to be AP cows.

Once the mediocre player is gone, the game begins to collapse. This is for two reasons. First, most "competitive small group" players are in it for pug stomping and not competitive play. Second, even among the groups seeking competition, 2-3 groups typically rise to the top and farm all the remaining competitive groups. The farmed groups also leave the game to avoid having to face the fact that they weren't nearly as good as they thought they were.

This thread reminds me of the movement to remove forward camps. To cut down on zerging and improve open field skirmishing. What a disaster. More and bigger zergs emerged. Can't move safely around the battlefield? Zerg! Or use Sejanus, Nickel, etc., as FCs...

So, what logical train of thought gets you to the point where you think that bombing 10x your numbers will improve the game? Destroy the zergs and what will the zergers do? Stay around and get repeatedly bombed, day in and day out, by 1/10th their numbers? Is their anything more humiliating we could add to the game? They can't FC, they can't zerg, is anything left for them to enjoy PvP? And once they are gone, then what?

I would love to hear any argument as to how removal of AoE caps will lead to a fun environment conducive to a large, sustainable PvP player base. When I think of AoE cap removal, I think of DAOC PBAE bombing, banshee cone AE or early Animist shroom stacking. Each of which contributed to the ultimate demise of that game...

So we should keep AOE caps so players can zerg without effort and skill is essentially minimized in PvP? Except when they run into players that are doing the same thing and know what theyre doing - and get cleaned out. Until they bring more than double that, and drop frames to 5FPS? Sounds really interesting.

The thing is - I think youre not really off-target with how ZOS is approaching this issue. Their design is intentionally putting in handicaps that make it very casual friendly. Then you have players who arent casuals, playing in the same fashion balling up and will still clean these groups of casuals out. All in all, if nothing changes - ESO will remain a game where zergballing is the only real productive way to PvP/advance points in Cyro. If its all that remains, theres just plenty of people like myself that wont bother with mass PvP in ESO, especially when performance is horrid during it. If you players in guilds like GoS, decibel, VE, and haxus want to continue to fight for keeping AOE caps while every one of you makes use of balling and AOE caps in large groups, that is up to you. But thats the game youll get and keep. Thats the design that probably caused the largest exodus of skilled players in the game as well, along with largest exodus of PvP population. But keep taking shots at how Im fighting for my ego rather than improving Cyros mass PvP and, if nothing else, to actually make damage intake equal for all parties.

The reality is, there is better PvP that is more interesting than this. Its just that nobody is trying to make that a reality @ZOS at this time.

Huckdabuck wrote: »

Takllin wrote: »

Zheg wrote: »

The argument that fights should be over in a second to preserve server performance is an awful one. If you make pvp last a second, what's the point? Seriously? How bored would you be in a week? At that point I could go drop a banner on zombies and grind champ points. Server performance is always on our minds given the lag we've had to put up with, but that doesn't mean pvp should be made pointless because ZOS struggles to deliver on what was promised as far a capabilities.

To hopefully change some of the tone that I myself am guilty of, this shouldn't be a bash fengrush thing, I just see little reality in terms of what most people are under the impression the cap currently does, what removing it will do, and what the ripple effects could be.

The tragedy should not be lost on people that this argument has focused on one of the least relevant of the improvements suggested in the video. Changing how healing works could be incredibly exciting and promote skill over numbers on all fronts, but that's been mentioned maybe 3 times in these 9 pages.

The healing change is the least realistic because this game was never designed to handle it because of consoles. There are a lot of barriers and impediments to making that change. This thread was also solely devoted to this topic, not the entirety of their podcast.

PvP fights also will not last a second, that's a gross exaggeration. I haven't seen a single person advocate for the ability to wipe large numbers of people with AoEs in a second. It's not like this is something new either, people have been advocating for this for a very long time now. We've seen that while their LoS check fix did improve lag, it wasn't the magic bullet. This is another step towards improving performance.

You need to qualify that statement and say something along the lines of "I've never seen a single INTELLIGENT person advocate for the ability to wipe large numbers of people with AoEs in a second........there have been plenty of idiots screaming for I WIN buttons in dealing with zergs......see some of the prox det conversations!

Haha fair enough, I had forgotten about those.

