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Fengrush covered most of the details. Agree completely with his assessment. I'm going to hit the issue from a different angle.
First: Purge and barrier are not core issues. How they interact with game mechanics is the issue.
Premise: AoE caps, ultimate generation, and skill balance are completely inter-twinned.
The following characteristics define the current group meta in ESO:
1. Coordinated Prox Det
2. Rotating Barriers
3. Steel Tornado for absurd AoE damage scaling (execute bonus damage, bonus damage vs CC'd target)
4. Ultimates for AoE crowd control (Nova, meteor, Banner, leap) and to add bonus damage to ST.
5. Rotating rapid maneuvers to keep the group moving.
This meta exists because:
1. AoE caps artificially reduce damage to large groups.
2. Barrier creates a huge damage shield on 24 people.
3. Heals automatically target lowest-health players. Damage does not.
4. Feature (1) and (2) and (3) couple together: 20k+ shield on 24 people (not crit-able), with >50% damage reduction beyond 6, heals automatically target the players that get hit with damage!!!!!!
6. Therefore an opposing group must put out enormous BURST damage in order to wipe the entire group before they react (i.e. pop a barrier, which will save an entire raid by itself). Hence, Prox det and coordinated ultimate.
Considerations: AoE caps and dynamic ultimate interplay. Pre patch 1.6 dynamic ultimate enabled small groups to consistently wipe large groups via smart play. Ultimate gain was the equalizing dynamic -- the more people engaged, the faster i could gain ultimate. The cost was risk: I had to be able to survive against much larger numbers. AoE caps were somewhat sensible in this case because ultimate generation was based on how many players were hit, criticals, and so forth. HOWEVER, balance changes could have scaled ultimate generation better while enabling the ability to uncap AoE.
Current situation: static ultimate generation means that the large group ALWAYS has more ultimate available than a smaller group. When added to the AoE cap, this gives the large group an artificial, unfair playing advantage. The large group already has the advantage of numbers and the ability to prepare a larger number of ultimates for an initial use.
I've already touched on skill balance. AoE removal requires consideration of all skills as they stand. The changes required for these skills are different depending on the AoE cap mechanic, whether or not dynamic ultimate stays, and so forth. For example, barrier is much less of a problem without AoE caps.
Finally, can you comment on the performance consideration of AoE caps? The meta as I've described it absolutely destroys servers and the ability to have fun. Changes which break this up are important.
My basis for that suggestion was that currently, the larger your group is, the less likely you are to take damage because of the existing cap mechanic mitigating damage to larger groups. If the caps were just outright removed, then being in a large blob no longer helps for defensive purposes, but also doesn't encourage use of single-target over AoE, which is something Wrobel wants to promote. A blob would still spam AoEs against a small group instead of using single-target, which would neither improve the lag issues nor create a fun playstyle for the small group. Reducing damage for the first 6 enemies hit by an AoE makes the single-target more favourable in that situation, making gameplay for the small group more fun. A larger group would still have the advantage over a smaller group, but an inverted cap would give the smaller group a bit more of a chance.I don't agree with the idea of inverting the caps. This is just going from one side to the other in favour of who should be winning fights.
If those 20 stand on the same pixel, they SHOULD die to the 5 that rush in and AOE bomb them!!! Worked perfectly fine in daoc, where zergs knew they had to spread out on inc.
@Kutsuu Like the one I posted earlier?Remember those super cool big zerg battle videos that you guys used to advertise the game?
Agreed 100%.If ball-groups were at risk of being blown up by well-placed AOE, they would learn to spread out. Suddenly keep battles actually look pretty cool again with everyone spread out, and you could make more marketing videos!
avid_mdb16_ESO wrote: »The purpose of AOE skills is simple: it is to give one player an utility to fight against a group of players.
The problem with AOE in ESO is that there is no friendly fire and large groups are using AOE with no negative consequences.
In a real world environment an AOE skill is inflicting damage not only to enemies but to allies as well if not placed properly.
