PTS: AoE Ability Cap 6 Targets Max

Oblongship · April 2014

ZOS you told us several times while this game was being made that you wanted to make it to where a small group can take out a much larger group.

Then you limit the AOE to 6 targets max?

I really don't like the way your class changes are going in these PTS notes. You are sneaking in major game changing "fixes" and hoping no one catches on.

This is really disturbing.

By the way when I say sneaking them in...I mean putting such a major change literally in this format.

"Fixed an issue with several area-of-effect abilities where they could erroneously hit an unlimited number of targets."

Malediktus · April 2014

Small groups still can beat larger uncoordinated groups. It just makes a bit harder and more balanced.

Oblongship · April 2014

Malediktus wrote: »

Small groups still can beat larger uncoordinated groups. It just makes a bit harder and more balanced.

Lets put that aside...I am talking about them just sneaking literally game changing things like this into one small blurb and hoping no one notices.

The only way we know it is 6 people is because of the people testing it on the PTS.

This means Heals as well...you can only heal 6 people at a time. Which means it will affect PvE on top of PvP.

Malediktus · April 2014

Making it affect heals is only logical.Otherwise you would need less healers in your group/zerg because the AOE damage hits fewer people = less total damage.

Current PVE is balanced for max. 4 people anyway, so 6 is plenty. Future trails have 12 players, so 2 healers will be requiered. Seems fine to me.

nightow78 · April 2014

Terrible change just buffing zergs and nerfing smaller groups.
I really hope they rethink this before it goes live.

Oblongship · April 2014

Malediktus wrote: »

Current PVE is balanced for max. 4 people anyway, so 6 is plenty. Future trails have 12 players, so 2 healers will be requiered. Seems fine to me.

annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd considering you can't target who to heal yep...hopefully the 6 you randomly heal will be the right one...

Oblongship · April 2014

nightow78 wrote: »

Terrible change just buffing zergs and nerfing smaller groups.
I really hope they rethink this before it goes live.

I really agree...this is far to extreme of a change and resembles a knee jerk reaction.

Every company that knee jerks especially this soon after launch takes a long time to recover from it and usually loses a lot of customers.

The_Drexill · April 2014

Ugh, this is a bad change. Not being able to zerg bomb will make it a zerg game... it will die like Warhammer. Not trying to be all doom and gloom and yell "fail"... but There's two games with similar systems... DAoC, and WAR. One worked, one didn't. Don't make it like the one that didn't.

Arsenic_Touch · April 2014

Oblongship wrote: »

Malediktus wrote: »

Current PVE is balanced for max. 4 people anyway, so 6 is plenty. Future trails have 12 players, so 2 healers will be requiered. Seems fine to me.

annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd considering you can't target who to heal yep...hopefully the 6 you randomly heal will be the right one...

Yeah, one of the big issues I have with this.

Oblongship · April 2014

brandondickenson_ESO wrote: »

Ugh, this is a bad change. Not being able to zerg bomb will make it a zerg game... it will die like Warhammer. Not trying to be all doom and gloom and yell "fail"... but There's two games with similar systems... DAoC, and WAR. One worked, one didn't. Don't make it like the one that didn't.

Yeah, I mean they specifically said during development that they want small groups to have the ability to be effective and take out larger groups...

This pretty much kills that...

Also the skills don't match up for this...and AoE root ability will just randomly target 6 people?

What happens if you are chasing down a scroll runner? OOPS better hope to many people aren't around them!!!

If they make a change like this they should just make the AoE range smaller not affect the number.

This REALLY REALLY is such a big bi g big change just to be thrown in

"Fixed an issue with several area-of-effect abilities where they could erroneously hit an unlimited number of targets"

It makes me feel like they were just trying to sneak it in.

Worstluck · April 2014

Hmm well I have the skill Power Extraction as a nightblade tank to increase the amount of enemies it affects from 6-9...I guess that skill is useless now? Just skimmed the patch notes, didn't see anything about it..

Oblongship · April 2014

Worstluck wrote: »

Hmm well I have the skill Power Extraction as a nightblade tank to increase the amount of enemies it affects from 6-9...I guess that skill is useless now? Just skimmed the patch notes, didn't see anything about it..

