Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
AoE - Capped or Uncapped?
Lyiat
Member, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One, Alpha Two, Early Alpha Two
This conversation set the Discord chat on fire for a while. I think it's something that is worth discussing out. The jist of the argument comes down to, how should AoE's be handled? Should they have a damage cap? Should they have a limited number of targets? Or should they function equally regardless of how many people fit in the template?
There are a lot of methods to handle your AoE attacks/heals , I'll list a few of the options below. Lets assume the skill we're discussing is a fireball that deals 5,000 damage.
Unrestricted AoEs
This is one side of the arguement. If an AoE deals 5,000 damage, it hits every single person in the template for 5,000 damage when the effect goes off. AoEs like this discourage murderballs and force players to spread out, getting maximum value the more people it can hit. The argument against it is that it can overvalue AoE builds in group fights.
Variant - Allowing FF on damaging AoE skills to compensate for the unrestricted damage, as suggested by Angier
Max Target AoEs
These types of AoEs restrict the maximum amount of people that can be hit by them. So while 20 people might be under a fireball blast, only eight can get hit by the burst. However, all eight will be dealt 5,000 damage, dealing 40,000 damage in total. Anyone else outside of that number would be safe and be dealt no damage. While this encourages AoE users to pick their shots, it limits the value they can have overall. AoE users also generally have no control over the people who get struck by these attacks.
Diminishing Return AoEs
In these types of AoEs, the damage of the AoE gets spread out *per person* in the AoE. If 5 people get hit, they all take 1,000 damage. If 20 people get hit, they all take 250 damage. It sharply cuts the value of AoEs and instead limits the damage potential of AoE users, preventing AoE users from just dominating the battlefield. However, because in this scenario, AoE damage needs to be buffed to even be worth using, it turns AoE attacks into massive single target nukes when used on one target.
Variable Damage AoE
This is personally the one I'd suggest. Simply put, the damage of the AoE is highest at the center and lowers the closer to the edge of the AoE you are. It more firmly replicates real world AoE effects, like grenades or explosions, and does effort to limit the effectiveness of AoE builds while still allowing them to shine in group fights, making spacing *important* but no longer critical. In this example, a character in the dead center of the blast might take 5,000 damage while a person at the edge may take 2,500 or even 1,000.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Any other models I haven't considered?
There are a lot of methods to handle your AoE attacks/heals , I'll list a few of the options below. Lets assume the skill we're discussing is a fireball that deals 5,000 damage.
Unrestricted AoEs
This is one side of the arguement. If an AoE deals 5,000 damage, it hits every single person in the template for 5,000 damage when the effect goes off. AoEs like this discourage murderballs and force players to spread out, getting maximum value the more people it can hit. The argument against it is that it can overvalue AoE builds in group fights.
Variant - Allowing FF on damaging AoE skills to compensate for the unrestricted damage, as suggested by Angier
Max Target AoEs
These types of AoEs restrict the maximum amount of people that can be hit by them. So while 20 people might be under a fireball blast, only eight can get hit by the burst. However, all eight will be dealt 5,000 damage, dealing 40,000 damage in total. Anyone else outside of that number would be safe and be dealt no damage. While this encourages AoE users to pick their shots, it limits the value they can have overall. AoE users also generally have no control over the people who get struck by these attacks.
Diminishing Return AoEs
In these types of AoEs, the damage of the AoE gets spread out *per person* in the AoE. If 5 people get hit, they all take 1,000 damage. If 20 people get hit, they all take 250 damage. It sharply cuts the value of AoEs and instead limits the damage potential of AoE users, preventing AoE users from just dominating the battlefield. However, because in this scenario, AoE damage needs to be buffed to even be worth using, it turns AoE attacks into massive single target nukes when used on one target.
Variable Damage AoE
This is personally the one I'd suggest. Simply put, the damage of the AoE is highest at the center and lowers the closer to the edge of the AoE you are. It more firmly replicates real world AoE effects, like grenades or explosions, and does effort to limit the effectiveness of AoE builds while still allowing them to shine in group fights, making spacing *important* but no longer critical. In this example, a character in the dead center of the blast might take 5,000 damage while a person at the edge may take 2,500 or even 1,000.
Thoughts? Suggestions? Any other models I haven't considered?
4
Comments
My concern with allowing FF is allowing people to grief your own raids and groups. It'd really suck in a raid dungeon to have that one 'spy' that ruins the entire raid by popping off all their AoEs in the middle of your ball.
