đź“ť Dev Discussion #67 - AoE Form and Function đź’Ł
Dev Discussions are an opportunity to join in on player discussions about topics that Intrepid Studios want to hear your thoughts on. This is less about asking us questions, and more about us asking YOU the questions! If you do have questions about Ashes of Creation, keep an eye our social media channels for our monthly Q&A thread, check out the Ashes of Creation community wiki, or try the #questions channel in Discord!
In this thread, we’ll be discussing:
Dev Discussion - AoE Form and Function
- Area of Effect (AoE) abilities are a common staple in MMORPG combat. We’re curious to know what your thoughts are on AoE abilities and the way they’re displayed.
- In PvP, which Area of Effect (AoE) abilities, should be telegraphed to enemies?
- How clearly should AoEs be to enemy and friendly players?
- Do your thoughts differ in a PvE setting?
- Do you have examples from other games in which AoE abilities are presented in a way you like? If so, please share them!
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Comments
I think Mages are the dominant users of AoEs, however I think its important that all Archtypes have some limited access.
For both the user and the target, its important that the AoE has a very distinct indicator on the ground that doesnt get obstructed by terrain or verticality.
I think that if you dont have visual indicators on the ground, it harms people playing at low settings, and forces players to turn up the graphics which can turn the battlefield into a soup of VFX.
2. In PvP, which Area of Effect (AoE) abilities, should be telegraphed to enemies?
When telegraphing to enemies, it should be all non-instant cast AoE abilities within a certain reasonable distance to where there could be a threat to the user.
If the AoE has a well defined shape, there should be an equivalent telegraph overlayed on the terrain, whether thats a circle, square, cone, column, or oval. This includes abilities like the Rangers Air Strike, or the Bards Pheonix Saga ability.
If the AoE is a radius around the person casting the AoE, the telegraph should move with the user (such as bards melodies).
The only AoE abilities that I dont expect telegraphs for are those that can rapidly change, such as the mages prismatic beam, however I expect those types of abilities to be exceptionally rare.
3. How clearly should AoEs be to enemy and friendly players?
The AoE that the user is casting should be treated with the most priority, since its a direct feedback to the users actions.
The AoE that is casted against the user should be treated with the second level of priority, since it provides a level of danger to the user.
The AoE that is casted by the users party or raid should be treated with the lowest level of priority.
Additionally, the telegraph that gets overlayed on the ground needs to be color coded to differentiate between friendly and enemy. Obviously you dont want to color code the entire ability, but the telegraph thats overlayed on the ground needs to be differentiated.
Ultimately, my dream would be to be able to adjust the VFX for each ability individually, since I think it would be difficult for Intrepid to match the fidelity & intensity of each abilities level of VFX. However I expect this would be a UI nightmare.
4. Do your thoughts differ in a PvE setting?
Not really, while everyone will claim to have the sensory processing capabilities of Spiderman, very few people are going to be able to deal with all that information, and it will simply overload them. As I said previously, the users own actions take the most priority, while the party members AoEs take the least priority.
In a PvE situation, especially a raid, the enemies AoE is much more important than the raid members.
5. Do you have examples from other games in which AoE abilities are presented in a way you like? If so, please share them!
I would reccomend looking at the way GW2 handled displaying AoEs. You can specifically take a look at Necromancers that use Staffs. I personally didnt like the class design of the Staff Necromancer, since almost all of the abilities were AoE, but they were displayed well.
Here are some clips of the AoE placement in action.
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxpvxKFHADArzAHEcgC0T0UYwagzXfORGq?si=zRfG0XsdI7Dga1fc
https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxFHk-K-kdnjUftgP68Mi30F2YkgceN_iS?si=c-1NyyTdhOZmbPHZ
Another GW2 AoE clip:
I think in a modern large scale MMO, AoE attacks should be telegraphed in PvP, and in PvE. Imagine being in a large scale 100v100 fight. It will go one of two ways.
1. Players are incredibly frustrated because they are randomly being damaged and can't really comprehend what is happening due to the large amount of effects and players. Sure, they can make out some longer, more defined AoE attacks sometimes to avoid, but otherwise it is difficult for them.
2. Players are frustrated because enemy AoE attacks are telegraphed, and the entire battlefield floor is a some shade of flashing red because there are so many AoE attacks being used.
How do you balance this? I don't think it will be possible to please everyone, and I don't think it will be super possible to make it a very accessible user experience on either end of the spectrum.
