Guild Wars 2

On my berserk thief, with shortbow skill “Cluster Bomb” I can deal up to 7000 dmg against target with toughness at the level of ~2000. Removing AoE limit would result in situations where few defending players could take down the entire attacking army with just few skills.

An answer (not THE answer), would be to have a total limit to aoe damage per spell or skill, and an unlimited amount of targets. Would still limit damage to zergs, but also allow the main aoe damage classes to be more viable in WvW. As well as remove the rng on targets being susceptible. This would help in pvp but hinder pve, so…again a need to separate the two play styles and builds.

George Steel.1804:

Actually what the OP makes a lot of sense. I would prefer these AoE abilities to have an unlimited amount of targets in WvW (exclude PvE) to deter people from grouping and playing with a zerg.

- Where is the balance of couple of elementalists wiping several dozen melee attackers at the gate? Even hitting the maximum of 5 targets with AoE attacks makes them far more effective than single target options, and as such will deter greater force in numbers from pressing siege at full power.

Zenith.6403:

George Steel.1804:

Actually what the OP makes a lot of sense. I would prefer these AoE abilities to have an unlimited amount of targets in WvW (exclude PvE) to deter people from grouping and playing with a zerg.

- Where is the balance of couple of elementalists wiping several dozen melee attackers at the gate? Even hitting the maximum of 5 targets with AoE attacks makes them far more effective than single target options, and as such will deter greater force in numbers from pressing siege at full power.

The same place where the balance is if 10 aoe spells or skills drop on these same groups of melee attackers and they…just…stand…there. The balance is skewed either way. For those that enjoy the mindless zerg, aoe limits make sense. Just group up and charge and hope you don’t get to be the unlucky one that rng decides to be a target of all the aoe. Grouping in masses shouldn’t be totally discouraged(because really,that’s what a WvW should be to an extent), but it should be intelligent grouping over what is currently happening.

Group balance and group skills and teamwork is what they should go for. And yes, a smart group will currently beat a mindless group, but that shouldn’t be just incidental. People should have to be smart in order to take down a fortified position with determined defenders

Zenith.6403:

George Steel.1804:

Actually what the OP makes a lot of sense. I would prefer these AoE abilities to have an unlimited amount of targets in WvW (exclude PvE) to deter people from grouping and playing with a zerg.

- Where is the balance of couple of elementalists wiping several dozen melee attackers at the gate? Even hitting the maximum of 5 targets with AoE attacks makes them far more effective than single target options, and as such will deter greater force in numbers from pressing siege at full power.

You don’t seem to understand a basic point. If the defending team has a couple of elementalists, then the attacking team can tote along a few. Mutually Assured Destruction. The game would be much better if there WAS an arms race of sorts, where builds could counter other builds via intelligent skill use, rather than just out-DPSing and sheer numbers.

And from what I’ve seen in WvWvW, warriors tend to sit and hit gates with their Twilights and Sunrises. Makes as much sense as Lancelot slicing at a castle wall in Monty Python. And he was repelled by chickens and cows flung from catapults. Point is, a dumb player rushing into AoE SHOULD be crushed, rather than counting on a lame game mechanic to save them from their stupid decision.

And as I and others have said multiple times, the balance to AoE is to simply not stand in it. Meteors could do hundreds of thousands of damage, but if no one was dumb enough to sit under them, the skill would effectively do zero damage. Besides, as a couple others have noted, in what other game is rushing INTO AoE an effective tactic to cut down on total overall damage, much less the question of whether it makes any sense rationally.

I’m not suggesting an unlimited AoE cap (although I think it would fix WvWvW), I’m simply asking for an intelligent re-examination of it in WvWvW. And please, point me in the direction of the profession that only has access to single target damage. Even the Mesmer has a cleave aa chain on MH sword. If your gripe is that this would cement the Elementalist as the king of AoE, well duh, the profession since GW1 has been billed as such, even though in both games the balance team has screwed the pooch with the profession.

killcannon.2576:

For those that enjoy the mindless zerg, aoe limits make sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Zenith.6403:

killcannon.2576:

For those that enjoy the mindless zerg, aoe limits make sense.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Thanks for that, only works though if there are no people who like a mindless zerg, of which there are plenty. In addition, I addressed the argument so no strawman is present.