Of course you cannot implement friendly fire in ESO. But you can add a debuff to an AOE ability for each friendly unit hit. It has to be calculated that a bigger group will always hit harder with their combined AOE abilities but not by much. So the group of 5 people will not get evaporated instantly by a group of 20.
Add a debuff to healing as well instead of capping when healing big groups.
This way the AOE heals and AOE damage of large groups will always be stronger if compared to small groups but not by much.
With the current AOE cap you punish drastically those small groups.
Cheers!
I think it will be better if they bring back ground oils than the skill that you proposed because you cannot stack oils on the same location. Can you imagine 5-6 people using this skill stacked and 3-4 people just spamming heals. Everything what gets inside will melt down (As you said not like wall of elements melt down).Joy_Division wrote: »As far as Magicka Detonation, well, this was our promised replacement for our beloved Ground Oils and the votes are in: it's a stinker. Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, how about you make it so magicka detonation follows the already proven zerg-busting function of Ground Oils? If you made it so the caster was immobile, had a cast time, a produced a large AOE fast ticking Dot, many of us would be happy Cyrodiil campers as it would solve several problems.
Can anyone remind me why ZoS removed ground oils? Was it because people can use it next to keeps and use the siege limit? If that was the reason they just can remove the oils from the siege limit counter.
@Wrobel , I hope you timed this thread creation with the intention of having mass amounts of pumpkin pie to gorge on and get through the angry posts (that are mostly warranted, to be fair...).
I truly don't think removing the aoe cap is going to have as pronounced an effect as has been sold to the general playerbase by a few well known names, but on that same vein of thought, I don't see too much harm in removing the aoe cap. The biggest concern I would want to see addressed if the aoe cap is removed are added measures to prevent group v group fights from being over even quicker than they already are. Lag permitting, most group v group fights come down to who gets their own bomb off successfully and can wipe the entire (or a large percentage of the) opposing group in one shot. If those fights are already over in literally <4 seconds, and the aoe caps are already in place to mitigate damage, their removal will make those fights even shorter because the bombs will be bigger. I know a few small-group minded players salivate at that thought, but I've always preferred long drawn out battles where sides clash and have chances to regroup, maneuver, and strategize DURING a fight. Most of our meta is already bomb and done, and I'd very much prefer to not see pvp go even further down that path. I know some of the small groupers want to be able to run into a juicy stack of players with <=4 of their own and blow everyone up in a second with ulti and aoe, but at that point it comes down to ego and wanting to be able to brag about kill counts rather than promoting a pvp environment focused on actual fighting with counters, strategy, LOS, terrain, etc. If I wanted to oneshot people, I'd play an FPS. I want tactical pvp fights with skills and sets that allow me to counter some builds and be weak to other builds, with fights that last long enough for all players to react and put up a fight. As fun as it is to stealth one-shot a vampire using the ridiculous mechanics of camo hunter, if all of pvp was like that it'd be boring as hell and people would spend more time on their horses (or in fact, running, because of the stuck in combat bug -_-) than actually fighting. Being blown up by prox det, ults, and aoe even quicker than the current meta does not sound like healthy or fun pvp.
Call me crazy, but I want pvp to be about actually fighting other players, not blowing them up in 2 seconds so they can ride back on their mount, or being blown up myself in 2 seconds so I can ride back.
Anyway, aoe caps don't make sense as an artificial limiter, but their removal would require (imo) mechanic changes to make sure aoes don't just melt everybody now. A strong prox det + ult combined with someone else's ult and a steel tornado can obliterate most players' health bar, and I'd don't see it as a healthy thing for the meta to shift even more towards a buff and bomb mentality. PLEASE be wary of that, as I don't think you're going to be able to placate the playerbase unless you remove the aoe caps - they've been whipped into such a frenzy over this you really don't have an alternative. Just make sure the aoe caps are removed responsibly so that TTK is not even shorter that it currently is for group v group fights.
Half of your post makes sense, the other half doesnt.