An example of what I personally like is GW2, there are red shaded floor spots of Aoe attacks, and even an indicator of WHEN the damage will be done for certain attacks. This is really nice in PvE encounters, and also appreciated in PvP.
However, it can be more interesting than just red circles everywhere. AoE abilities can be telegraphed intuitively based on their effects. Like what if you are casting a meteor shower over 2s, the floor could start cracking, or the meteors could appear in the sky before actually falling to the ground and doing damage. This would be more interesting, and leave it to players to learn over time what AoE abilities look like before they actively affect you. Instant AoE's are harder to telegraph warnings about, but as they happen it can be tastefully done effects to make it obvious where it is hitting, or a well defined red polygon that shows the accurate area of effect.
Either way, I'm sure there is a sweet spot somewhere about this.
Speaking about the display of AoEs (and setting aside the damage/scaling/capping ...), I believe AOEs should be easy to read, while not obfuscating other important information on the screen. Overtime I became a fan of ground telegraphs. It's important to have different visual ways of displaying these effects, so you can have multiple of them overlaping without losing all readability. I'd like the ability to have various settings we can play on for each of the types of abilities that have telegraphs: color, transparency, etc...
In PvP, which Area of Effect (AoE) abilities, should be telegraphed to enemies?
Ground DoT effects mostly, or abilities with delayed impact. I think the timing shouldn't be communicated other than through the actual skill animation, just the actual area of effect.
How clearly should AoEs be to enemy and friendly players?
Ally buffs/heals that require to stand in them should be very clear, AOE abilities that you can synergize with one way or an other should be clear.
All the enemy abilities that you should reasonably have time to step out of, I'd expect a clear visual indicator of the zone of effect.
But again, it should be up to the player to make some effects more visible or other less. Visual clutter happens very fast.
Do your thoughts differ in a PvE setting?
In PvE, I believe it's fine to communicate more information. Full blown telegraphs with aoe and timing communicated.
Do you have examples from other games in which AoE abilities are presented in a way you like? If so, please share them!
Throne and Liberty, Lost Ark, Elder Scrolls Online to some extent.
Also, the AoE from the dragon raid boss left smoldering circles on the ground, but they also were under the water in puddle areas, that should have an interaction, vision obscuring fog, or steam cloud that causes little DoT.
It should be abundantly clear to friendly and hostile players. The harder it hits the more telegraphed it should be. Don't make AoE so strong that it becomes a brainless meta strat to AoE everything.
I would also love if we could control their opacity, because getting flashbanged by 10 aoes landing on my character, and not being able to see shit, feels kinda bad.
Do not care about pve/pvp differences, because options should be universal.
Definitely haven't played a game where those options are present. Would love if Ashes was my first one
If you're unflagged, what happens when another unflagged player walks into your AoE?
What if they're a combatant? What if they're corrupted? What if they're corrupted AND attacking you?
My main concern is whether players can abuse your use of AoEs to flag you against your will.
You have to flag before aoe affects players, supposedly you can even change it so you can only target combatants.
Corrupted players can be attacked by non-combatants without them flagging which I really hope they change.
The more powerful the ability, the more it should be telegraphed. Of course, then that powerful ability becomes less fun to use from a player perspective, but there's an obvious balance there that has to occur. I like how with sagas the bard players have to stack up themes from abilities to use them. Because of that, there is already a kind of telegraph being shown by the bard from the abilities previously used, and there should be less of a visual telegraph for the sagas during a cast because of that.
Telegraphing is a method to allow for counterplay from other players, it is great to include in a game in order to punish mindless zergs and reward coordinated gameplay. I think Intrepid is handling telegraphs for AoE well right now with indicators.
How clearly should AoEs be to enemy and friendly players?
Extremely clear. Friendly AoE's and enemy AoE's should be distinct. When they aren't distinct, all you're causing is frustration for players since there is no good method to determine which AoE is which. If Intrepid is looking to have large scale PvP battles, there needs to be some method to the chaos, otherwise it's just a numbers game.
I love the idea of having effects tell you where something will hit versus red telegraphed way more for immersion instead of seeing red everywhere.
For pvp its hard to be give too much directional advice as I still don't know what combat system you're going for. If it's an I-frame system where our dodge or movement abilities are intended to be used to avoid hard cc telegraphs for pvp and pve then hard cc should be telegraphed. If you don't want I-frames to be a thing, than that's less important. I don't think it's been made clear what the dev's intent is with giving us the rolling dodge. Typically that signifies I-frame, but I don't know if it works that way in testing and with tab-target abilities does it matter either that someone is rolling around?