This game caters to casuals, that’s it in a nutshell. I loled when i saw the red circles for the first time. So not only is there a limit on how many clumped up non attention paying baddies you can hit , the baddies are also shown when to step out of the badmans aoe. Its like an mmo designed for small children.

Kaleban.9834:

Point is, a dumb player rushing into AoE SHOULD be crushed, rather than counting on a lame game mechanic to save them from their stupid decision.

And as I and others have said multiple times, the balance to AoE is to simply not stand in it. Meteors could do hundreds of thousands of damage, but if no one was dumb enough to sit under them, the skill would effectively do zero damage. Besides, as a couple others have noted, in what other game is rushing INTO AoE an effective tactic to cut down on total overall damage, much less the question of whether it makes any sense rationally.

This. This. A thousand times, this.

Kaleban.9834:

You don’t seem to understand a basic point. If the defending team has a couple of elementalists, then the attacking team can tote along a few. Mutually Assured Destruction. The game would be much better if there WAS an arms race of sorts, where builds could counter other builds via intelligent skill use, rather than just out-DPSing and sheer numbers.

The defending team has an advantage. It always does.

Basically, what will happen is this : stay hidden in the fort, wait to form a small little zerg, then portal bomb towards the siege.

While portal bombing is not uncommon, what it achieved was limited to destroying the siege and maybe killing a few persons. If the limit is removed, a portal bomb will be extremely deadly with a few elementalists (or anything that can throw one or two AoE).
“But you can spread out”, not that much though, go too far and they won’t even need a portal bomb to get you.

And what exactly is the advantage given to the attackers ?

But actually, for the hell of it, imagine 10 mesmers, playing ping pong with a zerg by using Illusionary Wave and Temporal Curtain.

RedStar.4218:

Kaleban.9834:

You don’t seem to understand a basic point. If the defending team has a couple of elementalists, then the attacking team can tote along a few. Mutually Assured Destruction. The game would be much better if there WAS an arms race of sorts, where builds could counter other builds via intelligent skill use, rather than just out-DPSing and sheer numbers.

The defending team has an advantage. It always does.

Basically, what will happen is this : stay hidden in the fort, wait to form a small little zerg, then portal bomb towards the siege.

While portal bombing is not uncommon, what it achieved was limited to destroying the siege and maybe killing a few persons. If the limit is removed, a portal bomb will be extremely deadly with a few elementalists (or anything that can throw one or two AoE).
“But you can spread out”, not that much though, go too far and they won’t even need a portal bomb to get you.

And what exactly is the advantage given to the attackers ?

But actually, for the hell of it, imagine 10 mesmers, playing ping pong with a zerg by using Illusionary Wave and Temporal Curtain.

The funny thing is, you’re coming up with all these imaginary scenarios that given the current state of WvWvW could never exist. BECAUSE of a removal of AoE limits, all players would be forced to think up multiple tactics and strategies, counters and counter-counters, ad infinitum.

Removal of AoE limits, combined with a change in how siege works (such as rams providing a roof that obstructs ranged AoE) could drastically improve WvWvW to a point where its not simply largest zerg wins.

And one point, defenders throughout history usually had the advantage, which was the whole point behind catapults, ballistae, cannons, etc. An army, no matter how well equipped with small arms (swords, maces, spears, etc.) could not hope to defeat a defending force taking refuge behind castle walls, which was the whole point of walls and castles in the first place. Defenders in this game should always have the advantage, forcing servers and commanders to make strategic decisions about how many troops to leave a sufficient defense while sallying forth the rest to take out the enemy camps or keeps.

Lastly, your 10 mesmer comment doesn’t really make sense, seeing as how a zerg is likely to have its own mesmers, as well as other professions that would counter such tactics. But as it stands now, no matter how much hypothetical strategizing is done, the simple fact remains that given how WvWvW is currently setup, the quickest and most efficient way to “win” is to zerg from point to point. If that’s ANet’s long term vision of WvWvW, its likely to die off sooner rather than later. A WvWvW that encourages lateral thinking and tactics may be more difficult at first, but has much greater long term potential.

There are many (or most) games where AoE is AoE – otherwise its multiple target. You are in the area when the aoe falls, you get hit. And in those games, mages do not kill everything on sight by spamming aoe and melee classes are still very viable.