Also to your earlier point, ZOS probably won't do anything about any of this. Though sometimes I wonder why we try when it's all for nothing. They are horrendous at listening to feedback. I'd love to see them have open discussions about mechanics and such with the community instead of dictating how things will go regardless of the feedback that they've been given.

Zheg:

This is what Pain Train Vs. Disorganized Mob battles look like:



The circles represents the range of your favorite AOE skill. The reds are often getting hit by 100% damage from blue AOEs. The majority of blues are not.

Two ESO players walk into a bar.

Pam the Pug: "Why is it that you get hit for 25% of damage from my steel tornado?"
Barb the Bombtrain mistress: "Because of AoE Caps."
Pam: "But I take 100% damage from your steel tornado!"
Barb: "That because the the reduction only happens after 6 targets are hit."
Pam: "What is the reasoning behind that?"
Barb: "To make it fair, otherwise raids like mine would be too strong!
Pam: "Cool story sis."

You keep asking for a critical reasoning why the removal of AoE caps might be beneficial that takes into account its possible repercussions. I did that a few pages ago. Yet here you are, still asking. Hmm... It's one thing not to agree with my analysis, it's another to just ignore it and keep asking for what it provides.

******

Do we want interesting large scale fights not over in less than a second? I see. So because these bomb groups willingly place their entire raid in one spot and invite the enemy to bomb them, we need this well-meaninged but unfair mechanic in place just so they can have interesting fights? Whatever happened to "raids and players will adapt"? Apparently they won't.

What the developers probably had in mind what would happen in large scale PvP is what is on their trailers and what happens every night in-between Ash and Nickel when the masses of PUGs fight what is in essence many instances of 1v1 battles over a larger area, something like this:

.

In such a case, while I still think and AOE cap is stupid, unrealistic, and rewards poor positioning, it is kind of sort of makes sense because the overall damage would be high. However, most importantly, nobody is benefiting from it at the expense of other players, i.e., it is a relatively even playing field.

****

The way the game plays out every night, the Vehemences, the Rages, the Haxuses, GOS and their like are deriving the most benefit from these AoE caps, even if they don't admit it.

Take these two comments @Satiar said: "Giving me capless aoe isn't going to make my raid squishier," - that is patently false.

"AND THE NUMBER ONE thing [Stacking tight on crown these days] does is allows the raid to focus its damage into a white hot ball of death."

Whoa. Since we are supposedly all about thinking critically, why don't we examine this statement.

Steve believes the largest benefit from stacking on crown is the offensive firepower it provides. It is. BUT, BUT, BUT in traditional military calculus, let alone decent fantasy game balance, considerations for offense had to be weighed against what was lost defensively. Where is that consideration here in ESO? You are allowed to maximize your offensive capability without suffering from the natural defensive liabilities from doing so. In fact, in ESO a raid that does this is granted significant free damage reduction - no matter how much they ignore or downplay it - in addition to the barriers, purges, heals, etc.

I'm sorry, I think you need to pay the price for stacking all your raid's assets on the same 15 pixels. That price is not high enough in this game. Obviously AoE caps are not a magic bullet that alone will solve this problem, but they are a contributing factor that allows that sort of undesirable gameplay to be super effective. If you want to create your white hot ball of death, that's fine. By all means do so. But don't try to sell me that a mechanic that allows your white ball of hot death to hit me for 100% damage whereas the majority of damage I inflict back magically disappears is somehow for my benefit. It's not.

@Joy_Division

"BUT, BUT, BUT in traditional military calculus, let alone decent fantasy game balance, considerations for offense had to be weighed against what was lost defensively. Where is that consideration here in ESO? You are allowed to maximize your offensive capability without suffering from the natural defensive liabilities from doing so."

Just pretend the group raids are a phalanx. Historically it had the massive power of a nuclear bomb and the defense of Fort Knox. So it was a win/win versus other field combatants. Don't be trying to ruin peoples emmershuns!

Death to Emperor AoE Caps, Long live Emperor Fengrush!

Xjcon wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Xjcon wrote: »

This may have already been said. Multiply the damage AOE does against 10 or more players. If you get a group of 20 people trying to zerg you just jump in the middle and do some aoe and they should all explode. No more zerg balls.