I understand that issue. But wouldn't a spy/troll/whatever be able to sabotage attempts by many other ways anyways? Pulling additional mobs. Being reluctant with heals. DPSing the wrong target, etc.
How do you deal with that? You kick these people from your group. A FF AoE would simply be one more reason to react like that.
And lets be honest: extended group fights often tend to devolve into a flustercuck anyways, so a badly placed AoE is a problem anyways.
Nah. That's not a good idea. It will deter people from picking AoE skills due to the fear of hitting their allies with AoE in mass PvP scenarios.
EDIT - It would also apply to PvE scenarios. How would you use an AoE skill on a boss, when your melees are attacking him?
That's a good counter-argument, indeed. The last we'd want is people going out of their way to not having to deal with the responsibility.
You have a point there, but you also just have the... *bad* players. If a player with lower skill dumps his AoEs at a bad time with no FF, he's just doing subpar damage. Sure, it's not ideal, but he's not actively costing the other members of his team resources (health/heals).
I don't want to see PvP become a pure AOE game, but if you don't have strong AOE skills, then zerg tactics can really run away.
AOEs are an awesome way to deal with zergs, don't nerf AOEs.
I agree on that assessment. In combination with what @CaptnChuck said, it's putting too much of a tactical and opportunity cost on AoEs.
So, if we consider Variable Damage AoE as the best option so far, how do these deter bombing squads? Any ideas how to implement this option with some sort of mechanic that deters stacking?
For this I would choose Diminishing Return Aoe this will make aoe classes to think where to cast aoe wisely.
AOE's are looking to be a big part of mage gameplay at the moment and a lot of the fun in classes like that is looking to take advantage of opportunities to hit as many enemies as possible and controlling spacing of the enemies (esp at chokepoints). I think installing a max # of targets and diminishing returns hurts some of the fun in that personally.
It shouldn't just be a nuisance to those standing in it (or near the edges) but should force them to really react to avoid it. AOE damage dealers fill a niche in pvp - they are effective at sustained pressure on groups (esp healing heavy groups that bunch up) and disrupt the spacing of opponents giving your team opportunities to pick them off, while STDPS should be the one who is actually able to pick off vulnerable targets (like a lonely aoe class without his front lines) and get more killing blows overall (at the expense of less dmg).
Totally unrestricted damage just makes AoE's boring/braindead and usually kinda OP.
A cap on how many players get hit, is more balanced I guess, but it's also just as boring/braindead and it doesn't really reward you much even if the enemies are all just grouping up in one place.
Diminishing Return AoEs kinda sounds like it wouldn't even be that effective using AoE's in the first place. If there's a lot of players, it would do so little damage that nobody would notice it, and while I guess it could be decent at times against a very small amount of players, you could just use single target skills then and focus down one player or something. Could be wrong though, maybe it could be a decent solution.
The winner like I said though, would be Variable Damage AoE. If they made it the right way, it wouldn't just be some braindead OP skills either, because it would only really deal that high damage in the very center of it, and if the enemy is stacking right on top of each other, then that's their fault. It would add an element of actually having to think a little more about where to use the AoE, or when to use it. It would probably not be useful in all situations, which is good.
I'm thinking it should be a pretty big drop-off from the center though, and it should only deal that very high damage in a very small radius.
Hopefully different AoE skills will have different damage effects, but here are examples of damage effects I would like to see in-game:
I'm not a fan of variable damage depending on how close you are to the center of the AoE because while it rewards players with great skill, it also rewards classes that have high mobility to avoid damage and oblivious players who are lucky. Also, replicating real world effects isn't necessarily good game design and we're not able to replicate, maybe only predict, how a Concentrated Lava Storm with Thunder augment would work in the real world.
I wouldn't quite classify this as diminishing returns, more like just evenly spread. You get no extra returns for any number of targets you hit. As long as you hit something, you get 5000 total damage.
WoW is going to be using a formula system in Shadowlands that causes diminishing returns for each extra person hit by an AoE. The more targets you hit, the more overall damage you deal, but each extra person adds a little less overall damage than before, and each person takes a little less damage as it is spread around. The formula takes the base damage (say, 1,000 damage) and divides by the square root of the number of targets hit. It will allow damage to keep scaling up per targets hit, but not to let it get too out of hand.
Here's what how it will work:
While this is designed to try and appeal to both sides of the argument (allow extra damage for extra targets hit while not allowing AoE attacks to scale TOO well), I don't know if it will work well in large scale PvP environments. Just looking at the numbers, I feel that a zerg group will find it much too easy to group up and spam a few AoE heals. On paper, it just doesn't feel punishing enough to the ones getting hit.