I think you need to define the game's combat style first.
-Thematic AoE is somewhat acceptable, i shouldn't always be able to see a single "Meteor" drop even tho its going to knock me to the ground.
-PvE environments that consistently show the floor effects seems too cookie cutter in most cases. Often an ability is telegraphed already, a floor effect for EVERY mob gets draining for the design. (However some raids can be the difference for heavy floor mechanics unless it already has great animation). It wont always need a cut "red" circle, cone, or floor effect that adds a flair of fun to learning mobs or mechanics.
Friendly fire & unfriendly fire in a PvP scenario should be shown without blinding or taking too much animation which is already headed in a great direction. If there is a mass of people. I want to see the bards range, I want to discern where the healer is from its unique animations.
A boar holding its head down and hind up ready to charge is absolutely an immersive telegraph. Or a minotaur with its horns down for example. A dragon spreading its wings, or planting itself taking a deep breath.
Now my answer from an inmerssive stand point is going vary a little since a lot of flashy eye candy-animations on the same screen can break the feel. But also in a competitive setting a lot of cluttercan be counterintuitive as you might lose the ability to track what area of effect you are actually being impacted by the most and need prioritize reacting to.
These points i made are regarding aoes that linger on the ground. Not a swing of the sword that hits multiple targets or such
all in all I do love cool animations, but as a competitive player at heart I want to have the best opportunity i can have in regards to learning a assesing what jsut happened to me both during the fight and afterwards.
I'd also want an option to hide Ally damage ground AOE effects or even better be able to lower the Opacity of them.
GW1 had no radius effect if i remember correctly, same as dota...
And now you can create a skill specialisation for some casters of your choice to "disguise" their AOE in seemignly friendly ones for their ennemies.
They way i am seing AoC PvP (from videos cause i am not an Alpha1 backer, just got my Alpha2 key), it will have a lot in common with CF PvP.
CF PvP also had a long TTK. We fought 15min battles (1 group x 1 group). We also fought mass PvP (although the performance of that game was shit, so it wasnt that "mass") that last several minutes. What i am seing from AoC videos is that the organized PvP (group x group) has also a long TTK, with coordination needed between players in order to suceed. Its not just about keep pushing shortcut as quickly as you can.
CF had a very long range of possibile combinations as classes. So the battlefield was always very different in everybattle. But the concept was always the same:
- Long TTK,
- CC´s were not that effective cause everyone could "retaliate" instantanly to evey CC, using a bit of stamina (that was also used when running under combat)
- Combat was based on sustain damage, instead of burst damage (like in Throne and Liberty, for an example)
- AoE´s was always drawn to players on the field (allies and foes). It has a lot of different DoT AoE´s, CC´s AoE´s and such.
Why that pvp worked so well?
Because you always have the chance to fight. You could not get stun locked or something like that. You could easilly distinguish which skill your enemy were using, what was his type of battle and so you could act acordingly.
In mass PvP, you need AoE to be showed to players. That way, players can find ways to avoid it or to combo it with other skills from you allies, creating a skill gap that is not frustrating and is rewarded enough.
AoE´s animations and textures dont have to be fancy, they need to be effective: You and, your allies and your foes have to be able to quickly understand what is being casted and where.
Aliste-se! https://discord.gg/guildayggbrasil
It's difficult to design content in these PvP focused games in a way that discourages zerging behavior, and introducing AoE that's more dangerous against larger and less organized groups is one way to do it.
Granted, in doing so you may create other abuse type situations like during mass farming of mobs, but it's something worth a lot of discussion for a game like this.
It all depends on the balance of each class, how much power you want to give to a spell and how much outplay potential you want to offer. This question doesn't make any sense with no context.
How clearly should AoEs be to enemy and friendly players?
Players should at least be able to differentiate from friends to foes the AoEs that stay in a zone to proc any buff/debuff, heal or damage over time. You need to be able to know if you can go in an aoe before walking in it.
It's pretty obvious what needs to be done: you need to make 2 vfx colors for all the persistent AoEs.
Unless you want to turn on friendly fire, enemy heals and call it a day.