This is the exact scenario that should NOT happen. Do you have any idea how hard some det builds hit for already? Some of the stronger ones (meth is a damnnn good example of this) can already lay down enough damage to nearly instashot a whole clump of people, and sometimes it actually does already happen if initiation catches them completely asleep.

You realize what happens if you start multiplying damage?

Then spread out. If someone throws a gernade at a single opponent just he should die, but if ten or more of his buddy's are In the exact same spot they should die aswell, allowing it to be mitigated simply because more people are in the same few square meters is dumb.

If you're trying to fight for realism here I think you're wrong. Other bodies will cushion the blow of that grenade the further you are from the center of the blast. Sure you'll be bleeding out your ears, but its quite possible you could survive relatively unscathed. All that being said, I think the best solution would be if player collision were possible, but I have absolutely no idea if the game is built to handle something like that. Player collision also has downsides in other aspects, in the sense that guilds like the Goons of Eve fame would come to the game and definitely abuse it, blocking doors just because. From a realism standpoint it could be fantastic though, having your frontline soldiers in the front (tanks) with your dps types (two hander/dual wield/staves) and healers in the center or back depending on formation. It would be cool if they could build a system for this and would solve all the problems, but I have a feeling it might either be too heroic of a task for ZoS to tackle or be beyond the capacity of their software or willingness to invest in something like that. Who knows.

dodgehopper_ESO wrote: »

Xjcon wrote: »

Rylana wrote: »

Xjcon wrote: »

This may have already been said. Multiply the damage AOE does against 10 or more players. If you get a group of 20 people trying to zerg you just jump in the middle and do some aoe and they should all explode. No more zerg balls.

This is the exact scenario that should NOT happen. Do you have any idea how hard some det builds hit for already? Some of the stronger ones (meth is a damnnn good example of this) can already lay down enough damage to nearly instashot a whole clump of people, and sometimes it actually does already happen if initiation catches them completely asleep.

You realize what happens if you start multiplying damage?

Then spread out. If someone throws a gernade at a single opponent just he should die, but if ten or more of his buddy's are In the exact same spot they should die aswell, allowing it to be mitigated simply because more people are in the same few square meters is dumb.

If you're trying to fight for realism here I think you're wrong. Other bodies will cushion the blow of that grenade the further you are from the center of the blast. Sure you'll be bleeding out your ears, but its quite possible you could survive relatively unscathed. All that being said, I think the best solution would be if player collision were possible, but I have absolutely no idea if the game is built to handle something like that. Player collision also has downsides in other aspects, in the sense that guilds like the Goons of Eve fame would come to the game and definitely abuse it, blocking doors just because. From a realism standpoint it could be fantastic though, having your frontline soldiers in the front (tanks) with your dps types (two hander/dual wield/staves) and healers in the center or back depending on formation. It would be cool if they could build a system for this and would solve all the problems, but I have a feeling it might either be too heroic of a task for ZoS to tackle or be beyond the capacity of their software or willingness to invest in something like that. Who knows.

Yea. Point is that there is no real reason not to ball up and slaughter people for AP.

Frawr wrote: »

Sureshawt wrote: »

While the AoE cap is not a perfect solution it is at least providing some protection from organized AoE bomb groups. Without them everyone regardless of group size,balling etc. is going to go down hard and fast to AoE.

I've been down this road before with other MMOs. In the beginning there are good large-scale open field fights and organized PvP using voice comms involves tactical movement, effective target calling and situational awareness. Then the AoE meta evolves and everyone rerolls for AoE. Organized ball groups spamming AoE becomes the only way to effectively fight and everyone either gets on board or left behind.

What I regret most is that I spent so much time on the AoE train before realizing it wasn't rewarding or remotely challenging and that a brain dead monkey could do all that was required. No need for tactical movement of subgroups, no need for individual skill with your class, no need for good target callers. Follow the leader and spam AoE over and over...rinse repeat

Lift AoE caps without restructuring how AoE currently works in ESO and watch the game devolve into nothing but organized AoE bomb groups roaming the campaign map.

The game is currently organised aoe bomb groups and unorganised zergs. The AoE bomb groups win. The reason for that is simple:

The aoe cap is providing protection to the bomb groups, not from them.

The tight packs benefit far more than do the zergs of randoms.

This is an ezmode mechanic that zos has put in to try to make life easier for casual players but actually makes it harder for them.

