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Will AoE be meta in massive PvP events?
Draethar
Member
In Black Desert Online you basically have Wizards throwing out as much AoE as possible in choke points and what happens is that a meta forms and certain classes are so much more desired than others. I'm sure this is destined to happen but what are they going to do to try and prevent this or mitigate this?
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Anything between those two extremes of either very weak or very powerful, and you'll likely see it become the meta. The aoe murderball/ball group meta that has plagued other mmo's and given a bad name to how good mmo pvp can be.
As far as player collision, that helps reduce the effectiveness of aoe. But it's not a cure all. ESO had soft player collision, which I think is what's been described for AoC. And ESO was murderball aoe meta central.
Depending of the size of the AoE it might not be that fearsome. Although there isn't a hard-coded limit to the number of targets for AoE, player collision imposed a certain practical limit on how many people can pack in one spot.
But just to solidify my point. If I'm chillin solo in the world and a group of 10 people catches me off guard and just rolls up on me and AOE's me down, every single one of their AOE's from each individual character is going to do max damage to me in an AOE cap system. But if I AOE back some before I die, little ol solo me, I'm AOEing a clump of players, the exact thing AOE is designed for, but I'm penalized in an AOE cap system. Depending on the caps, I only hit 5 or 6 out of 10. Or maybe I hit them all but only at 50% of the damage.
Completely ass backwards. If anything it should be the other way around. I know, why would 10 players AOE a solo instead of just single target. That's not the point. The example is to illustrate the bad design of AOE caps.
It is also the worst thing for all multiplayer games. People defend AoE saying it's a tool that requires timing and teamwork.
I say take a look at Mobas and mmorpgs.
AoE takes 0 skill, 0 aiming, 0 awereness. Thanks to AoE all PvE except for boss mechanics is considered "trash", ez, non challenging. PvP has turned to either ranged pew pew or aoe zerging.
One big hope of mine is that one day an mmo will restrict AoE, making battles more about taking on an enemy, killing them and move to the next target or help a friend fighting next to you.
What we have now is people stacking on the group leader spamming AoE heals, aoe CC and AoE damage not even looking at anything in the screen, other that beneficial green coloured aoe circles and harmful red aoe circles. With player collision or without. It doesnt nake the world of a difference when you have 30 corpses in an instant.
What happened to seeing an enemies ability, a sword swing or a fireball and you choosing to put your shield up, roll out of the way, rush in to interrupt or simply taking the hit, knowing that you could deal more in that moment, or activate a passive ability.
Nope. Just AoE spams. No strategy, no effort. Just coms "ok AoE dump in three, two, one GO GO GO spam it, spam now. Ok stay in green" everybody can do that and it's still ugly gameplay.
The last good pvp mmo I played was Tera online before the lolly class with the scythe.
Most attacks could hurt anybody in the playets crosshairs, meaning most abilities were AoE, yet never onced did I felt that the combat was AoE spams and zerg stacking.
Tera Online had the best mmo action combat ever, with individual ability cooldowns, usefull normal attacks, feeling of impact when you connected with the enemy, be it using ranged or melee skills and a sense that AoE was not there.
And the reason thatbI enjoy the aoe there is because there are restrictions to protect the gameplay and give meaning to choices.
AoE Can definitely be made to take skill and teamwork.
Just make it so that powerful AoE spells take a long time to cast with a visual indicator of when it'll impact, giving players plenty of time to run out of its area. BUT at the same time, if it's chained with a stun from a teammate, it would cause big damage and would def be a practice of skill, teamwork and communication.
Nice example of this, is the brimstone staff in Albion where it takes a good 4/5 seconds WITH a visual indicator that shows when its ability (a big fat meteorite) will impact. You wouldnt be able to cast a stun yourself during this time, but during large scale pvp, you could communicate with your team when to use a big stun and the aoe ability.
The only thing is, is that it'll be more powerful against mobs than it will against players since mobs dont run away from aoe. Good way to counter aoe is also by adding movement abilities, which we know already exist such as blink. A good mage will know not to use an AoE attack before they used their blink/dash abilities.
In short: Put a limit on how many aoe abilities are in the game, with large cooldowns, long cast times and proper visual indicators. This way, it isn't spammable, can be dodged or even walked out of fairly easily if not used with a stun or root. Could also just make AoE's do DOT damage instead of big claps. Or limit it to cones and beams that hit multiple enemies.
What do most games do? They give this powerful aoe ability to, let's say, these mages, with no real restrictions, and we have the classic, "rdy? 3 2 1 nuke". How is that fun?
Dont understand why we are talking about ''most games''? Only single target spells would be boring to me if anything. Just because you had bad experiences with AoE doesn't mean it can't be implemented to be healthy to the game. A few tweaks and changes like the ones i mentioned, already makes the game not just AoE spam heaven, long cooldowns makes it so that people have to use the AoE's decisively. 3 2 1 nuke won't always be viable, and even if it is, it wont always be succesful.
AoEs usually are not nerfed because they are an essential tool in punishing unorganized zergs and rewarding smaller organized groups.