There are casters on both sides
There are cooldowns
There are healers/support classes
We watch where we stand
Mages are weak when melee’ed
We try to outflank and get our melees to the enemy casters

And yes, it should be difficult to take a fully reinforced castle with defenders instead of flipping them over every 10 minutes. Instead, we have the ability to stack 100 toons in 1 tile and no disincentive to do so. So all our melee skills concentrate on the nearest target and so we can 1-attack a reinforced door down in seconds.

Seriously, the phrase used most often by the commanders is “stack on me, stack on me!” This should not be a valid tactic.

While I think that raising the AoE cap to about 10 or so might be a good idea, I believe that removing it entirely is just asking for trouble. It was put into the game for a reason, folks. Ulimited target AoEs +Combo spam would simply be too powerful.

It might make more sense to have uncapped AoEs on Seige weapons only, since seige weapons have inherent weaknesses. (Can’t defend themselves, stuck in place once built and therefore have limited range, can’t be repaired, require both money and supply to build just one,must be manned at all times to be of use.) THAT I could see alleviating zergfests without being broken.

Zergs in WvW are an issue, yes. The solution to this is NOT to turn WvW into an AoE turtle-fest.

Be careful what you wish for, folks. Just because it sounds good on paper does not mean it’s good in practice.

Kaleban.9834:

Lastly, your 10 mesmer comment doesn’t really make sense, seeing as how a zerg is likely to have its own mesmers, as well as other professions that would counter such tactics. But as it stands now, no matter how much hypothetical strategizing is done, the simple fact remains that given how WvWvW is currently setup, the quickest and most efficient way to “win” is to zerg from point to point. If that’s ANet’s long term vision of WvWvW, its likely to die off sooner rather than later. A WvWvW that encourages lateral thinking and tactics may be more difficult at first, but has much greater long term potential.

If one team has the advantage, how can you talk about “Mutual destruction” ? The removal of the AoE limit will benefit the defenders far more than the attackers for the simple reason that the attackers won’t benefit as much as the defenders because there are rarely 6+ defenders on the small section of the wall their AoE can hit.

You said it yourself, currently the defenders do not need to outnumber the attackers. To stop an attack, they need to destroy the siege and then prevent the attackers from building again by cutting their supplies or killing them.

As for the mesmer part, it was a joke…A joke about mesmers using their push and pull skill to ball up a zerg. And then quickly kill them. (Of course, stability will make that unusable, unless of course shouts and boons are still under the limit).
But if you want to analyze a joke : how can attackers do that to players inside a keep ?

And technically, the best way to win isn’t to “zerg from point to point”. You need to divide your zerg to be able to take multiple points and defend those you took, heavily depending on your population and your enemies population.

Silver.3284:

There are healers/support classes

Something not really in the game.

Now if we extend the removal of AoE limit to support skills, the new zerg will say “Stack and spam healing kills and shouts”.

I’m not saying that the current system is perfect, I’m saying that removing the AoE limit won’t be something that makes WvW better.

Kaleban.9834:

You don’t seem to understand a basic point. If the defending team has a couple of elementalists, then the attacking team can tote along a few. Mutually Assured Destruction. The game would be much better if there WAS an arms race of sorts, where builds could counter other builds via intelligent skill use, rather than just out-DPSing and sheer numbers.

- But that’s what happens with current AoE too. It is both necessarily the best choice of skill to use against clumped enemies, and sufficient damage output to make them respond. Attackers like to take down pot of oil and cannons even if they are “just AoE”. If you’re hitting 5 enemies with any AoE spell, you’re doing a great deal of work against their attack.

The problem is wvw isn’t balanced if elementist is the only one with superior aoe. You should give other class ability to stop zerg too.

My suggest is as follow. Give each other class it’s own aoe.

Warrior: A shout with 5 second cool down which hit all target in a range of 1200 with damage comparable to elementist aoe.

Guardian: An aura which do damage, so guardian can just walk around with 1200 range damage comparable to elementist aoe.

Hunter: remove the cooldown to barrage. So it have infinit cast. And make the Size 3 times larger

Thief: remove the cooldown to catrops

Memser, creat a mist with 1000 range which hit everyone with elementist comparable damage.

Necro, increase well size 5 times.

Engineer, increase grenade size 3 times.

That will stop the zerg and “other” class have the ability to stop zerg too! I can only dream… but the game will be sick fun if it is designed that way =)

Quite honestly, if I’m a game desinger, I’ll just give everyone the ability to “set” traps. That’ll be pretty fun for wvw.

killcannon.2576:

And yes, a smart group will currently beat a mindless group, but that shouldn’t be just incidental

It isn’t just incidental. It never was.