Anyways, just wanted to add that method to the list. I personally think Variable Damage AoE sounds the coolest.
With evenly split AoE Abilities, grouping with 100 People on a spot is the optimal thing you can do. Nobody will ever die, as the damage is split 5000/100.
The variable Damage AoE idea does seem interesting, rewards skillful play and does inhib the job AoE Abilities are supposed to do -> punish masses of players for sticking too tightly.
Let's not forget, that there is already body collision in this game. AoE's, that only hit the center for the full amount of damage + the fact, that the enemy can't actually stack should be enough way to inhib the power of AoEs.
Obviously, some (non-dmg based) AoE Abilities will still need some sort of cap (CC Abilities, AoE Pull Abilities etc.)
I do believe, that this is no issue you can look at in a way that does affect all abilities the same. Different type of abilities will have different needs. A Meteor that hits the enemy instantly for 5,000 is a whole different thing than a Rain of Arrows that deals 7,000 over 10 seconds, or a channeled AoE Beam or even a Warrior's Whirlwind.
For the meteor, damage that falls of the closer you get to the edge makes sense. For the Rain of Arrows not so much.
This could give players more flexibility in their plan of attack. Play solo away from the pack for more risk vs reward or play closer to your team trading opportunity for protection.
In the first scenario Unrestricted AoE this creates huge pucker factor, but isn't this what a good healer lives for...his moment to shine and show his awesome skills The healer however would need an equivalent AoE heal to recover the group.
Max target AoE this one just never made any sense to me. Kinda ruins the whole immersion thing, when you loose half your hp but the squishy mage standing next to you in a fire storm takes no damage at all. Now if the damage was based on armor type or amount of fire resist maybe, but that is a topic for another thread. From my healer point of view, sure their are less people to heal but is it enough to justify burning my big AoE heal on, or should i individually heal each one. This would be where a good bouncing heal would be nice that bounces to the players that need it most. In the end it would causes more decision time for the healer, which could cause disaster.
Variable or diminishing effect This one just makes the most sense as far as balance and immersion. The center of a blast is always the worst place to be, on the outside of a blast zone is more survivable. The healer could either go with the big AoE or the bouncing heal to get the worst casualties first the top everyone else off individually as needed.
Notes There should be no FF on AoE damage or heals. But an AoE damage should not be able to one shot an opponent for the full brunt in a 1v1, there needs to be some kind of damage cap on one person or small group.
100% This.
This will allow skilled smaller groups to concentrate their AoEs on large mindless zergs whereas large mindless zergs will likely have a harder time concentrating that AoE damage because they are generally less skilled. It maximizes damage based on how skilled your group is and deters big stacks of players without requiring them to be way spread out.
Coming from ESO, a game who Devs have recently attributed AoEs as a source of their server lag, I can see a great need to strike a healthy balance. Too many AoEs, as the ESO Devs theorize, and you run up the calculations/lag.
Not only are zergs and AoE ball groups prolific in ESO open world pvp, but they are unbalanced. One thing I say the ESO balance team didn't do well was maintain the superiority of single target abilities. They slowly nerfed all of them to the point it became uncomfortable and less viable to play out of group. But they also made the mistake of nerfing powerful personal AoEs to the point they didn't matter if a lone person used them. The damage loss meant groups could no longer be killed by a single person. It also meant that if you wanted to kill someone in a timely matter you needed the extra damage of a group. This resulted in organized zergs called ball groups that spam Unrestricted heals and AoE damage. These groups are pretty dull and mindless to play in. The best players play drunk as all you have to do is press one or two assigned abilities and follow the group leader.
What makes them run amuck is they nerfed the counter play, solo bombers, into the ground.
What I see and suggest for AoC is to use a combination of unrestricted, diminishing, variable, and one from ESO I'll call compounding across the archetypes. That way you don't get one style of play or dominant strategy. The battles wont become patterns to players, and the combat will be more engaging.
Compounding AoEs is the opposite of diminishing they do more damage the more people that are caught in them. So If you try to spam on a solo player it's weak. In a zerg It's strong. I would recommend these abilities be large and have long telegraphs. In encourages people to spread out.
I see diminishing AoEs on a magical duelist class. Catch players with easy to land abilities that rock their opponents. Works well for picking off small clusters from the larger battles, but doesn't have as good an efficiency as a fighter in a 1v1.
Unrestricted AoEs are just Ol' reliable. They can be effective if piled on with other AoEs and ought to be the most accessed. Useless if used by themselves, they are open to more counter play.
