Thoughts about AOE damage

What about AOE damage being proportional to numbers of players affected?
In this way, AOE damage could be a great tool to balance fights unbalanced in numbers.

Thivar wrote: »

Tacualeon wrote: »

Thivar wrote: »

maouw wrote: »

you mean scaling UP the more players are hit?

UP
Theres no reason to scale down

Thivar wrote: »

fights unbalanced in numbers

Picking bad fights is not reason to increases aoe damage neither.

Do you mind creating an argument?

I agree that some figths should not be fought but it is fun to e.g. run away 3 fights to fight one?
Making AOE damage an impressive tool to fight against larger groups based on the enemy's numbers could encourage people to run in less numbers.
Also, a lot of players in other games out there use "stack and spam AOE" to just kill everything without any additional efforts or downsides. With a system like this, you could make AOE usage against small groups something more irrelevant, encouraging large groups to fight individually while keep a constant care about positioning since the enemy attacks will be stronger if you stack too much.

maouw wrote: »

scaling up could work for something like a plague - where the contagion is accumulative, and the more people around you who are affected by it, the faster is accumulates on you.

Also worth noting: if you boost the AoE meta, you also boost the assassin meta because everyone spreads out.

This system would have to work for every AOE and yes, this would boost assassin's play but do not forget that even people having to spread out and having downsides on AOE usage against lonely assassins, they are more in numbers and can still focus fire easily on him.

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maouw

you mean scaling UP the more players are hit?

Tacualeon

Thivar wrote: »

What about AOE damage being proportional to numbers of players affected?
In this way, AOE damage could be a great tool to balance fights unbalanced in numbers.

Can you give us some numbers or examples?

maouw wrote: »

you mean scaling UP the more players are hit?

I think he meant scaling down.

Vyraka

I think fire, frost, and electrical damage would hurt equally regardless of how many people were hit.

Nagash

Ah the bane of summoners. AOE

Thivar

maouw wrote: »

you mean scaling UP the more players are hit?

UP
Theres no reason to scale down

Tacualeon

Thivar wrote: »

maouw wrote: »

you mean scaling UP the more players are hit?

UP
Theres no reason to scale down

Thivar wrote: »

fights unbalanced in numbers

Picking bad fights is not reason to increases aoe damage neither.

Do you mind creating an argument?

maouw

scaling up could work for something like a plague - where the contagion is accumulative, and the more people around you who are affected by it, the faster is accumulates on you.

Also worth noting: if you boost the AoE meta, you also boost the assassin meta because everyone spreads out.

Thivar

Tacualeon wrote: »

Thivar wrote: »

maouw wrote: »

you mean scaling UP the more players are hit?

UP
Theres no reason to scale down

Thivar wrote: »

fights unbalanced in numbers

Picking bad fights is not reason to increases aoe damage neither.

Do you mind creating an argument?

I agree that some figths should not be fought but it is fun to e.g. run away 3 fights to fight one?
Making AOE damage an impressive tool to fight against larger groups based on the enemy's numbers could encourage people to run in less numbers.
Also, a lot of players in other games out there use "stack and spam AOE" to just kill everything without any additional efforts or downsides. With a system like this, you could make AOE usage against small groups something more irrelevant, encouraging large groups to fight individually while keep a constant care about positioning since the enemy attacks will be stronger if you stack too much.

maouw wrote: »

scaling up could work for something like a plague - where the contagion is accumulative, and the more people around you who are affected by it, the faster is accumulates on you.

Also worth noting: if you boost the AoE meta, you also boost the assassin meta because everyone spreads out.

This system would have to work for every AOE and yes, this would boost assassin's play but do not forget that even people having to spread out and having downsides on AOE usage against lonely assassins, they are more in numbers and can still focus fire easily on him.

Bricktop

Anything that encourages small groups and not zergs is a fantastic thing.

Celestial Scythe

I could see some spells being more effective the larger the numbers like a plague, while others being weaker like a Wind Vortex spell.

Medrash1

@Thivar

Thivar wrote: »

What about AOE damage being proportional to numbers of players affected?
In this way, AOE damage could be a great tool to balance fights unbalanced in numbers.

Do you mean to scale down the damage right? To balance when it hits multiple enemies and then not be overpredominants in all fight.
if you meant a space up i wonder if you are actually crazy or what xD (crazy is a good thing) ... anyway both scaling down or up based on the number of enemies is a bad idea for aoe i think ... but with a complex counterbalance can be doable maybe.
If you make a scaling up spell it means his base damage has to be pretty low, and for the scaling down damage it has to be stronger at the start.
A good AoE usually get weaker when it has more people in it, sure it still strong and effective against more enemies, but it need some limits.
A well balanced AoE with scaling up damage, that i saw in videogames, is an infection or pleague based spell. It's weaker and hard to use properly, but can be devastating in some circumstances. It start from an enemie beeing infected, with a small aoe maybe, and then when some condition is meet (like his death) a cloud of spores and viruses spread to the enemie, growing in size and damage.

The base rule to do such type of spells is that when casted it needs to draw the power from the enemie and use it against themself, so for example, if many people go inside it and fail their defenses the AoE cast will start growing and sucking energy .
An idea can be that if anyone uses a Fire spell or have some fire (like candles) the AoE spell will use their fire against themself, increasing the AoE spell in damage and size. But this Fire damage spell need a precise and restricted condition to be effective. So yes, but it's hard to make.

Moid

I think AoE is a great feature to have in a video game...

So long as it hits friendly players who get in its way just as hard as enemy players.

Sathrago

Keep AoE damage the same at any amount of people, make it something you should be afraid of and get out of and we don't need to scale anything.

DeadlyDave

When you see a circle on the floor with shooting flame balls landing; ANYONE caught inside should receive damage dependant on there level and gear they have equipped.
You could have a heavy armour with very high resistance to fire damage so the AoE of fire balls hardly does any damage.
Well whats the point of AoE if it doesn't do any damage to players with Fire resistance.
Mix up the tactics with having other forms of AoE damage electrical, wind, toxic rain ..... etc

fathergoose

Here's my own hot take:

1. Pure single target abilities should do the most damage.
2. Short range/conal cleave should have high damage but less than pure single target. Make it worth using for maximum throughput on 2+ mobs.
3. AoE should be either utility or low enough single target damage to only be higher throughput on 5+ mobs. No target cap, ever, for any reason.

Healing falls under the same rules. Cleansing magical debuffs should ideally be single target, because AoE cleansing is an absurd bane to DoT spread. On that note, DoTs should follow the same rules too, and if they can spread automatically they shouldn't do big individual target numbers.

Very simple rules that I don't understand why games break so frequently, whether it's AoE abilities that do top single target damage, or OP cleansing, or whatever the case may be. The uniqueness can come from split damage between burst and DoT, utility, whatever, but target caps make things feel awful in large scale. If 15 wizards all Blizzard a big clump of stacked fools, those fools should all die.

GW2's WvWvW showed me the horrible flaws in target cap design and I really never want to see it again.

George_Black

The benefit of an AoE is the mass effect without the need to aim.

If there are no appropriate:
Cooldowns
Amount of effects
Output dmg/heal
Mp costs
aoes make combat a spam fest, instead of gameplay.

AoEs need thise restrictions. Not player caps.

I dont like AoE gameplay, unless it is the them of a class/weapon (example polearm warrior).

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