I dunno….if they remove the aoe cap (on both offensive and defensive abilities) you would have zergs running around with permanent stability and retaliation from just 2-3 guardians. Any area damage would cause the caster to die instantly. I actually think there would be even more zergs and stacking on each other.

However I doubt they will actually remove the aoe cap. You think lag is bad now?

Wanted to rant about how you want to be this god that can wipe zergs with your ele AoE… but too much effort. Simple, if you remove dmg AoE, remove my staff limit on both my attack and on empower, remove cap to Shadow Refuge and Mass Invisibility… now just imagine how “fun” wvw would be… people would just stealth zerg.. and youd be all like woot buff’ed aoe, time to destroy zergs… dead… zerg suffering from reveal debuff… now you come back to forums, omg put limit on friendly aoe skills… why? because you have this feeling that you should be able to wipe the floor with large number of players, with one skill maybe 2.

Maybe you haven’t heard this before, but in battle, in war, there is safety in numbers.

Sunflowers.1729:

I dunno….if they remove the aoe cap (on both offensive and defensive abilities) you would have zergs running around with permanent stability and retaliation from just 2-3 guardians. Any area damage would cause the caster to die instantly. I actually think there would be even more zergs and stacking on each other.

However I doubt they will actually remove the aoe cap. You think lag is bad now?

Retaliation is a Boon that can be removed just like any other boon. The same goes for Stability. The thing is, with a Necromancer, the cap of people hit with a Boon removal AoE is also lifted and thus as long as they’re in the area they’re getting stripped too.

Trust me, zergs will break up. At the very least, they’ll break up at choke points and door entrances to make the zergs spread out their position so that as to not stack in the damage pool zones.

Then we come to the issue that people complain about most with a cap removal: “but, but ….then melee will be useless in sieges! boo, hoo, hoo.”

That’s not the case at all. They’ll be useful, but in different ways. Sieges should NOT be about some 20-30+ melee characters bashing on a door with 1 or 2 rams too. Arena.Net didn’t design this game with just rams in mind for siege. Just the same, they didn’t design a single melee class without the addition of ranged weapon usage (and weapon swapping mid-combat for said classes too).

I foresee that if the cap were removed, sieges would last far longer with a far more epic feel to them. Besides just the use of siege engines like arrow carts, catapults, and trebs, you’ll see a tactical spread of the breach zones as defense is set up in a sort of player-made-oil pot locations with AoE defensive positions. A problem right now is that even with 10 players set up like that, a “zerg” of 25 will still run past easy cake as the RNG usually has all 10 hitting the exact same 5 players….ya, that works well ~rolls eyes*~*.

P.S. Do you melee classes realize that an AoE cap currently effects your sword swings, arching abilities, and just general multi-hit skills? If the cap were to be removed, it wouldn’t just be removed for only Elementalists, or only Necromancers; it would be for everyone in the game.

Azylir.9137:

Maybe you haven’t heard this before, but in battle, in war, there is safety in numbers.

Unless those numbers purposely decide to stand in the path of a 2000lbs. fuel air explosive device.

The point is, and has been repeated by many, congregating en masse inside AoE circles as a tactic to limit the overall damage by manipulating the RNG is quite ridiculous.

As to the idea that the 5-cap still means a character does “enough damage” that’s obviously not true whekittenerg can quite easily sit under several meteor storms without taking too much damage. In a mode like WvWvW, the ability to use skills not just for pure damage but also as intimidation tactics, chokepoint holds, etc. would change the face of the game and make it vastly more interesting.

Obviously there is disagreement as to how it should be changed (uncapped or increase the cap) and several people have said its fine as is. The fine as is crowd I’m sure just love zerging around and barely have to think while collecting badges. This type of gameplay is not really sustainable, as the newness will eventually wear off, people will have their badge armors, then WvWvW will die. But if the gameplay itself is the attraction and reward, then the game will only get better.

Well, I’ll just point out the obvious, lol: there will still be zergs and if there’s a lot more people in those zergs able to aoe an unlimited number of people then they’re just going to mow you down even quicker. So I’m not sure how you think this would give a much smaller group any real advantage.

