Most MMOs miss on large scale PvP

Solvryn

Most MMOs miss on large scale PvP, especially when it comes to player density in a specific area. Ball Groups and Zerging seem to be a sign that many developers are missing critical elements of large scale that dismisses strategy and tactics. The severity depends on game to game, Elder Scrolls is an example of balling and zerging,

https://youtu.be/E1bhSasngpc.

AoEs:

The coordination efforts of the players are there but with the game having very little form. It has zero collision detection (which AoC has), has little need for positioning, angle management, field awareness, formations, or the like. What the devs did do right is attempt to curb the player density in a specific area by a skill called Magicka Detonation.

Magicka Detonation
Magicka Detonation
ESO-Hub.com
Cast Time: 1000
Target: Enemy
Range: 28m
Cost: 3510
Skill description
Curse an enemy with a magical bomb that explodes after 4 seconds, dealing 434 Magic Damage to all enemies in the area. Each enemy within the bomb's radius increases the damage by 100%, including the original target.


Area of Effect abilities and their use are an incredibly integral part of large scale combat and they're almost always guaranteed to be a spammy mess rather than a tactical application in a strategy.

Keeping the AoEs an important tactical application rather than a spammy mess is something that has been discussed by a few of us in the discord.

Major ideas that came up with are:

• Remove any AoE caps that limit the numbers of players hit in the code. There will be an AoE cap through collision detection anyway. Albion Online also does this.
  
• Add scaling to AoEs, increased damage for players hit and decreased healing for players healed.
  
• Add cost scaling to players hit with AoEs. So theres a required recovery time for mages.

This fundamental change in the way Area of Effect applies will lessen spam and will require these abilities to have a greater strategical and tactical acumen and will reward groups with coordinated and cohesive efforts and destroy the groups with less or without any coordinated and cohesive efforts.

Single Target Abilities and Skillshots:

Not all single target abilities have their same weight in needed application, but powerful long ranged attacks also have a very specific importance. The ability to remove individual players from the fight in large scale is an incredible asset to have. I am specifically talking about Sniping, and I do not see often in MMORPGs that often implement this style of play well and it remains unsupported in most MMORPGs.

Ashes will have missile collision, which is the counter to sniping. But will it have support for Sniping? Sniping in the hands of a precise, coordinated, and patient individual brings a layer of lethality to a big fight for many coordinated groups to utilize.

Because of how hard Snipes usually hit, a great way to implement it would be a skillshot that puts a player in an ADS (Aim Down Sight) window in a bow or crossbow that allows for massive damage, because in order to balance such a powerful ability, a player should zoom in an individual at the sacrifice of their Field of View. Screen sway is an additional layer of complexity to balance out such a powerful attack.

With missile collision is the counter, it puts the emphasis on a player hitting their shots thus making them an integral and valuable member to an organization.

There are other important aspects of mass PvP that need to be considered, such as well made maps, etc. I want to address AoE and Sniping specifically.

Add your input in terms of where games miss the mark in large scale PvP.

cheers.

Sol

Ludullu

I think targeted aoes that require a debuff from another class (ideally a targeted ranged action ability) and that do aoe dmg based on how much dmg you did to the target would be great to bring "balance" of skill lvls for both sides.

Let's say you have a thin squishy rogue running together with a fairly big group of his allies towards some place during a siege. Their enemies see the rogue and know that he's squishy, so they target him with an action ability to put a debuff on him and then try to blow him up with a targeted aoe that would do huge damage to the group because it would do a ton of dmg to the rogue (especially if the enemies throw some other debuffs onto him).

Now, the rogue should be able to mitigate or directly avoid the damage to himself and, more importantly, to the group. It could come in the form of iframe dodging or a short-timed evasion buff, or just splitting from the group, or debuff cleansing from the supports, or some detargeting and going into stealth so that he can't be hit with an aoe, or anything else that I can't come up with rn.

Rogue would have to be aware of his surroundings in order to react in time (this is where that "sniping" with the action ability could come into play) and would have to know what to do in that split second, in order to save his group. And the enemies would have to have a good action "sniper" to properly lead the target and hit the rogue in a group, instead of anyone else. And the AOEer would have to immediately cast his ability, in order to give the rogue the least amount of time to react.

We could even have the aoe be castable w/o the debuff, but if there's no debuff the aoe would do miniscule dmg or just be a single target mid dmg ability. So the aoe side would have to time their hits perfectly, to ensure no time for the rogue to react.

And you could have several such interactions to counter zergballs. it could be chained timer debuffs that then explode, so the targets hit with them would have to disperse immediately. It could be aoe debuffs that link targets together and boost single target dmg by a lot if the link is broken (by running away from other linked people), so now the targets gotta stay together for the duration of the debuff but are now huge targets for other mmos.

There's a ton of potential counter-zerg designs, on top of the body collision and just aoes existing. I hope Intrepid comes up with something interesting and skill intensive.