Nooblet wrote: »

I think the best thing they could do for the AoE game.. is have a reason to spread out(not sure what exactly to encourage that). In DAoC, if you were close to someone else, you were far more likely to take an AoE mez, or root etc. Which not only make it easier to CC, it also made it easier to interrupt with hard interrupts. In ESO, with the targeting system, AoE caps, healing mechanics, No hard interrupts(and mostly instant abilities), etc.. they all promote stacking, which really takes away the depth of PvP imo.

Possible things could be :
add AoE debuffs of some sort that have no cap.
increase AoE cap to 15ish(or none) .. this wouldnt be enough by itself.
have more ranged AoE dps spells(that can hit more than 6)

I don't really know the best answer. But something needs to be done to promote strategically spreading out over stacking in a ball.

A lot of people really don't get how stupid AoE caps are, they're pissed about Caltrops right now letting people avoid the Siege damage in this game, Wait till they start facing large zergs/groups running multiple Replenishing Barriers, and their Siege doing nothing then...

The punishment for stacking in any game should always be the risk of dying to AoE.... AoE caps pretty much insure this will never be the case.

xsorusb14_ESO wrote: »

Oh look, The OP now thinks AOE's are to powerful, and wants to remove that as well.....For someone who claims he loved DAOC, you sure do want to remove everything about this game that was similar to DAOC.

We already have Matt Firor doing that, we don't need anymore suggestions on how to screw up the game more.

Just becouse he was on the DAOC staff doesnt mean the good features that turned DAOC into what it was belong to him entirely, i dont see much DAOC in this game so i can think of 2 things:

1. Matt doesnt have a clue about what he is doing
or
2. Matt doesnt have enough decisional power
or
3. Matt doesnt care (or has other priorities) about creating a good PvP environment

Doesnt even matter wich one it is, his reputation is ruined in my book

All in all i'm preaty sure that if ZoS employs the janitor from Blizzard ESO will not turn into a WoW clone...hopefully!

Nijjion wrote: »

@popatiberiuoneb18_ESO Have to agree has to be one of those... though I would bet he didn't do much in DAoC side but that's hard to tell... He was Mark Jacobs right hand man which has more of a grasp than Matt does... I have big hopes for Camelot Unchained... he will make it a lot more DAoC like from unique classes and to learn from his mistakes of WaR (main problem was 2 realms and 1vs1 is never a RvR type PvP in my mind... has to be 1vs1vs1 for true RvR )
...

Unfortunately that wont happen anytime soon and i'm afraid to get my hopes up...if it doese happen to be even half as good as they claim its going to draw all the PvP crowd and turn the ESO PvP joke into a bad memory

Nijjion wrote: »

@popatiberiuoneb18_ESO Have to agree has to be one of those... though I would bet he didn't do much in DAoC side but that's hard to tell... He was Mark Jacobs right hand man which has more of a grasp than Matt does... I have big hopes for Camelot Unchained... he will make it a lot more DAoC like from unique classes and to learn from his mistakes of WaR (main problem was 2 realms and 1vs1 is never a RvR type PvP in my mind... has to be 1vs1vs1 for true RvR )

Mark Jacobs proved with Warhammer that he has no idea why DAoC was successful. I'm pretty sure that all these devs simply "don't get it" and the success of their previous games was not due to some insight on their part, but to pure luck.

Imperator_Clydus wrote: »

NordJitsu wrote: »

I think you're exaggerating how homogenous strategies are and also lumping in some odd ones....Bolt Escape is not an AoE.

I also think you're mistaken in thinking that single target is not just as powerful (or more powerful) than AoE. Get a group of single target DPS. You only need like 6. Now get them in TS and have one person calling targets with either Back Lash or Quick Siphon. Watch how fast stuff melts.

AoE is under powered right now. It should be hitting harder IMO. Especially ground based AoEs like Wall of Lightning and Lightning Pool (the PBAoE's are pretty much fine as is.) Standing in a pool of fire/lightning/ice should be punishing. You should have to move out of it. If you get rooted in that pool, you should have to dodge.

Right now those skills barely tickle.

I'd just like clarify that Bolt Escape itself is not an AOE, but the morph that is an AOE stun when you use it is. This is a very popular tool, besides dark talons, to immobilize a large amount of players in order to quickly burn them to the ground.

We aren't discussing simple AOEs that can easily be avoided. We are discussing primarily abilities such as impulse, which are instant and cannot be avoided. Whatever you may believe, I think it's foolish to say AOE is underpowered when multiple players stacking the same AOEs can melt 50+ players in a matter of seconds. That doesn't seem underpowered to me.

Single target is one thing as players have to focus fire and burn down those individual players. AOEs are burning down entire large groups within a matter of seconds without the need of focusing fire. The AOE bomb group just follows the train and keeps the AOEs constant.

I'm pretty sure you have sorcs in your grp, so if they get stunned by a bolt escape, cc break, and make your sorcs stun them, if you get rooted, dodge roll out of it, but then you'll say, oh they're all blocking while spamming impulse, well you have block too ....

i suggest what someone else suggested, try to do it yourself with a small grp of 5 or 8 and take on a zerg, see how well you do

Imperator_Clydus strikes again in his never ending struggle to ensure that ESO becomes GW2. Not sure why you do not just go play GW2 to be honest. Zergs are favored and rewarded in every conceivable way in GW2, which seems to be what you want.