About a week ago I was running around in WvW. I saw the zerg and joined up to get some caps. Suddenly our zerg came up on a hill with another zerg underneath. We were totally outnumbered. The commander called out for us to stand on him.
I had no idea why we would ball up like that. Made no sense for about a minute. Then it dawned on me. Funny thing is, although we were out numbered there was no good way for the other zerg to know for sure and even though they were spamming AoE’s it didn’t do a whole lot of damage.
It ended up being a stalemate when we clearly should have been wiped. Honestly I think AoE caps should go. Point of impact is where majority of dmg is applied, and at the outer rim of the red circle minimal dmg is applied.
Same with a melee class sword or hammer with AoE. Anything within the arc of the swing gets damage the closest to impact gets full damage. If anything just cap the amount of damage the attack can apply.

Ghanto.9784:

Well, I’ll just point out the obvious, lol: there will still be zergs and if there’s a lot more people in those zergs able to aoe an unlimited number of people then they’re just going to mow you down even quicker. So I’m not sure how you think this would give a much smaller group any real advantage.

Not really obvious at all, nor is it correct. The point of the zerg is the same as a school of fish, survival by numbers.

Right now, if a small group of Eles all simultaneously meteor storm a huge zerg, very little damage is done, the zerg swarms over the Eles and they’re dead. The zerg stays together and continues on, much like a plague of locusts.

Now if there were a removal of the AoE cap, that same small group of Eles could use the same tactic to smash apart the zerg, scattering them because grouping together inside the red circles is no longer a means to spread out the damage. Leaving several smaller groups that can then be engaged by ally groups. Which means tactics, planning and positioning come into play, instead of just the herd mentality.

Again, ask yourselves, in what rational, logical way does the act of congregating inside AoE skills make any kind of sense? Even from just a gameplay perspective, in both PvE and sPvP, players try to avoid red circles because they know it means death. So why in WvWvW should it mean anything different? The hard cap on AoE is very counter-intuitive, and a stupid mechanic that equates to training wheels for adults.

To all those whining about their poor melee classes, remember that every single class has access to AoE, some are just better (i.e. Ele, Necro) at it than others. I didn’t choose to main an Ele because I wanted to slay people in melee combat, I did so because I naturally assumed that I would be more of an artillery piece, softening up many targets for my sturdier comrades to melee and finish off. Problem is, the AoE cap completely pulls the claws and fangs from any sort of long range support, and encourages the zerg mentality over actual tactics and strategy. Its a shame really.

Never liked aoe limits cause it doesnt feel like aoe then.

But i understand why its there, daoc worked great with aoe / pbaoe because you had some great cc classes to deal with these kind of things not to mention it was ALOT easier to interrupt casters. Aoe makes sense for chokepoints but in gw2 you dont have the cc to make a push, through these chokeponits so yeah the limit makes sense less fun but understandable.

Why does a “casual game” always become a “dumbed down” game.

That’s why I don’t even waste my time with WvW. Its a severely “dumbed down” version of RvR, and all it does is propagate this zerg mentality.

The problem here is the zerg doesn’t enhance the game, or make it more epic feeling, it does the opposite.

Now I am sure if say WoW or GW2 was your first MMO, then you probably have no clue. This type of gameplay is truly new to you. But if you have been around and seen things like Daoc, especially pre foundations, you cant really help but to be disappointed, and to feel like we are progressing backwards instead of forwards, that game developers have taken a design and essentially “dumbed it down” for the masses, and thats just as much a indictment of the current MMO playerbase as it is the developers of them.

Let me put it this way. I am a die hard PvP/MMO fan and have been playing them for nearly 2 decades. I haven’t touched WvW because of how boring, bad, and brainless it is in months, and am currently looking at even straight PvE games like LOTRO, instead of playing GW2, because if I am going to have to monster bash for my jollies, anything have to be better then what GW2 offers even in that category.

GW2=dumbed down MMO, and casual play shouldn’t equal dumbed down play.

Simple things to help WvW out of stupidity:

Remove AOE cap.
Make siege movable and more durable.
And for god sakes make it so a wall or door has to get to 50% health before it magically goes back up( It was watching a keep wall get taken down by siege, just for it to go right back up upon the first repair, just to watch the wall go back down, just to watch it go right back up after first repair like 4 times in a row that made me alt f4 and not come back to WvW).

The problem with AoE is that it chokes the server. It may not be as easy to see this on all servers, but if you’re in one of the higher tier ones these days, where clashes between 40+ players from every server in the matchup (120+ players in one location fighting) are quite frequent, you probably know how that translates into some serious skill lag. This skill lag, comes in a large part from AoE.