In a fight I need to be able to visually determine the following, in descending order of importance:
-AoE skills being cast at my location so I can dodge out of the way or use a reactive skill to survive
-AoE skills being cast by my target so I can interrupt them in time or, failing that, shield their target (my teammates)
-support AoE skills being cast by the enemy team so I can purge the buff produced by said support skill as soon as it's cast or kick them out with a forced movement skill if it's a persistent healing area
-support AoE skills being cast by my team so I don't get screamed at for wasting their mana and lose DKP
How clearly should AoEs be to enemy and friendly players?
Clear enough to not have to second guess yourself in the middle of a large scale PvP battle. Even if the indicator appears at the very end of a casting animation, it's better than nothing.
Do your thoughts differ in a PvE setting?
If it were up to me, I'd make enemies a complete enigma to the player until they do their share of hunting quests or dismember enough enemies of that type to have a PhD in monster biology. Obviously most people would just consult a guide but I still believe that being able to telegraph monster attacks from the get-go is immersion breaking. Scouting the dungeon and fighting the boss a few times to figure out what it does is just as important as bringing correct gear and party composition.
I absolutely love the way AoE was handed in Ashes of Creation Alpha-1. I believe A1 Ashes already counts for me as the pinnacle of immersive, fun and most importantly relevant/visually appealing AoE effect and telegraph displays. Those days were the '10/10, no notes' days for me.
This isn't a critique of anything seen recently either, mostly because we haven't seen much of anything recently that I believe needed a true AoE telegraph.
In PvP, which Area of Effect (AoE) abilities, should be telegraphed to enemies?
I believe that there is minimal need to telegraph AoE to enemies in PvP except for continuous effects such as Blizzard from Mages. My preference for combat design is much simpler. I don't care about 'everyone being able to theoretically react to everything', particularly in PvP, so the 'windup animation' of the telegraph matters more than any indicator of the AoE target zone of the ability.
If a mage has the ability to cast a spell 'behind them' or 'at their own feet' (e.g. Sevarog using Subjugate for an escape in Predecessor), I feel that PvP is actually cheapened by having any indicator that this specifically is happening, but I strongly believe in having an indicator that they are planning to cast something.
So overall, to keep it simple for this post, I don't think AoE needs to be telegraphed. Any AoE that is 'so instant that you can't get out of it anyway' or 'so instant after the startup animation that you couldn't', should either not be very powerful, or have a clear and visible startup. Preferably with sparks of power of some kind on the user and a relatively clear idea of where it will go based on their facing direction. This might end up being too 'Action Combat' but I believe with the Hybrid Combat style, this is a reasonable ask for people. "You must be facing the area you want to put Chains of Restraint in order to put it there", even if you only turn to face that spot after you begin the channel for it.
How clearly should AoEs be to enemy and friendly players?
No strong opinion. If the game is designed around making people have the skill to tell them apart, they should be able to. If it is less this, then it matters less to me. An MMO, of course, has the issue of their being far too many players to 'read/know the intent'. In a smaller battle game, even when two of the same character/build are available, you can generally tell whose AoE you are dealing with by having some idea of the 'intent'. However, since even this is sometimes a skill issue within groups, I guess I'd err on the side of making them distinguishable from each other whenever this doesn't ramp up a performance cost or something.
Do your thoughts differ in a PvE setting?
Somewhat, since PvE AoE tend to be much bigger. Even when they're not persistent. But I only care about this when they're disjointed from the visual representation in some way, and I don't really enjoy games where the idea is 'move out of the RedZone Telegraph'. I dislike them even more when the design to 'mix it up' involves having some abilities that don't have the telegraphs, because it makes working with Pick Up Groups, or less skilled players, a whole emotional management minigame. I don't come to MMOs to play emotional management minigames, but I do still want to organically play with others.
I understand that some games just can't make challenging content whose AoE attacks are actually sensibly connected to their character models (again, discounting Mage type enemies, who can be done like the Poison Elder Dragon from A1 or the Twins, shown below for reminders)
(man I love watching that fight...)
Do you have examples from other games in which AoE abilities are presented in a way you like? If so, please share them!
I have minimal examples for this. I love FFXI of course, but that's a 'Raiding is Reading' game by most standards, (a concept referenced in my most recent TheoryRaid thread: https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/60640/lets-theoryraid-5-tiamat-ffxi-vs-firebrand ). The Telegraph there is 'X starts casting Y on Z' or 'X readies Y' and then you look at where X is facing. I don't want this.