Its because they just snuck it into this statement

Fixed an issue with several area-of-effect abilities where they could erroneously hit an unlimited number of targets.

The only reason we know it is like this is because of all the people testing it on the PTS and reporting it.

gfroverab14_ESO · April 2014

I agree with the article posted on TF....guess Zenimax really does want this game to be F2P cause that's what is gonna happen when all the hardcore PvP players leave cause they screwed the game up with a target cap of 6 players..

Also... don't insult us Zenimax.. "not working they way we intended..." you mean the way it had been working through the years of play testing was wrong? I doubt it....but then i look at all the quests that haven't been fixed and maybe this is right....

when does Wildstar come out?

tw1jaysin · April 2014

Well crap. No AoE cap was a real big selling point for me coming from GW2. All this is going to do is promote stacking like in GW2 to take advantage of the cap. Seriously, ZoS you should rethink this. Do you really want to promote zerging and stacking? If so then this isn't the game for me. We already have GW2.

LadyChaos · April 2014

I'm torn,

I'm an AoE specialist personally, I focus on trying to get as much chaos into a circle of ouch as possible, but, I can see the need for restrictions to keep individuals from unbalancing the largescale system.

I can see this equating to needing more than 1 sorc to bubble a break in, more than 1 destro staff to AoE, 1 DK not owning a raid, 1 Vamp Emp not eternally siphoning an entire raid etc...

but at the same time I'm skeptical about the implementation to avoid the GW2 turtle mentality. giant raid stacks on itself and negates AoE altogether because only any 6 at any given time can be hit by siege/PC damage etc...

Worstluck · April 2014

Well, Power Extraction is the morph of the skill Drain Power. It increases the bonus damage you get while increasing max number of targets. If this change is going live, I hope they do something to that morph or at least refund my skill points in it.

I don't agree with this change regardless..I can imagine this may be a response to the vampire ultimate. I used the crap out it, it's pretty overpowered.

Greiger · April 2014

GW2 Did this as well. While there were a lot of things they did right this is one of the things they did wrong.
They capped AoE damage to at most 5 targets. Small group vs large group combat always comes out with the large group winning because the small group can only hurt a small percentage of the large group at a time, while the larger group is hitting a much larger percent of the smaller group.

While zerg vs zerg combat in an open field just comes down to who has the tighter stack and fewer melee characters.

I don't see why these people think that limits on the number hit by AoE makes any sense, you should be encouraged to spread out to minimize AoE, not stack up tighter so only a few people get hit before a cap. So what if a single volley hits 20 people, they shouldn't be standing on top of each-other like ***.

CrispZ · April 2014

Oh no we cannot let this happen

driosketch · April 2014

Oblongship wrote: »

The only reason we know it is like this is because of all the people testing it on the PTS and reporting it.

It's barely even tested, and we have no idea how this will really effect gameplay. If a root targets skill is truly random, then teams will want to stick extra close to their scroll runner. This just changes tactics. You don't even know if this change will even make it to a live patch. I just see some players worried about their "elite" status making a stink about it to fuel knee-jerk reactions.

aipex8_ESO · April 2014

Well, i

Worstluck wrote: »

Well, Power Extraction is the morph of the skill Drain Power. It increases the bonus damage you get while increasing max number of targets. If this change is going live, I hope they do something to that morph or at least refund my skill points in it.

I don't agree with this change regardless..I can imagine this may be a response to the vampire ultimate. I used the crap out it, it's pretty overpowered.

It sounds like currently that point is useless to you because you are effecting an infinite number of targets regardless. I'm assuming that after they fix it, it will work as intended and you will effect 9 targets.

RaZaddha · April 2014

GRAB YOUR PITCHFORKS! It's time for a REVOLUTION! I won't wait for this game to go the same way GW2 zerg combat became, it literally is: stack together because since theres a AoE cap theres a bigger chance the heavies will absorb the damage of the light people.
We can't allow aoe cap to go live.

endus · April 2014

Bump because this post needs to be read by Zenimax. From what I understand a lot of the people that worked on DAOC work for Zenimax. They had no problem in that game with gank groups (organized groups of eight) that could take out large zergs if they played correctly. Theres no reason to limit AOE especially when the range isn't that big. If you keep these changes there is going to be a huge drop in subscriptions after the 30 days.

cucmw5ub17_ESO · April 2014

Knee-jerk reaction to vampire-emperor aoe's instead of considering the community consequences?