The more targets that are hit, the more information the server needs to relay to everyone involved. Every time you take damage, all 100 players nearby needs to know that your health went down. When 5 players take damage, that’s 5 players that needs to get told how much damage they took, and 100 players needing to know that those 5 players lost that much HP. This escalates, as AoE rarely hits just 5 specific players, especially ground field/channeled types of AoE. Not to forget the fact that most AoE also produce some form of condition, which also needs to be relayed to everyone nearby.

AoE limits are likely to be a necessary evil. The game is already fairly unplayable lately, because WXP without adjustments based on how many are involved, just made the massive-scale fighting more common than ever. A missed opportunity to at least try and give the players a good incentive to spread out more.

It seems reasonable to me that any AOE attack would have a limit of some sort. Assuming that a magical AOE attack was a real thing, it would have limited power spread among everyone in the target area. So either 5 targets get full effect, or 50 targets would receive 1/10th of the same effect.

It’s not like you’re dropping a nuclear bomb on the battlefield. It’s a finely-tuned magical attack.

Bogartan.2756:

It seems reasonable to me that any AOE attack would have a limit of some sort. Assuming that a magical AOE attack was a real thing, it would have limited power spread among everyone in the target area. So either 5 targets get full effect, or 50 targets would receive 1/10th of the same effect.

It’s not like you’re dropping a nuclear bomb on the battlefield. It’s a finely-tuned magical attack.

The limit of spell itself is distance cast, diameter, and damage of each hit. How many hit is artificial.

Absconditus.6804:

The problem with AoE is that it chokes the server. It may not be as easy to see this on all servers, but if you’re in one of the higher tier ones these days, where clashes between 40+ players from every server in the matchup (120+ players in one location fighting) are quite frequent, you probably know how that translates into some serious skill lag. This skill lag, comes in a large part from AoE.

The more targets that are hit, the more information the server needs to relay to everyone involved. Every time you take damage, all 100 players nearby needs to know that your health went down. When 5 players take damage, that’s 5 players that needs to get told how much damage they took, and 100 players needing to know that those 5 players lost that much HP. This escalates, as AoE rarely hits just 5 specific players, especially ground field/channeled types of AoE. Not to forget the fact that most AoE also produce some form of condition, which also needs to be relayed to everyone nearby.

AoE limits are likely to be a necessary evil. The game is already fairly unplayable lately, because WXP without adjustments based on how many are involved, just made the massive-scale fighting more common than ever. A missed opportunity to at least try and give the players a good incentive to spread out more.

Is anybody not even slightly bothered that games a decade old on far less powerful machines were able to do this, but we fast forward a decade and now people are making excuses in current titles?

Game design is going backwards, not forwards.

Non demanding players=lazy programmers.

There is no logic.

To reduce lag of course

Anybody here ever play MAG on the PS3?
After playing that, I find excuses like “to limit lag” laughable.
There you had up to 256 players in an FPS, no limit on the number of targets AoE could hit and all of this on a bloody console.

Remove the AoE limit, then let people figure out their tactics rather than having a knee-jerk reaction and neutering your game.

Make doors weaker, giving people a reason to stay in keeps and towers to defend.

Allow indirect fire, so defenders and attackers alike can lob attacks over walls.

Work on battlement collision detection and how it affects line-of-sight; Defenders shouldn’t have to jump on top of buttresses in order to get a clear shot.

Roofs on rams has been mentioned before, but yeah, this. Give the roof a health pool so that it has to be destroyed before damage can be done to those operating the ram.

Additionally, there should be locations that defenders can attack from where they also have protection above their heads.

Re-add body blocking from GW1, both friendly and enemy, so that it becomes impractical to have too many people squeezed into a small area.

I’d even say add friendly fire, but there’s too many opportunities to grief with FF turned on.

Mungrul.9358:

Anybody here ever play MAG on the PS3?
After playing that, I find excuses like “to limit lag” laughable.
There you had up to 256 players in an FPS, no limit on the number of targets AoE could hit and all of this on a bloody console.

Remove the AoE limit, then let people figure out their tactics rather than having a knee-jerk reaction and neutering your game.

Make doors weaker, giving people a reason to stay in keeps and towers to defend.

Allow indirect fire, so defenders and attackers alike can lob attacks over walls.

