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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.
Comments
If you walk in a line in a slow manner - you'll get picked off real quickly. If you rush it with numbers - OP aoes.
The usual answer to this is "tanks will need super protective buffs for such rushes". But such buffs would require long cds cause the buff would remove the whole point of aoes, right? If such a buff has anything other than "only your party receives this" - the zerg will use tank alts to simply circumvent the aoes.
If the buff is party-only - you're putting a limit on how many times the attackers can attempt a rush, because outside of that buff they get demolished.
Once again, this was the case in L2 quite a lot. And L2's aoes weren't even scaled.
If you have any idea roughly what Livestream or interview it was in, you can just give me that (or a few of them if you're not sure) and I'll throw it into the parsers.
Any terms you remember related directly to it other than 'Guardian' or 'mass/multiple aggro' will help a lot too.
And considering that we don't even know how hate abilities work in pvp, in this context the only "pull" that would matter would be the Grapple ability, but I definitely don't remember any mention of an aoe grapple.
Sure, but all that would mean is that you missed it too.
Maybe it's smth that was discussed a loooong time ago and got lost in the ether, just as a few quotes from the past have been. At times I feel like there's some mandela effect happening with some quotes, cause several people seem to "definitely" remember them, but nobody got proof for them.
Time machine? Not at all, unless you would consider logical predictability as such.
As previously stated properly balanced AoEs by themselves wouldn't require an extra form of scaling as they already scale their total damage by the amount of people affected.
Sure, competent PvP team can indeed deal with spread out players with strategy and tatics even without skills that directly punish such formation, the same way they can deal with big tightly packed player groups, but AoEs are already a meta staple.
Not sure if there is confirmation about the mass pull but, there's definitely the possibility that one will be a thing.
Aren't we all sinners?
cant stack like that in aoc xdd
But if we want to go down the route of boosting aoe damage based on clumped together targets, then it also needs to start increasing the cooldown and the spell cost to balance it out.
And one thing that I dont see at all in this discussion, is the fact that zergs are huge. There is going to be many people also spamming protection and mitigation abilities to reduce the incomming aoe damage down to zero anyway. Smaller groups wont be able to carry enough protection removal to deal with that.
Not to mention the bigger zerg, ya know, throwing damage back at your team to, and being a smaller team you have much less protection against that kind of thing.
An idea like this is only really good for an ambush, and after that you wont be able to engage the zerg again because the commander will be prepared.
It was supposed to be the morph of that pull skill for Tank/Tank
Show me where in your maths it’s going to be OP? Mass pulls into AoE are already a thing without scaling.
If an AoE already hits for 500, they can set that cap for the maximum amount of bodies in that AoE.
You sound dramatic as hell.
This combo would also directly counter the goal of this thread, because even if good players stay somewhat separated - they'll still die to the combo, so this won't be "a way to counter zerg".
And I'm always dramatic
I told you I don’t WANT them to full solo a player that’s why you scale them. AoEs can be damage appropriate for the amount of people in them. Don’t know why people are struggling.
I’ve repeated myself enough times already.
And you’re objectively incorrect, play with actual collision detection duder. Everything I’ve said works.
I wouldn't want it to hit for 500, cause that's op as hell in mass fights, but still. I simply don't understand that part of your argument. And so far it seems like the biggest part of the argument.
The only reason you want scaling is so that aoes don't hit solos too hard, but they wouldn't hit them hard even if aoes did in fact hit for the same amount as a solo target ability.
The point of scaling is so that the damage goes up.
So to explain this further smart groups are going to spread. Tanks to the front and side by side, (A line). Range behind them in a formation to where they can optimize taking the least amount of damage from an aoe.
When you do this with enough people, the opposing team will be forced to blanket their AoEs across the entire line in order to have effectiveness.
And that’s why it’s objectively not OP. The only people who are going to still die to a max damage AoE, are Zergs. Zerglings are scrubs, so who gives a shit if they perish.
Now. 1 person in an AoE should take less damage from the AoE as opposed to a single target damage ability is because that’s good balance.
What makes it good? Why shouldn't aoes just hit for the same dmg across the board? They will already do more overall dmg in a mass attack situation, so why should they do EVEN MORE in that situation?