You don't want group fights to end faster than they already do, I agree, group fights are for the most part boring atm, it's whoever has the biggest bomb impact wins. removing aoe caps will make it even faster, yes. But that's only if groups keep playing the way they do, with crown stacking being the prominent strategy.
you want "tactical pvp fights with skills and sets that allow me to counter some builds and be weak to other builds", and that is just not part of large group play I'm sorry. Group play requires group focused builds, and not builds that focus on countering what your enemy is using atm.
If group think a bit, removal of aoe caps will make them spread out when they are being engaged by a bomb group, rendering the bomb group's aoe useless, and they'll work from there.
usmcjdking wrote: »Blanket removal AOE caps would sufficiently work to completely kill the AvA. This isn't 1.5 or 1.6 damage numbers with battle leveling. This is 2.1 where damage has just about doubled due to lack of foresight on removing caps and the absolute refusal to have damage/healing not scale exponentially out of control. This is the only reason why I am totally against their removal. Spin2Win, ProxDet and Vampbat trains would completely obliterate any unorganized defense which makes the game unfun. When IC dropped, it was almost impossible to kill anyone in a 1v1. Good for the new players. As soon as people finished gearing out to BIS, things went downhill very, very fast.
Until soft caps and hard caps are addressed, I am completely against the removal of AoE caps. PvP is quickly becoming a wasteland to newcomers as is because they are getting macroed back to Storhaven/Deeshan/Auridon. More blanket buffing/nerfing (Battle Spirit) will only make it worse as champion point progression continues. Same people in groups, same people in zone chat, same enemy groups running around. This does not speak well for the long-term health of the game.
Regardless of what people who don't actually participate in group v group fights assume, most of the time the stacking happens for the initial bomb, and players then begin to focus on targets in smaller clusters because any smart player will have scattered when they see prox det circles, novas, and negates all in one spot. Group v group players also have to fight on their own/in small groups a good portion of the night (whether caught on back line, caught on siege, scouting, etc.).
usmcjdking wrote: »Blanket removal AOE caps would sufficiently work to completely kill the AvA. This isn't 1.5 or 1.6 damage numbers with battle leveling. This is 2.1 where damage has just about doubled due to lack of foresight on removing caps and the absolute refusal to have damage/healing not scale exponentially out of control. This is the only reason why I am totally against their removal. Spin2Win, ProxDet and Vampbat trains would completely obliterate any unorganized defense which makes the game unfun. When IC dropped, it was almost impossible to kill anyone in a 1v1. Good for the new players. As soon as people finished gearing out to BIS, things went downhill very, very fast.
Until soft caps and hard caps are addressed, I am completely against the removal of AoE caps. PvP is quickly becoming a wasteland to newcomers as is because they are getting macroed back to Storhaven/Deeshan/Auridon. More blanket buffing/nerfing (Battle Spirit) will only make it worse as champion point progression continues. Same people in groups, same people in zone chat, same enemy groups running around. This does not speak well for the long-term health of the game.
To summarize (and avoid misunderstandings), you are basically the opinion that a removal of AOE caps would be good against bombsquads, but against unorganized players it would be way too OP as they do not exploit defensive skills as much as organized groups do.
What do you think of the following suggestion, in terms of AOE caps?:
Reduce the radius of all AOE's to 5m alongside removing the AOE cap. This should make sure that it's very hard to hit a lot of unorganized players with a single AOE, but the effectiveness against organized groups would be very high as they tend to be very clustered.Regardless of what people who don't actually participate in group v group fights assume, most of the time the stacking happens for the initial bomb, and players then begin to focus on targets in smaller clusters because any smart player will have scattered when they see prox det circles, novas, and negates all in one spot. Group v group players also have to fight on their own/in small groups a good portion of the night (whether caught on back line, caught on siege, scouting, etc.).
As somebody who played and theorycrafted raid (24-man) PvP since beta, I strongly disagree. The lost effectiveness of AOE heals, purges and barrier makes spreading out extremely punishing, up to an extent where it is almost never desirable. On top of that you loose the mitigation provided by AOE caps, which can be up to 37,5%. Apart from that you do have to defend yourself from time to time, but this most of the times can either be tracked down to bad gameplay, or be dealt with using one or two defensive skills. Single target attacks are only BiS once a fight is over, but then they are usually not even worth the slot, as you heavily outnumber your opponent anyway.