Work on battlement collision detection and how it affects line-of-sight; Defenders shouldn’t have to jump on top of buttresses in order to get a clear shot.

Roofs on rams has been mentioned before, but yeah, this. Give the roof a health pool so that it has to be destroyed before damage can be done to those operating the ram.

Additionally, there should be locations that defenders can attack from where they also have protection above their heads.

Re-add body blocking from GW1, both friendly and enemy, so that it becomes impractical to have too many people squeezed into a small area.

I’d even say add friendly fire, but there’s too many opportunities to grief with FF turned on.

Body blocking was implemented in Warhammer Online and was made as a key selling point too. The reality of that “feature” was that an AFK kitten could just sit at a door and block anyone from passing him/her. It became very much exploited by allies for the enemy, or just for the sake of trolling.

As for doors, they’re already weak beyond reason. Two rams and 15 people can bust a door in under 2 minutes…heck, sometimes under 1.5. This is, of course, normal doors. I’d like to instead see a 3rd tier of door that would be a Metal Braced door that would take 2x as long as Reinforced Door would take to break down.

The problem with zergs right now is that they exploit how easy it is to re-flip something already flipped and just keep going in circle patterns across the map (very similar to how Warhammer Online did it, but in this game there’s actually some fighting that happens too). I’d like the developers to finally seal up the Supply Camps and make the lords there immune to all types of damage, lifesteal included. This way, less exploitation on that end.

You are right in that the people claiming that this would “cause more lag” or have “serious, crippling effects on the server” are kind of wrong. What’s already causing huge amounts of lag on the servers is dozens of rendered players in one small cluster casting abilities at the same time (i.e. the zerg). An AoE cap removal would spread out the zerg, meaning that the rendering of said characters would be spread out and the lag would diminish some. And, if it were really the case of “the hit numbers calculated would cause server distress”, then why is it that siege weapons have no cap and can hit everyone in range of it? Why did they add an unlimited direct conic AOE Spread Shot to the Ballista weapon?

Friendly fire is a bad idea. They had it in the jumping puzzle where you used to be able to use the spikes, boulders, logs, and flames against allies as well as enemies. To admit, I trolled the hell out of allies by preventing them from passing just as much as enemies. They resolved this post-launch….or just before launch (I do recall in the Beta it worked really well, but not sure if post-August).

Ezeriel.9574:

I think it has more to do with saving on bandwidth and lag than anything.

Likely this. AOE limits and condition stack limits do not greatly affect SPVP and so are tuned to allow maximum enjoyment there while maintaining bandwidth and server traffic. ANet really didn’t foresee WVW to be the big hit it was, with zergs of 100s of players running around the maps. They expected most to spread out across the PVE maps or do SPVP matches, with the occasional dip into WVW for the variety. Also, siege engines…

I see a lot of “remove AOE cap” using the excuse that it eliminates skill and zerg. Yet no one is willing to talk about “skill” to combat the AOE cap. The really good teams do use actual skill to combat the AOE cap and zergs. Opponents clump in a tight ball, use your “skill” and “strategy”. mesmers, guardians, warriors, etc all have knock backs, knock them out. Target different player in the zerg, spread out the 5 hit limit. necro wells on a clump is devastating for removing the boons etc. People want to remove AOE cap for the opposite reason of skill, they simply want small numbers to do insane damage with AOE. I have seen skilled groups mow through much larger groups, yet they have the same AOE cap

deracs.1762:

I see a lot of “remove AOE cap” using the excuse that it eliminates skill and zerg. Yet no one is willing to talk about “skill” to combat the AOE cap. The really good teams do use actual skill to combat the AOE cap and zergs. Opponents clump in a tight ball, use your “skill” and “strategy”. mesmers, guardians, warriors, etc all have knock backs, knock them out. Target different player in the zerg, spread out the 5 hit limit. necro wells on a clump is devastating for removing the boons etc. People want to remove AOE cap for the opposite reason of skill, they simply want small numbers to do insane damage with AOE. I have seen skilled groups mow through much larger groups, yet they have the same AOE cap

Kinda hard to knock out a zerg when the AoE cap on knock backs and knock outs are also 5.

Your assumption is wrong. No one wants an AoE cap removal to be “gods of WvWvW” as a few others have put it. People want an AoE cap removal to change the meta of WvWvW from zerging to smaller spread out engagements. Skilled players in a guild using Vent to coordinate attacks with a well built team have posted videos all over Youtube. Of course organization will beat zerg any day. Organized groups will probably win the day in most scenarios. That is not causal proof that the AoE cap is a good thing.