Nearly every other game that has this goes right to the redzone territory and I hate it every time. It's not immersive, it's almost always conveying an effect that takes place instantly after a certain period and which can, in many cases, just shred you, making you look/feel like an idiot for not avoiding it, etc.
A simple example from Onigiri (this video claims to be a Momotarou fight, but also includes an entire Tiamat fight, solo, easy mode both, but this is good, as it doesn't drag on, while still showing off basically all moves of each)
And for contrast(?) a simple TL fight with some larger 'telegraphs', TL is useful as an example for me because it has all three types:
1. Attacks that have a windup but no TL equivalent of any 'redzone', just facing, and an obvious follow-through
2. Attacks that have a windup but also the TL 'redzone' (the circle warning, but since these fury attacks all have different startups, you use that as your marker to 'pay attention to the animation', not as an autoresponse, basically changing from the FFXI style 'reading the log' to a 'reading the screen')
3. Attacks that have a ground telegraph and maybe some dialogue but not always the circle warning.
Even better for me, FFXI+L2-lovechild fan as I am, the '2' type matches FFXI's 'X readies Y' without any actual information about the target, so you get that feeling (this might not be a positive for most people) of 'knowing that you have a damage opportunity because you trust your Tank and believe they are the target' without a redzone to confirm it.
As the introductory group boss of TL, this satisfied all my wishes exactly and made me feel the same as fighting in Alpha-1, a case of 'TL making me nostalgic for AoC'.
But for smth. like the big dragon bossfight from last DevUpdate I'd appreciate some variety. For example a dragon that will breath fire can do an animation that lets you expect what comes next. But there are all sorts of other possibilities. For example the WoW Onyxia fight where "Onyxia takes a deep breath" is an emote and then you can predict where the fire lands by the direction she is looking to.
An enemy can start glowing before he does some big attack, etc etc
Here is the tip for top 2 that aren't done right:
1. Instant AoE:
a)If doesn't have ongoing effect-quick flash or burst animation followed by loud sound effect (Shattering of glass, explosions, gust of wind)
b) If it has ongoing effect (stays after you cast it)- minimal subtle effect that loop. Silent sound effect.
2. Channeling AOE
I am scared to give a feedback on this one. You guys make everything that needs emphasis saturated with color. That's not good spell design. Your Tank's Wall ability literally looks like stacked up Turkish delight. Its horrible.
Channeling AoE must be most visible out of them all, so you can give a chance to opposing player to interrupt it. Your Blizzard spell is perfect in saturation and effects. Dont you dare change it.
Guild Wars 2 has done them perfectly. Especially with their Elementalist class.
The rest are up to you...
In PvP, which Area of Effect (AoE) abilities, should be telegraphed to enemies?
Burst DmG and stunning ones. Meteor, for example.
How clearly should AoEs be to enemy and friendly players?
I think you should adapt to a game so you can tell it just by looking. Thats where good spell design comes to a play.
Do your thoughts differ in a PvE setting?
Unless it has some wind up mechanics that you can showcase with animation (Which would be preferable), you should make the danger zone visible.
Example: Boar readying to charge at you shouldn't have any notification, but some crazy magic effect cast by a magical being that isn't exactly humanoid should, if that makes sense.
Do you have examples from other games in which AoE abilities are presented in a way you like? If so, please share them!
YES! Guild Wars 2 has a large variety of AOEs with very different cast times and FX. I think its masterfully done.
In Guild Wars 2 has also done AOE danger area notification perfectly. Especially in PVE
Just a simple faded, slightly burning red circles was a simple yet effective solution. Works in PvP too.
Telegraphed boss AoE's notifications are good too.
I think AoE should only be used in a context of a swarm of 4 or more mobs being held together by a tank and healer. No one should be able to be tanky enough to hold multiple mobs and AoE them down. If there's AoE CC, it should be on a long enough cooldown that you cannot do the WoW mage thing where it's the only class that can kit a whole group of mobs around by itself. I know mages love that but the reality is that it just breaks the game on so many levels. The whole game would turn into mages getting gold by boosting players through dungeons, same as classic WoW.
The best place AoE abilities can be in is in situational rotations where you are in a group, or specific encounters where the mob splits into multiple mobs on death. Besides that, the best PVE encounter is against a well made mob with actual mechanics to play around.
As for PvP, it's best to nerf AoE damage as much as possible because everytime a ranged character can do good AoE damage, group PvP just devolves into "Who has the most AoE to dump on the other group wins".