Variable looks like a really good hybrid class, like the diminishing AoE with more potential group damage less potential solo damage.
I mentioned counter plays. I was thinking give players the ability to have group and personal AoE protection. Give the classes that use diminishing and compounding AoE a chance to bypass that protection.
This creates situations where player will or wont have to spread out depending on whither they have group protections up, but also depending on what type of enemy they face on the battlefield.
Limit how many aoes per person actually affect others so that some just spamming aoe attacks or CC's dont win by default.
That being said, AoEs per class should still be effective as damage attacks from a solo perspective. Meaning AoEs should be slightly weaker than singe target abilities, but not 2x weaker or anything
They massively reduce the amount of calculations the server has to perform. That becomes especially important in games with massive battles like AoC. Things like variable AoEs (which I prefer from a gameplay point of view) massively increase the load on the server instead.
While i'm no fan of AoE Caps, i'd still prefer to play a smooth battle rather than a stuttery mess of rubber banding, lost packages and minimum FPS on a burning server.
TL/DR. Performance > overly fine tuned AoE mechanics.
It might be enough to just put decent cooldowns on the AoE abilities and just not allow them to be spammed. Also just not put many of them in the game. If you want a AoE heavy team then you should have to work together and sacrifice something to be able to do it. Most games just let you do it with no drawback whatsoever because the damage classes just tend to do good single target and AoE.
This is one of the most important things to look into if you want to make a game where every class has a place.
U.S. East
There's an issue in the game GW2 where everybody is stacking in their groups for buffs, but at the same time there are instant death circles of stacked AoEs in WvW. They have max player caps on the AoEs and the game still has the worst of both worlds! The issue isn't so much the player caps as much as it is the constant usage of AoE spells.
In a number of other games, the reason you can hit so many targets with a single AoE is because those targets can be (and often are) all standing in the same general location.
As soon as you take the ability to do that away, you are already limiting how effective an AoE can be - I do somewhat doubt they need more restricting than that.
It encourages to play skillfully rather then just zerg blob faceroll.
Sure AoEs are powerfull in group fight but if an entire group dies to an Aoe then maybe they should have moved out of that red circle rather then stand still.
Its all about situation awarness. To know your position relativ to that of your team mates and keep a relativ distance.
Close enough to support them but far away enough to not all get killed by the same AoE.
Friendly fire would however not work.
You would constantly hit the tank as well as the other Melee players with the AoE attacks meant for the boss.
― Plato
Do not butcher AoEs. Don't add a ton if you're planning to eventually nerf it until it becomes stupidly weak. It is an AoE, it shouldn't be forgiving for people who will stay within its radius. Don't want to have a meteor landing on your head? Just. Move. Out.
That (rant-filled) being said, there's a catch for balance. There are a lot of approaches when it comes to handling damage output and I'm sure our dear devs are working very hard on them, I'd just like to mention about ICD (Internal Cooldown). Having successive 5k hits on your head doesn't seem reasonable, especially when the AoE is falling/ticking too fast. So per-target ICD may help with that or balance the skill speed, but it will feel very weird. Another idea is to have Diminishing Returns on AoE damage as in it will deal full damage for its first 3 ticks then scale down to 75% for the next 5 and so on, per target. This last one works very well in FFXIV (though I wish it scaled down on smaller percentages).
I heard a bird ♫
I think the most important thing is remembering the main focus of the game, the great 250v250 battles we are all looking forward to. Considering this, I've begun to lean more towards the following mind set:
1. Keep the calculations simple, for easier and quicker calculations (both for players and servers). Just have the damage deal equal damage to all targets hit. If it hits one person, they take 1k damage. If it hits 20, they all take 1k damage. No extra calculations to count everyone hit, calculate their distance from the center of impact, or evenly split damage between multiple targets.
2. As stated, body collision will effectively put a limit to how many targets can be hit.
Taking the prior two points into account, developers can more easily focus on fine tuning AoE other ways.
1. Increase/decrease AoE radius to hit more/fewer targets.
2. Increase/decrease cast time of the spells, to slow them down or make them easier to interrupt.
3. Increase/decrease CDs on AoE spells to prevent players from spamming them too often.
4. Increase/decrease damage on AoE spells for balancing.
5. Increase/decrease mana cost of AoE spells.
Not all AoE spells will be the same. Some may be meteors. Some may be slow pulse ground effects. One might be a tornado, or rain of arrows, or a blade whirlwind. In each case, keeping it simple is always best to begin with. If it needs to be fine tuned, I believe there are many ways to do that without overcomplicating the calculations.