AoE - Capped or Uncapped?

Valento92

@Shaladoor I'm hoping for a flexible system for these two types of AoE:

• Area of Multiple Objects: For example meteors, multiple objects falling from the sky. The area per se doesn't cause damage but the objects that fall instead. Quantity of objects vary.
• Pulsing Area: This is the other type. The area per se is ticking damage as the time passes. It should be carefully made because this can lead to overpowered situations. A skill gamesystem that tracks "intervals" as effectively as possible should be in place.

Both can be fine-tuned in a variety of ways but ultimately they should be handled differently for server performance issues. It's easy to mess up with the first type of AoE, both in balance and backend management.

H8edHero

No player cap. The more in the AoE the stronger it is up to a maximum. So if one player is in the AoE it hits hard enough that an AoE based class stacking only AoEs can potentially kill a single target, but it will not just nuke them. If five people are in the same AoE it hits for 100% more damage to each player. If 10 people 200%, etc. up to a maximum of 250%.

These are just spitball numbers they would have to be adjusted according to AoC's damage potential.

Caeryl

Unrestricted targets and variable damage where applicable.

AoE should never be limited, it defeats the point, if players are standing in stupid, they should all get popped with it. If they’re playing Stack on Lead they deserve to get popped even more.

I support explicitly anti-grouping AoE too, like good ol’ Proxy Detonation from ESO that scales up in damage based on how many people are immediately nearby when it goes off. Zerg bombers were doing the lord’s work honestly.

The only hard rule for damage AoEs is that it should be about 1/3 or 1/4 as strong as a single target damage ability, and the same abilities should not stack any subsequent debuffs/DoTs/etc. Take the strongest value only.

Kyizwa

why not use all or some of them for different spells?

Drokk

I don't have the energy to repeat everything I said in discord. But essentially...no caps is best. An aoe should scale exponentially with the number of targets. That is its nature. You balance this with mana cost and making yourself a sitting target with long cast or channel times.

Aardvark

So why exactly are we trying to nerf Mages before we even have open A1? Also last night they were also asking for spells to have collision so you can’t stack them ...which would make it so you would never want more than 1 caster in a raid. We seriously need to stop trying to nerf and rebalance classes before we even see what’s planned. Half the classes don’t even exist yet

Roblight

No caps except maybe on aoe heals (only because I am afraid of seeing zergs or death balls built around an AOE heal spam. Forcing the only counter to be dropping enough AOE on the group to one shot them.)

But as others have mentioned we need to wait and see what all the classes/skills look like and not to mention how the larger battles will work in regards to what is the meta. Zerg as a death ball or are you required to split groups for various objectives.

I think the main reason no caps on AOE is important is to make sure zergs still need to be afraid of something. There should not be a certain number of players where all of a sudden things become brain dead mode. As long as skills or mechanics are in place to stop zergs then I am happy.

Noaani

Tragnar wrote: »

AoE should just hit less per target based on how many targets you have without being it just a hardcap of certain damage dealt. Basically every target hit should get less damage based on how many targets are being hit

In my opinion, this would work ok for some AoE abilities, but I don't think it would be a good fit for all.

Rather than there being one mechanic to rule them all in regards to AoE's, I can see an argument for different mechanics for different abilities.

As an example, an AoE where the notion is that you are projecting an amount of magical power in to an area to damage all enemies within - that should deal less damage the more targets you hit.

On the other hand, an ability where you set a target area on fire, or rain down arrows over a specific area, or cause an earthquake in a specific area - that should deal the same amount of damage to anyone in that area.

In terms of balance though, the notion of player collision (and presumably mob collision) really should prevent AoE's from being overpowered.

I don't see why there can't be a number of different mechanics AoE's can take like this, as long as the description of the ability makes it clear if all enemies take the same amount of damage, or if all enemies share in an amount of total damage.

Hartwell

@Noaani

I agree with this. We're going to be playing an action/hybrid game. There are so many factors that can go into an AoE. Some will need max player caps. Some should be unrestricted. There will be instant cast AoEs, channeled AoEs, cast time AoEs, AoEs that start off as projectiles and need to be aimed, ground target AoEs, AoEs of various mana costs, AoEs with radius of all sizes, and variations in their cast ranges. There are AoEs that buff and AoEs that debuff. Some games also have AoEs with dispel effects. One system for all could be limiting towards developer creativity.

If the developers want an massive radius instant cast low mana cost AoE on a short cooldown, then they should be able to put a player cap on that if they feel like it would balance things out.

Hartwell

I have another limitation mechanic idea for specific AoE abilities that came in mind recently, but it might be too resource intense. In FPS games they hit scan their grenades to make sure that players behind cover don't get hit. Some of those hit scans can have players body block the damage. For example, Reinhardt in Overwatch can block a self-destructing D.Va with his shield.

It's not that I necessarily want this kind of spell, it's just something that can add flavor to certain explosive projectiles in games that also happens to limit them as AoE abilities.

Lyiat

Hartwell wrote: »

I have another limitation mechanic idea for specific AoE abilities that came in mind recently, but it might be too resource intense. In FPS games they hit scan their grenades to make sure that players behind cover don't get hit. Some of those hit scans can have players body block the damage. For example, Reinhardt in Overwatch can block a self-destructing D.Va with his shield.

It's not that I necessarily want this kind of spell, it's just something that can add flavor to certain explosive projectiles in games that also happens to limit them as AoE abilities.

As much as I like this idea it'd likely be too simulation intensive. There's different ways of 'simulating' an explosion area, and doing something that determines cover from the point of effect would require a lot of calculations as opposed to a simple, "apply this script to everything within this area".

Hartwell

Lyiat wrote: »

Hartwell wrote: »

I have another limitation mechanic idea for specific AoE abilities that came in mind recently, but it might be too resource intense. In FPS games they hit scan their grenades to make sure that players behind cover don't get hit. Some of those hit scans can have players body block the damage. For example, Reinhardt in Overwatch can block a self-destructing D.Va with his shield.

It's not that I necessarily want this kind of spell, it's just something that can add flavor to certain explosive projectiles in games that also happens to limit them as AoE abilities.

As much as I like this idea it'd likely be too simulation intensive. There's different ways of 'simulating' an explosion area, and doing something that determines cover from the point of effect would require a lot of calculations as opposed to a simple, "apply this script to everything within this area".

It's not so much the cover behind world objects that I'm afraid of, but rather when the game needs to do collision checks for every player in the area per hit scan. Planetside 2 has grenades that you can hide behind cover for, but I'm sure that players can't jump on a grenade to save everybody.

Asura

I think a nice balance point could also be delay / ticking abilities. An instant AoE effect should do the least amount of damage, then an AoE effect that triggers after 1sec or so, and then an AoE that has 1sec ticks over a 5sec period should do the most dmg. In the latter cases the opponent has enough time to react and evade the AoE, while it still provides combos from teammates that apply CC

Valento92

I'd like to remind everyone worried about being too "early" to talk about nerfs and mechanics, that it is just discussion/speculation by now. It's a way to offer our perspective in these matters and it is mostly welcome by the devs, this is what these forums are about after all. It's expected for people to come up with mechanics restraints rather than to just yell "blow everything up". So yeah, keep ideas and opinions coming, even if they picture nerfs or capped behavior.