Ooooooh, this is why sorcerers haven't been allowed to have any sustain.

i can understand the logic behind these test as someone who's written code and programs before, but also looking at this from a player perspective, that's one major flaw.

You're removing fluid gameplay from PVP that's renown for it's fluid combat. Combat desyncs and lag have never felt as bad, and the cast timers surely dont help. Aren't those also calculations the server has to run?

Say, there's a 50 v 50 fight for instance. What if 25 people on each side use a cast-timed ability at once? The server would need to monitor each of those times to fire off the skill correctly.

Perhaps AOE is indeed a problem to some extent, but are these changes means to an end or truly a formidable solution? I just can't foresee that any of these changes are going to go live post-testing.

Slightly Modified idea, since in the upcoming patch group buffed sets are now only targeting group members, they have they're own advantages in a larger group already vs smaller groups...

if you make these AOE cost increases, cooldowns specific only to groups of 4+ and increase in severity based on group size, people would second think about running in large groups.

This would no doubt split the battlefield in PVP up a little, give the servers a much deserved rest. and leave a more tactical and strategic group compositions...

everyone is happy?

Alone solution is the dedicated Cyrodiil server. But it is probably impossible.

Versispellis wrote: »

Ooooooh, this is why sorcerers haven't been allowed to have any sustain.

How do you do you dark deal?

renne wrote: »

There is absolutely no way on this earth if any of these changes are made it doesn't affect PvE or BGs.

If they're not just straight up deleting Templars, they'll have to rework the entire class and they're not just going to have a PvP version of Templars and a PvE version of Templars.

And wow, guys, way to make it look like you just absolutely hate the Templar class. Between this and the skill and class changes you've still not reverted on the PTS (lmao imagine trying to get burning light to proc on jabs now!) it's pretty clear you've got zero interest in it being a viable class in anything other than overland questing.

If these changes go live can we Templar mains get a class change token, because there'll be absolutely no point in anyone running the class anymore.

No I agree, Templars will be absolutely ruined. Half of the Templar skills suck, half the stamina skills in the game suck, Stamina Templars for example would be absolutely done. The game would be done. This class would need to be gutted, or all their abilities will need to turn to instant, single target. Because at this point, I don't see how a class that is forced to use 3 AOEs (Rune, Purge, Jabs) can function in a fast paced game. @ZOS_Gilliam do you play your game?


Your game was playable 2014-2015, it was playable 2017, it was playable Nov 2019, what did you do? In Gordon Ramsay's voice... "STOP RIGHT NOW".

Vaoh wrote: »

Player 1: Take my PUNCTURING SWEEPS
Player 2: I cast my IMPULSE on you
Player 1: *after 3 seconds* Let’s see if you can survive my RITUAL OF RETRIBUTION
Player 2: *after 3 seconds* Heh, I’m still at 100% Health. Take my IMPULSE again
Player 1: *after 3 seconds* Eat these PUNCTURING SWEEPS again

World of Scrolls Online?

I have a few questions mixed in with my commentary to try to understand the rationale here, and while I am a software developer I'm not a game programmer, so bear with me.

From what little I'm able to find on the matter, it seems that AoE in a gridless combat game is calculated with a point-in-polygon algorithm, where every point would be a player. Thus, for every AoE ability cast, it sounds like you have to check against every player on the server who could be affected. Is that correct?

If so, does that mean every hit of a multi-hit ability like Hurricane is causing such a check? I can't see any way it wouldn't. Then moves such as Biting Jabs, which appear to hit multiple times per second, sound especially troublesome, which is awful because that's literally their spammable.

How many other mitigation strategies have been attempted? For example, pursuant to the above assumption, is it possible to have a temporary no-check table for characters far enough outside an AoE effect? If someone is on the exact opposite side of a keep to me and I start spamming steel tornado, for example, it's an incredibly safe assumption that we are not going to be able to close the distance between us for a certain amount of time based on distance from my first cast. If every potential target is evaluated for being in the polygon of a caster's AoE, could there be a gradated number of seconds that they remain on such a table for the casting player's AoEs based on their distance from the source? You could math it out to just be a function of max move speed if two players are assumed to be full sprinting at each other on mounts with max speed buffs, idk. If the cost of maintaining that table is less than having to do the AoE calculation every time for every player, that may be a good avenue to pursue.