Examining how pvp changes in GW2 and WoW affected the way players grouped up and fought can teach developers a lot about the metagame. Hopefully this really does just stay in the PTS.

Haduis · April 2014

Awful change. There's only two real reasons for this to be implemented, neither of which address the real problem.

Reason 1: AOE is imbalanced right now, so the lazy design decision is to cap it. How about taking a look at individual skills and tweaking them from there? Why do we have to murder AOE as a whole?

Reason 2: Zergs don't like being beaten by smaller numbers, so they nerf it.
This is just about the worst reason. Zergs are full of players who don't want to learn how to play well, they don't want to learn their classes, they just want to run around in a blob and beat everything. Guess what? This isn't a reason to nerf their direct counter (AOE). Removing competition from PvP destroys the fundamental thing that makes PvP fun.

Small groups have it hard enough when facing larger numbers WITHOUT the AOE cap. It's simple math. Capping AOE will only make this exponentially worse, to the point where small groups will be marginalized and their impact in Cyrodiil will be severely degraded.

TLDR: An AOE cap will hurt any playstyle that isn't "zerg everything" Skill should win fights, not numbers.

Lickyo · April 2014

wow I hope this doesn't go live

Audigy · April 2014

ZOS you told us several times while this game was being made that you wanted to make it to where a small group can take out a much larger group.

Then you limit the AOE to 6 targets max?

They also said that crafting would always be equal to raid gear, with 1.1. this wont be the case anymore.

In my opinion should people run out of AOE and not count how many others are there so they can dodge it.

PvP in 1.1 sees quite some changes also in regards of Ranks and gear as the new PvE raiding zone offers the ability to climb to Rank 12 and get superior gear to those that do PVP.

Maybe 1.2 will be a pvp patch?

Nox_Aeterna · April 2014

While i dont think that having a max makes up to bad idea on itself , the issue is that we cant target , not that i think anyone would be able to hit 6 targets in a resonable speed anyway.

Since we cant target , we need to trust our skill will hit everyone in a zone , otherwise it might not hit that one target we actually wanted it to hit.

I agree with many others here , AoE skills should not have a limited number of targets in their area. If they want , they can reduce the AoE range to smaller radius , but it should still hit all targets.

Dubah · April 2014

Awww man, guess what guys? People abused the system so it gets changed, thats what happens when you cant respect what the developers give you. People were AE farming 3-4 group because their AEs hit every single target, this is what you would call abuse, you want them to stop making changes like this then stop abusing the system. It sucks but it is necessary and guess what, you will get over it or go play another game

Nox_Aeterna · April 2014

Dubah wrote: »

Awww man, guess what guys? People abused the system so it gets changed, thats what happens when you cant respect what the developers give you. People were AE farming 3-4 group because their AEs hit every single target, this is what you would call abuse, you want them to stop making changes like this then stop abusing the system. It sucks but it is necessary and guess what, you will get over it or go play another game

Yup , cant wait for the ignore function on these forums.

Hope they dont come with a limit, too many "go play another game" folk to add.

Oblongship · April 2014

Dubah wrote: »

Awww man, guess what guys? People abused the system so it gets changed, thats what happens when you cant respect what the developers give you. People were AE farming 3-4 group because their AEs hit every single target, this is what you would call abuse, you want them to stop making changes like this then stop abusing the system. It sucks but it is necessary and guess what, you will get over it or go play another game

What a condescending way to get your point across.

Thats right man come yell at the people who didn't abuse it...I know I sure as heck have not.

Hope this made you feel like a real man...cause it sure didn't make you look like one lol

Haduis · April 2014

Dubah wrote: »

Awww man, guess what guys? People abused the system so it gets changed, thats what happens when you cant respect what the developers give you. People were AE farming 3-4 group because their AEs hit every single target, this is what you would call abuse, you want them to stop making changes like this then stop abusing the system. It sucks but it is necessary and guess what, you will get over it or go play another game

There are a few skills that need to be addressed, sure I can admit that.

I also believe that the solution to AOEs lies right there in the name. Area of Effect. Area. Don't be clumped up in that area and you'll completely negate the usefulness of the spell. It isn't rocket science.