There are alot of methods of balancing AoEs in a way so a single class such as Meteor Fiesta Mages doesnt become the ultra meta of mass pvps, such as balancing based on risk vs reward through the measurement of Cast time, Area Size and Range to determine power.
Fast Cast time, Bigger area size and long range = Smaller damage
Slow Cast time, smaller area size and short range = Bigger damage
Aren't we all sinners?
But here's the key. That smaller group of players, maybe 8, 16, or 24 people...they should be JUST as susceptible to an even more coordinated group of 1, 2, or 3 players doing the SAME thing to them, AOE bombing. The 8-24 man group is voluntarily balling up in order to AOE bomb a larger, yet spread out unorganized group. The 8-24 man ball should be just as much at risk of AOE. There should be no built in protection mechanics. They voluntarily balled up.
Mana efficiency of AOE Heals vs AOE DPS is another factor that can mitigate a AOE meta.
Personally I don't think that AOEs should be spammed in PvP.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Their place to shine should be in choke points where enemies are forced to go through to advance, thus softening them up for the single target damage dealers to jump once they’ve gone through. The enemies have options on how to approach such a scenario. They can send in tanks first to disrupt the group, since they can survive the AoE damage. They can have high-mobility classes sneak in and try to assassinate or otherwise disrupt the casters. The could turtle and poke from one side of the AoEs until they can pop some significant defensive ultimates and rush through while they’re active.
In the case of stacked AoEs, there’s not a particularly good way to balance that. Limiting how many instances of an AoE would be great for players, but every tick would see the server checking every instance of the AoE to determine which player’s damage will take priority. Making it weak enough to be ignored or healed through without significant resource investment means AoE is not useful in sieges if you doesn’t have some CC attached.
The only realistic way I can see AoEs being balanced is on the caster side. Hence the suggestions made in the first paragraph. Cheap and easy AoEs are what can ruin large scale PvP. Expensive and strategic AoEs open up options for it to be strong when it’s used at the right time, and punishable when it’s used poorly.
Seems to me that your issue is with games that don't put appropriate cooldowns on abilities.
My strongest AoE in EQ2 had a 5 minute cooldown. Good luck spamming that.
The way I can see AoE meta being avoided is removing the necessity to pass those gates. Instead of invading the citadel they could destroy it, compelling defenders to come out. Instead of having to pass through town gates they could destroy the walls and use ladders to sneak in.
You're bleeding for salvation, but you can't see that you are the damnation itself." -Norther
Strong AoE abilities allow smaller more coordinated groups to fight larger more uncoordinated groups in many other games as somebody pointed out. Several people have mentioned AoEs being used on chokepoints to hold them, and this is working as intended imo. This SHOULD happen on chokepoints, but there should be alternate routes around the area that people can maneuver onto and possibly even create new routes in siege scenarios. Additionally there should be the ability within the game to use the classes/builds/augments to create a way for your guild to assist in pushing a chokepoint if your group is specced correctly for that type of thing and think you can pull it off because of your comp/strat/whatever. Could be a giant reflective shield you can drop in front of you for 5 seconds, could be a giant wall you can put down to cut the enemy group in half and block LoS, could be a whole bunch of different things that they could come up with that you could put together to coordinate a way to push a chokepoint.
It could also be problematic for some flagging purpose if everyone's not in the same group or raid. Making it "neutral damage" would only bring many possible ways to exploit the mechanic to avoid things such as corruption. So, although interesting, it's has possible flaws to check out.
250v250 siege with 30+ sec TTK omegalul.
I hope they have changed their stance on this. 30++ is WAY too long for PvP based mmorpg. People complain about 1 shots which is why IS is going for high TTK, but imo its bad combat design if it stays that high.
But to come back to the aoe again, you just need more aoe than in other games, and that's good because you have to limit more dps to the aoe areas because otherwise the dead zone is no longer given. this gives you more tactical leeway, especially when defending castles. .
I remember in Warhammer one of the classes was a Bright Wizard and in any type of big siege combat 5 or 6 of these guys could just roll through and melt everyone. I'm sure it was crazy-fun to be a Bright Wizard but after a little bit of that people would just log out and not participate.
In the same game I was a Goblin Shaman with my primary heal being an AoE and man, it was fun to play the positioning game in PVP and PVE and if your team learned to stack at key times it was a beautiful thing.
In the early days of WoW I'd run 5-man dungeons with a group of local friends and with my Ice Traps and Wyvern Sting (as a Hunter) and a buddies Sheep ability (as a Mage) we could perfectly crowd control large pulls and single-pull them down at will. Fighting like this felt really rewarding and tested your communication, skill and patience - now WoW is largely just AoE spam.
In ESO and EQ2 I had builds where I could routinely pull 15 to 20 mobs at a time and kill them almost as efficiently as a solo player could kill one. Not rewarding at all.
So I'm really interested to see how they handle it here.
I believe the 30 seconds is meant as a 1-on-1 type thing. If you get butt-blasted by 250 people I'm pretty sure you just die instantly.
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In regards to the topic of the thread, I'm thinking high damage aoe on long cd, and single target spells that do more damage than aoe. Therefore you are not incentivized to use your aoe spell, but can use them in a pinch if needed. Also there will be player collision, so realistically you can only hit so many targets with one aoe spell.