---

@Zheg of course there will be other repercussions of changing it, however, the key benefit (and a really major one) is that it will level the playing field for smaller groups.

Hell, even a few randoms could get together with detonations and take out one of these 'elite' raid guilds if they caught them off-guard. That cannot happen right now.

Players having to adapt is standard stuff and will happen regardless.

Why would you even think this is possible? Instead of questioning someone's mental capacity concerning this as I did earlier.....I'll just go with WOW!

Joy_Division wrote: »

Zheg:

This is what Pain Train Vs. Disorganized Mob battles look like:



The circles represents the range of your favorite AOE skill. The reds are often getting hit by 100% damage from blue AOEs. The majority of blues are not.

Two ESO players walk into a bar.

Pam the Pug: "Why is it that you get hit for 25% of damage from my steel tornado?"
Barb the Bombtrain mistress: "Because of AoE Caps."
Pam: "But I take 100% damage from your steel tornado!"
Barb: "That because the the reduction only happens after 6 targets are hit."
Pam: "What is the reasoning behind that?"
Barb: "To make it fair, otherwise raids like mine would be too strong!
Pam: "Cool story sis."

You keep asking for a critical reasoning why the removal of AoE caps might be beneficial that takes into account its possible repercussions. I did that a few pages ago. Yet here you are, still asking. Hmm... It's one thing not to agree with my analysis, it's another to just ignore it and keep asking for what it provides.

******

Do we want interesting large scale fights not over in less than a second? I see. So because these bomb groups willingly place their entire raid in one spot and invite the enemy to bomb them, we need this well-meaninged but unfair mechanic in place just so they can have interesting fights? Whatever happened to "raids and players will adapt"? Apparently they won't.

What the developers probably had in mind what would happen in large scale PvP is what is on their trailers and what happens every night in-between Ash and Nickel when the masses of PUGs fight what is in essence many instances of 1v1 battles over a larger area, something like this:

.

In such a case, while I still think and AOE cap is stupid, unrealistic, and rewards poor positioning, it is kind of sort of makes sense because the overall damage would be high. However, most importantly, nobody is benefiting from it at the expense of other players, i.e., it is a relatively even playing field.

****

The way the game plays out every night, the Vehemences, the Rages, the Haxuses, GOS and their like are deriving the most benefit from these AoE caps, even if they don't admit it.

Take these two comments @Satiar said: "Giving me capless aoe isn't going to make my raid squishier," - that is patently false.

"AND THE NUMBER ONE thing [Stacking tight on crown these days] does is allows the raid to focus its damage into a white hot ball of death."

Whoa. Since we are supposedly all about thinking critically, why don't we examine this statement.

Steve believes the largest benefit from stacking on crown is the offensive firepower it provides. It is. BUT, BUT, BUT in traditional military calculus, let alone decent fantasy game balance, considerations for offense had to be weighed against what was lost defensively. Where is that consideration here in ESO? You are allowed to maximize your offensive capability without suffering from the natural defensive liabilities from doing so. In fact, in ESO a raid that does this is granted significant free damage reduction - no matter how much they ignore or downplay it - in addition to the barriers, purges, heals, etc.

I'm sorry, I think you need to pay the price for stacking all your raid's assets on the same 15 pixels. That price is not high enough in this game. Obviously AoE caps are not a magic bullet that alone will solve this problem, but they are a contributing factor that allows that sort of undesirable gameplay to be super effective. If you want to create your white hot ball of death, that's fine. By all means do so. But don't try to sell me that a mechanic that allows your white ball of hot death to hit me for 100% damage whereas the majority of damage I inflict back magically disappears is somehow for my benefit. It's not.

while this sounds plausible, it also is, but there is a other Problem with removing the cap.
and this for a single reason, the enviroment in cyro or IC is not the place this will work.
how should someone spread out to avoid aoes when there isnt the place for it?
keeps are small, ic is small, outpost are small in matter of place.
To cap a Keep, most the bigger keeps, will lead anything beside organisated groups will just wipe by 2-3 siege.

how do you think will a random lfg Group be able to cap somthing if there is a good Ts Group in there with just 4 guys and oiling and meadbagging anything all over? Right now the cap is mitigating somthing for them.