After the initial bomb, most of the opponents are dead
usmcjdking wrote: »Blanket removal AOE caps would sufficiently work to completely kill the AvA. This isn't 1.5 or 1.6 damage numbers with battle leveling. This is 2.1 where damage has just about doubled due to lack of foresight on removing caps and the absolute refusal to have damage/healing not scale exponentially out of control. This is the only reason why I am totally against their removal. Spin2Win, ProxDet and Vampbat trains would completely obliterate any unorganized defense which makes the game unfun. When IC dropped, it was almost impossible to kill anyone in a 1v1. Good for the new players. As soon as people finished gearing out to BIS, things went downhill very, very fast.
Until soft caps and hard caps are addressed, I am completely against the removal of AoE caps. PvP is quickly becoming a wasteland to newcomers as is because they are getting macroed back to Storhaven/Deeshan/Auridon. More blanket buffing/nerfing (Battle Spirit) will only make it worse as champion point progression continues. Same people in groups, same people in zone chat, same enemy groups running around. This does not speak well for the long-term health of the game.
To summarize (and avoid misunderstandings), you are basically the opinion that a removal of AOE caps would be good against bombsquads, but against unorganized players it would be way too OP as they do not exploit defensive skills as much as organized groups do.
What do you think of the following suggestion, in terms of AOE caps?:
Reduce the radius of all AOE's to 5m alongside removing the AOE cap. This should make sure that it's very hard to hit a lot of unorganized players with a single AOE, but the effectiveness against organized groups would be very high as they tend to be very clustered.Regardless of what people who don't actually participate in group v group fights assume, most of the time the stacking happens for the initial bomb, and players then begin to focus on targets in smaller clusters because any smart player will have scattered when they see prox det circles, novas, and negates all in one spot. Group v group players also have to fight on their own/in small groups a good portion of the night (whether caught on back line, caught on siege, scouting, etc.).
As somebody who played and theorycrafted raid (24-man) PvP since beta, I strongly disagree. The lost effectiveness of AOE heals, purges and barrier makes spreading out extremely punishing, up to an extent where it is almost never desirable. On top of that you loose the mitigation provided by AOE caps, which can be up to 37,5%. Apart from that you do have to defend yourself from time to time, but this most of the times can either be tracked down to bad gameplay, or be dealt with using one or two defensive skills. Single target attacks are only BiS once a fight is over, but then they are usually not even worth the slot, as you heavily outnumber your opponent anyway.
usmcjdking wrote: »Blanket removal AOE caps would sufficiently work to completely kill the AvA. This isn't 1.5 or 1.6 damage numbers with battle leveling. This is 2.1 where damage has just about doubled due to lack of foresight on removing caps and the absolute refusal to have damage/healing not scale exponentially out of control. This is the only reason why I am totally against their removal. Spin2Win, ProxDet and Vampbat trains would completely obliterate any unorganized defense which makes the game unfun. When IC dropped, it was almost impossible to kill anyone in a 1v1. Good for the new players. As soon as people finished gearing out to BIS, things went downhill very, very fast.
Until soft caps and hard caps are addressed, I am completely against the removal of AoE caps. PvP is quickly becoming a wasteland to newcomers as is because they are getting macroed back to Storhaven/Deeshan/Auridon. More blanket buffing/nerfing (Battle Spirit) will only make it worse as champion point progression continues. Same people in groups, same people in zone chat, same enemy groups running around. This does not speak well for the long-term health of the game.
To summarize (and avoid misunderstandings), you are basically the opinion that a removal of AOE caps would be good against bombsquads, but against unorganized players it would be way too OP as they do not exploit defensive skills as much as organized groups do.
What do you think of the following suggestion, in terms of AOE caps?:
Reduce the radius of all AOE's to 5m alongside removing the AOE cap. This should make sure that it's very hard to hit a lot of unorganized players with a single AOE, but the effectiveness against organized groups would be very high as they tend to be very clustered.