Balancing AOE damage might prove to be a hard task. In 1 vs. 1 AOE skills are already poor, and if their usefulness in group combat is nerfed, what's the point to have such abilities? As far as I understand, single target damage is meant for small scale and AOE in large scale battles. If devs find some fine solution to this, I'm all for that, but just blank nerf for AOE sounds like a bad idea. And to be honest, nerfing AOE won't fix anything, because if AOE gets nerfed, then people are just crying a nerf in melee vs. ranged or something that does not suit their own playstyle.

@popatiberiuoneb18_ESO Yeah DAoC had big imbalances at release but what strikes me as weird with ESO is making mistakes that past MMOs have made.

Being near the industry myself and have a lot of friends who work as 3D artists in games, I know that they don't have that much free time but you would expect them to know MMOs to not make the same mistakes. It's like remaking the wheel but it's shaped like a pentagon.

Nijjion wrote: »

@popatiberiuoneb18_ESO Yeah DAoC had big imbalances at release but what strikes me as weird with ESO is making mistakes that past MMOs have made.

Being near the industry myself and have a lot of friends who work as 3D artists in games, I know that they don't have that much free time but you would expect them to know MMOs to not make the same mistakes. It's like remaking the wheel but it's shaped like a pentagon.

Yeah, DAOC was never perfect to begin with and always had inbalances with no exception. The difference is that the staff actualy took good decisions (most of the times) in dealing with the issues and listened to the playerbase to some extent.

I'd imagine there is this group of people that "call the shots" with what gets into the game and what doesnt. If those people have no idea what they are doing then you can have an army of 3D designers and it wont make the game better. I could give you so many examples of mmo's that succeded with poor grafic and mediocre interface but instead i'll just give you the MUDs as example (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD). Many had such a deep immersion and fun gameplay that no MMO was ever able to stand even close to it and any MUD player can confirm it.

I certainly wont blame Camelot Unchained if the graphics are not top notch and will play it as long as it stands true to the PvP promise..to be fair i dont expect much out of the graphics after seeing their videos.

Ironically uncapping AoEs, making them even stronger, would force people to spread out thus making single target burst builds more viable.

Dudis wrote: »

Ironically uncapping AoEs, making them even stronger, would force people to spread out thus making single target burst builds more viable.

Yup.

AoE caps hurt all play styles.

You want to know about a game with really strong AoE where people (for the most part) learned to deal with it? DAoC.

Hell, even the random zerglings got it...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkl_fAjmLmA

Doesn't that look just wonterful in comparison to the zerg-balls we now get in this game? :P

The thing people forget about Warhammer is Mark didn't make Warhammer the way he did cause he didn't know how to make DAOC2.....Warhammer got made the way it did cause when it was being made, It wasn't meant to compete with Mythics other game....it was only after they were bought by EA that Mythic decided that they could just say screw daoc and try and outdo it.

Just (as someone already noticed here) removing AoE will not stop people from grouping - it will actually do reverse.
With AoE all players in packed group got damage, so when You see big group running like one man the only option is to attack them with AoE, witout AoE they will not even notice any attack.
Always in any game 50 people will kill one person in one second, so I completely do not understand why some complain. The only solution is to group and coordinate - what others can do you can do also. If the group runs too close to each other it should be attacked with AoE so their only option is to split into few smaller groups running close but not in very close proiximity.

Some additional question that might be asked (so groups do not tend to zerg too much):
Area healing is weak, but does it stack?
Should healing automatically choose low health players?

- Never ask to stop AoE because people run in big groups - the AoE is only option to attack such groups.
- It is only because you choose wrong technique, there are some other skills that make group too strong, and you do not get organized properly that's why such groups exist.

brandondickenson_ESO wrote: »

Alot of weird comments in this thread.

There is always a counter. The truth is, the people that get straight up AoE bombed are generally making the mistake of cramming themselves into a small area... they're essentially begging for it. If I know a group is about to bomb a large group, I'll drop negate magic right on top of them with a volcanic rune as the bomb hits... then voila, the bomb group is looking a bit foolish.

AoE really isn't out of hand. It's not nearly as strong as a game like DAoC. Open field single target damage is what wins. As you start to see more competitive players combat each other in different scenario's... you'll see it come together. Bombing is for farming AP and zerg busting (newb stompin')... open field groups that fight competitively will use single target setups.

AoE on it's own isn't all that strong... Impulse for example isn't near as strong as single target spells, plus it's point blank. A cast of Dark Talons will put the brakes on an Impulse spammer pretty quick.

The problem is that keeps, and outpost, generally are small spaces. Many of the efficient AOE spammers would just wait for an entire group to go into the inner keep, then come from behind and impulse/dark talons/standard of might and wipe them out. Any smart AOE spam group will not attack you in the open field generally.

Considering AP farming is all most groups do, AOEs will always be the preferred option. Not to mention AOE spamming is a lot more efficient and effective than single target killing, especially when you are wiping 50+ players in a matter of seconds. To believe single target is even in the same ball park is rather odd to me.

AOE by itself isn't strong. Using it in conjunction with a lot of players, on the other hand, is. ZOS has already upped the cost of using impulse, which is a step in the right direction. I would just rather see more variety in PvP instead of AOE spam groups and merc spammers.