And I don't think you answered my question from here In your experience, do scaled aoes simply reach single target dmg or do they go beyond it (per person hit at max number of people in the aoe)?
Because if they're simply at single target power - I see no good reason for them not to simply have that dmg as default. And if they go beyond single target - what's the cost when compared to singles, cause getting some shit like x20 overall damage increase for even a relatively same cost is insane to me.
And anyone that gets pulled in close.
People being out of position in PvP is just a thing. It is often out of your control, don't try and pretend that it isnt.
Even then, you and your guild may be perfectly in sync, and always stand exactly the right space apart. However, when me and my guild of PvP scrubs come charging in and running amok around you and your perfectly formed guild, rival AoE's arent going to do less damage to you and your guild for being in formation.
Honestly, if AoE scaling were in the game and was strong enough, one of the best strats could well be to send in mules to get hit by them and boost the damage. I would even consider that a viable use of a second account. It would instantly negate any formation you and your guild may have.
Zergs and deathballs are two separate things, similar but separate. Zerg busting mechanics are pretty standard in games that strive to have "good" pvp. It's just up to the devs of a given game where they want to draw the line or strike the balance between highly skilled players obliterating everyone versus the game being a low skill, static pvp meta affair where zerging is king. I mean it's always going to be king, but OVERLY king.
Deathballs are a different beast though. It's impossible to predict these things right now, but my guess is Ashes won't have a deathball problem because you already have a few important things that work to stop it. Player collision, cooldowns on abilities, and if there are no aoe caps, then that too. But again, impossible to predict at this stage. If it's possible to do, the players will find it, and they will deathball. And it will be king.
So to answer your question, how to stop deathballs without Aoe. I'm no expert, just spitballing based on my experience. These are just ideas, not endorsements. And I'm going to list Aoe solutions regardless for the record.
- Powerful default Aoe damaging abilities or upwards Aoe scaling based on amount of targets hit
- Weak/trivial default Aoe damaging abilities (deathballs usually rely on Aoe not being powerful enough to break them up, but powerful enough to spam themselves as they crash into and out of groups of players, so weak Aoe renders many forms of deathball moot)
- Strong enough Aoe CC (same principle as Aoe damage, something that deathball groups are like "oh fk don't wanna get hit with that while deathballing, thus the behavior stops)
- Nikr's idea of a scaling Aoe debuff (just a means to an end, an additional step, followed up by damaging Aoe to actually break up the deathball. But it would work theoretically, it just shifts the critical element from the Aoe damaging abilities to the scaling Aoe debuff)
- Adjusting skill cooldown timers to where the skills that facilitate deathballs have longer cooldowns and the skills that break them up have shorter cooldowns
- Same as above, but adjusting the resource cost of abilities to match
- Warhammer Online style knockbacks ("Punts" was the slang for them at the time. Because they knocked you back that far. Maybe 10-15 feet, can't remember. Was a kind of goofy mechanic, but theoretically could work to make deathballing harder, line of thought being that you knock people out of the ball, it loses cohesiveness etc. Warhammer itself didn't have many deathball problems in my experience because Aoe was so powerful by default)
- Pull abilities/mechanics. Aoe pulls would probably be required, but single player pulls might have an effect (Same as the Warhammer knockback, gets people out of their ball, by force)
- No /follow. (Not neccessarily something I'm in favor of, but you asked for non aoe solutions. I've never run in a deathball group except for one time for a few minutes before I cringed out. But my understanding is that /follow is pretty useful to them.)