Surely this is something which should be addressed at the skill or basic mechanics level rather than mechanics which scales additional damage on large groups.My basis for that suggestion was that currently, the larger your group is, the less likely you are to take damage because of the existing cap mechanic mitigating damage to larger groups. If the caps were just outright removed, then being in a large blob no longer helps for defensive purposes, but also doesn't encourage use of single-target over AoE, which is something Wrobel wants to promote.
This doesn't make any sense though and is saying "because your group wouldn't be strong enough normally we're going to give you help via a game mechanic winning vs the bigger guys" once again trying to validate that bigger groups are bad and shouldn't be done and smaller groups are the only correct playstyle.A blob would still spam AoEs against a small group instead of using single-target, which would neither improve the lag issues nor create a fun playstyle for the small group. Reducing damage for the first 6 enemies hit by an AoE makes the single-target more favourable in that situation, making gameplay for the small group more fun.A larger group would still have the advantage over a smaller group, but an inverted cap would give the smaller group a bit more of a chance.
usmcjdking wrote: »Blanket removal AOE caps would sufficiently work to completely kill the AvA. This isn't 1.5 or 1.6 damage numbers with battle leveling. This is 2.1 where damage has just about doubled due to lack of foresight on removing caps and the absolute refusal to have damage/healing not scale exponentially out of control. This is the only reason why I am totally against their removal. Spin2Win, ProxDet and Vampbat trains would completely obliterate any unorganized defense which makes the game unfun. When IC dropped, it was almost impossible to kill anyone in a 1v1. Good for the new players. As soon as people finished gearing out to BIS, things went downhill very, very fast.
Until soft caps and hard caps are addressed, I am completely against the removal of AoE caps. PvP is quickly becoming a wasteland to newcomers as is because they are getting macroed back to Storhaven/Deeshan/Auridon. More blanket buffing/nerfing (Battle Spirit) will only make it worse as champion point progression continues. Same people in groups, same people in zone chat, same enemy groups running around. This does not speak well for the long-term health of the game.
To summarize (and avoid misunderstandings), you are basically the opinion that a removal of AOE caps would be good against bombsquads, but against unorganized players it would be way too OP as they do not exploit defensive skills as much as organized groups do.
What do you think of the following suggestion, in terms of AOE caps?:
Reduce the radius of all AOE's to 5m alongside removing the AOE cap. This should make sure that it's very hard to hit a lot of unorganized players with a single AOE, but the effectiveness against organized groups would be very high as they tend to be very clustered.
Honestly I have no idea why there even has to be an argument on the topic. 87% voted against caps when they were introduced in a poll with 4000 votes (i laugh at the though they even had 4000 voters on a pvp related topic - boy those days are LONG gone).
We should not have to argue why aoe caps should go - @Wrobel should explain why they were introduced in the first place and why they´re still in the bloody game.
This whole thread is a farce and i feel the end result - despite of the majority of posts here arguing for removal of caps will be: Mr. Wrobel thinks caps should stay. Without explanation again.
usmcjdking wrote: »Blanket removal AOE caps would sufficiently work to completely kill the AvA. This isn't 1.5 or 1.6 damage numbers with battle leveling. This is 2.1 where damage has just about doubled due to lack of foresight on removing caps and the absolute refusal to have damage/healing not scale exponentially out of control. This is the only reason why I am totally against their removal. Spin2Win, ProxDet and Vampbat trains would completely obliterate any unorganized defense which makes the game unfun. When IC dropped, it was almost impossible to kill anyone in a 1v1. Good for the new players. As soon as people finished gearing out to BIS, things went downhill very, very fast.
Until soft caps and hard caps are addressed, I am completely against the removal of AoE caps. PvP is quickly becoming a wasteland to newcomers as is because they are getting macroed back to Storhaven/Deeshan/Auridon. More blanket buffing/nerfing (Battle Spirit) will only make it worse as champion point progression continues. Same people in groups, same people in zone chat, same enemy groups running around. This does not speak well for the long-term health of the game.