Another assumption I have is that Cyrodiil is not actually a single server, but multiple servers with overlapping transitions zones to enable continuous movement. That might be totally wrong, but it would partially explain some phenomenon we experience, such as "render lines" and the ability to have fights at different parts of the map wind up more stable than one big fight with everyone showing up. If this is the case, is it possible to increase the number of these servers so that the map is more finely subdivided? Or has it been mathed out already to be at optimal placement given the inter-server communication needs? Is this even a real thing to begin with?

How many other redesign options are on the table besides the cost increases and GCD? There are a lot of continuously-firing AoE abilities going off every second that maybe don't need to and whose redesign would be considerably more palatable. For example, going back to Hurricane again, right now it looks like it deals damage every 1 second. That's a check every second just for having one of your main sorc buffs up, on top of other AoE abilities you might want to cast. Could it not instead tic less often (every 2 or three seconds) and instead deal more burst damage? Or how about Caltrops? Why do a check every second when you could just apply the snare and a bleed on the first hit and then have that player enter the aforementioned no-check table? Naturally any ability you're doing this for would need an extensive balance pass based on your change, but players will probably find "Mandatory 3 second AoE GCD" a lot less palatable than "Maybe Caltrops works differently a little".

How about a stacking AoE lockout, either per skill or generally, as per the testing schedule? Very coordinated groups (who are admittedly the main culprits for our issues, I imagine) tend to only have a window of a handful of seconds to do their damage when fighting each other. We proxy up, cast our shalk, then push in and cast our AoE spammable while the first two (plus our ults) go off. If a character is not dead within a few seconds of all that going off, odds are they will just heal up to full health and further uncoordinated AoE spam won't do you any good beyond that regardless. We seem to really like that type of engagement, but we also are all different in terms of how disciplined we are to stop casting AoE past the point of its usefulness. If instead of a GCD we build stacks, say with a max of 5 or so, and then got locked out of AoE upon getting the full stack, we would still have that dynamic gameplay we know and love, while simultaneously saving ourselves from our worst impulses, or worst Impulse spams, as it were. Naturally that might not actually be enough to mitigate the issue, but it might be worth its own testing bracket if and when the GCD test succeeds.

I would also like to express some caution regarding the tests. As always, anything that affects the balance of healing and purges is going to risk polluting the results with the potential heavy siege meta. Siege is already too strong for the amount of effort involved, and if we can't even heal or purge it consistently on top of all the other dots, debuffs, and damage that we're taking, then its presence on the battlefield is directly antithetical to the purpose of the tests. We cannot reliably reproduce the same hard-hitting fights causing the server performance problems if we can't even do open field fights without pugs dropping a handful of siege, never mind actually going to a keep and trying to take it. This already happens on live, but is more or less manageable by good groups who run heals, purges, and siege shields, so believe me when I say that this will severely handicap your ability to gather truthful data that has parity with normal live performance.

That said, I look forward to these tests and appreciate the honesty about the state of the game and the challenges we're facing. To five more years of Cyrodiil!! 🍺🍺🍺

Just out of curiosety but wouldnt the 3./4. option increase the stress on the server ? since it always has to calculate the new cost of your abillitys while you could still spam other abilitys in between ?

bigdavid11b16_ESO wrote: »

If anybody remembers. the day that nobody could group. is the day that cyrodiil had zero lag. Maybe you all should have a little ponder as to why. The reasoning is that there were no people spamming abilities that were linked to group utility
example : PURGE

Why can we not just start at once place. Group size. Lower it to a max of 12 and go from there.

Best performance to date

Why not simply increase the cost of aoe abilities? And/or reduce aoe stacking?

Also ZOS are still not addressing the fact that something specifically happened in the last February performance update that drastically reduced performance.