- Reduction of the overall effectiveness of heals, shields and other utility abilities that deathballs are able to use to survive (This is a big one. What is the point of introducing deathball busting mechanics when you allow deathballs to just heal through them with ease. Or immediately purge an Aoe debuff. Or immediately and more importantly REPEATEDLY cleanse a CC. Counterplay is important, but at a certain point abilities need to actually be allowed to have their effect on players or you just have a button mashing bonanza where everyone can just cancel everything with a button press and all these creative abilities you the devs come up with...rarely even have their intended effect. Looking at you ESO, it's been 8 or so years since I played, no idea what it's like now)
- Just to cap it off, ESO. Worst offender I've ever seen as far as deathballs. It was so bad, there were literal BOT deathballs. One guy multiboxing controlling a 16-24 player deathball. It was that easy. And it worked. That is your big clue that you are scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel of what pvp can be, how good it can be, when the meta can be BOTTED. You have completely gone off the deep end of "making the game accessible" and catering to the "look at me mom I'm pvping!" types that you have completely thrown in the towel on even attempting to make a good pvp game. And you hurt everyone in the process. You are dumbing down your own game and the entire genre. And at the end of it, no one gets better at pvp. No one gets better at basic pvp fundamentals like timing and positioning, movement, and reading a battlefield in real time. They get WORSE. Other aspects of ESO that facilitated deathballs were things like "Immovable," it came in potion form and as an ability I believe, making you immune to CC, ridiculous "sustain" builds where players could regen mana and stamina practically faster than it could even be spent, zero cooldowns...what a mess of a game.
Again though. I'm not sure Ashes will have a deathball problem. We'll see. For some people, deathballs are just pvp. That's just what you do, it's normal. Maybe that's Steven, I dunno. heh.
Depends what the ability is.
If the AoE is scaled that formation is going to trade damage in the organized groups favour, not an unorganized Zerg.
They’re not going have superior group movement, positioning, strategy, or tactics.
Sure, they could get in a CC, but an organized group recovers.
You seem to be forgetting that the superior group on the offensive side will be making sure their AoE's are dealing as much damage as they can.
If that means adding characters in the midst of you and your guild, that is what we will be doing.
There will be very few meaningful situations in Ashes where it is just you and your guild fighting against others. There will almost always be others on your side, whether you want them or not.
The archetypes aren’t even complete and we are talking about meaningful situations now?
We don’t know shit about what’s going to happen. The archetypes aren’t even done.
I’m sticking to the OP, let’s not derail the thread.
At most I can say it’s better to wait and see, they may have Zerg destroying mechanics they have thought of.
well, he has a point. in open world pvp, people could just run to you unflagged on a 2nd account and then flag on the last 2nd to make their main account aoe scale up. what are you going to do? if you see people running at you, they will probably attack, but you cant risk killing them before they flag if you are already pvping another group because you will go red. at most, you could run and then the fight turns into running back and forth with nothing happening.
and in castle sieges, there will be 250 on each side. so even if your group is comprised of good players, the rest of the people on your side arent (and this is by your own and other people definition here, zergs are bad, headless chickens, etc.) so your own teammates will stand next to you making your enemy's aoe scale up. so yeah...
The games class design has no impact at all on when PvP will be meaningful.
Sieges will be meaningful. Node wars will be meaningful. Caravan attack and defense will sometimes be meaningful. None of these situations give you the option of fighting as your guild alone.
Guild wars is the closest thing to meaningful PvP in Ashes where that will happen, and even then it would be easy to exploit scaling AoE's (there is nothing to say that you are able to attack ONLY the rival guild in a guild war).
Your final point - it being better to wait and see - is literally what I have been saying all along. There are many other options that simply don't have the same massive negative impact on the game as a whole (PvE with this system in place would be ruined), so literally the only way it should ever be considered is if PvP is literally broken to the point where the game is essentially unplayable, every other potential option has been explored and either ineffective, and Intrepid opt to have a game with playable PvP but unplayable PvE.
Because it really is a choice. This being in place makes PvE pointless - it may as well not exist.
I highly doubt Steven will let castle sieges stay random. Rather there be a roster that lets the Siegemaster pick and choose who does and who does not go on the roster.
Thats a controlled stack.
Node Wars are a different animal but in A1 a guild can absolutely stay coordinated.
G v G? Same.
so you have 250 players that are as good as you?
ill clarify what im talking about. lets say you have your small guild with your elite pvp group of 30 players and oyu also have your elite passives. you still have to ally to a big guild to have 250 people (unless you are willing to fight 30 vs 250). even if you can choose who goes into the siege (and you probably wont, as i suspect the big guild will be able to make a declaration scroll faster than your guild) you will still have players from the zerg who can ruin your positioning. also consider that you might not always be in charge of who will join the siege.
edit:
actually nevermind then. enjoy the headless chickens on your side making you get 1 shotted by your scaling aoes xD