To summarize (and avoid misunderstandings), you are basically the opinion that a removal of AOE caps would be good against bombsquads, but against unorganized players it would be way too OP as they do not exploit defensive skills as much as organized groups do.
What do you think of the following suggestion, in terms of AOE caps?:
Reduce the radius of all AOE's to 5m alongside removing the AOE cap. This should make sure that it's very hard to hit a lot of unorganized players with a single AOE, but the effectiveness against organized groups would be very high as they tend to be very clustered.
Just going to answer on this part:
Not a good idea. 5m range is just too small - it´s already hard hitting more than three players with impuls. The only issue with aoe currently are: Batswarm (arguably bc it´s an ultimate) and steeltornado bc of their range and detonation because of the high burst provided.
Any AOE between 6 and 8m radius is fine as is imho.
Edit:
Honestly I have no idea why there even has to be an argument on the topic. 87% voted against caps when they were introduced in a poll with 4000 votes (i laugh at the though they even had 4000 voters on a pvp related topic - boy those days are LONG gone).
We should not have to argue why aoe caps should go - @Wrobel should explain why they were introduced in the first place and why they´re still in the bloody game.
This whole thread is a farce and i feel the end result - despite of the majority of posts here arguing for removal of caps will be: Mr. Wrobel thinks caps should stay. Without explanation again.
usmcjdking wrote: »Blanket removal AOE caps would sufficiently work to completely kill the AvA. This isn't 1.5 or 1.6 damage numbers with battle leveling. This is 2.1 where damage has just about doubled due to lack of foresight on removing caps and the absolute refusal to have damage/healing not scale exponentially out of control. This is the only reason why I am totally against their removal. Spin2Win, ProxDet and Vampbat trains would completely obliterate any unorganized defense which makes the game unfun. When IC dropped, it was almost impossible to kill anyone in a 1v1. Good for the new players. As soon as people finished gearing out to BIS, things went downhill very, very fast.
Until soft caps and hard caps are addressed, I am completely against the removal of AoE caps. PvP is quickly becoming a wasteland to newcomers as is because they are getting macroed back to Storhaven/Deeshan/Auridon. More blanket buffing/nerfing (Battle Spirit) will only make it worse as champion point progression continues. Same people in groups, same people in zone chat, same enemy groups running around. This does not speak well for the long-term health of the game.
To summarize (and avoid misunderstandings), you are basically the opinion that a removal of AOE caps would be good against bombsquads, but against unorganized players it would be way too OP as they do not exploit defensive skills as much as organized groups do.
What do you think of the following suggestion, in terms of AOE caps?:
Reduce the radius of all AOE's to 5m alongside removing the AOE cap. This should make sure that it's very hard to hit a lot of unorganized players with a single AOE, but the effectiveness against organized groups would be very high as they tend to be very clustered.
Just going to answer on this part:
Not a good idea. 5m range is just too small - it´s already hard hitting more than three players with impuls. The only issue with aoe currently are: Batswarm (arguably bc it´s an ultimate) and steeltornado bc of their range and detonation because of the high burst provided.
Any AOE between 6 and 8m radius is fine as is imho.
Edit:
Honestly I have no idea why there even has to be an argument on the topic. 87% voted against caps when they were introduced in a poll with 4000 votes (i laugh at the though they even had 4000 voters on a pvp related topic - boy those days are LONG gone).
We should not have to argue why aoe caps should go - @Wrobel should explain why they were introduced in the first place and why they´re still in the bloody game.
This whole thread is a farce and i feel the end result - despite of the majority of posts here arguing for removal of caps will be: Mr. Wrobel thinks caps should stay. Without explanation again.
ZOS considers AOE a skill type that should be equivalent to single-target in terms of choices, so there definetely is need for a discussion.
Regarding the radius of AOE's, personally I have no problem hitting 10+ players with Pulsar. What I do not get from your post is, do you prefer to solve the bombsquad issue with modifications to AvA skills or some different solution?
1) Remove AOE caps on dmg.