Its tiring to hear people talk about server lag, as if GW2 is somehow more affected than any other MMO. The game renders graphics client side, server side is mostly position data and number crunching, which is what servers are designed to do and games five to ten years ago can handle what GW2 does, just with less pretty graphics. So please stop propagating the “server load” urban myth.

Also, we’re not discussing a group of 20 Eles vs. 5 Guardians. Assuming a more or less equal distribution of professions and numbers possible tactical options allowed by the game itself would be available to either side. The best counter to AoE is as has been said to “group on me” which you actually hear in map chat. The larger the zerg, the more effective this tactic is. This is outright stupid, and anyone who can’t see that might as well be a brick wall.

Did you really ask this?

Its incredibly simple, for the AOE limit not to exist AOE would have to be nerfed to the point of uselessness.
Not all classes, builds or skills are AOE, many are single target so because of this you have to balance AOE not to be overpowered against single target damage.

If you can do 500 damage to 5 targets the max damage a 1 target player can do is around 2500 to one target.

If you can do 500 damage to 50+ targets those one target players would have to be able to 1 hit kill everyone to have a balanced damage level.

It also messes up the balance, if I can do AOE damage at 1500 range and you need to be within 1000, If my 10 engineers all fire AOE into your group of 60 at 1500 range you will be dead before you can defend yourself since if we can kill one of you we can damage all of you if you are within that aoe.

Gw2 cannot have no limit on aoe because Gw2 do not have any pure cc classes or easy ways to interrupt these aoe’s not to mention each and every class have access to these things.

If their excuse is based on server stress limit then they had some kitten good magicians for daoc servers, should think a single animist could blow up a server solo. But kitten did it feel good to have no aoe limit and the fun part of gathering xp in a group and the limit was to always push further and see how many more mobs you could pull each to the point me and our 2nd paladin went to seperate rooms to pull as many as we could run back put block on icewizards and BLOCK BLOCK BLOCK BAM all dead ahhh the good times.

@Mungrul.9358 Did play MAG PS3 (RAVEN) amazing game and ran so smooth even with all 256 players, vehicles etc. and the objectives were great fun.

Simple, the AoE cap is in place to nerf AoE. Without it, WvW would be AoE vs AoE with 0 room for melee or single target ranged classes. You’d see zergs of elementalists blowing up any opposition, you’d see 20 invisible thieves all firing point blank their “cluster bomb” in the middle of a zerg and instantly killing everyone etc…

Not all AoE has a big delay with a warning circle.

Kaleban.9834:

deracs.1762:

I see a lot of “remove AOE cap” using the excuse that it eliminates skill and zerg. Yet no one is willing to talk about “skill” to combat the AOE cap. The really good teams do use actual skill to combat the AOE cap and zergs. Opponents clump in a tight ball, use your “skill” and “strategy”. mesmers, guardians, warriors, etc all have knock backs, knock them out. Target different player in the zerg, spread out the 5 hit limit. necro wells on a clump is devastating for removing the boons etc. People want to remove AOE cap for the opposite reason of skill, they simply want small numbers to do insane damage with AOE. I have seen skilled groups mow through much larger groups, yet they have the same AOE cap

Kinda hard to knock out a zerg when the AoE cap on knock backs and knock outs are also 5.

Your assumption is wrong. No one wants an AoE cap removal to be “gods of WvWvW” as a few others have put it. People want an AoE cap removal to change the meta of WvWvW from zerging to smaller spread out engagements. Skilled players in a guild using Vent to coordinate attacks with a well built team have posted videos all over Youtube. Of course organization will beat zerg any day. Organized groups will probably win the day in most scenarios. That is not causal proof that the AoE cap is a good thing.

Its tiring to hear people talk about server lag, as if GW2 is somehow more affected than any other MMO. The game renders graphics client side, server side is mostly position data and number crunching, which is what servers are designed to do and games five to ten years ago can handle what GW2 does, just with less pretty graphics. So please stop propagating the “server load” urban myth.

Also, we’re not discussing a group of 20 Eles vs. 5 Guardians. Assuming a more or less equal distribution of professions and numbers possible tactical options allowed by the game itself would be available to either side. The best counter to AoE is as has been said to “group on me” which you actually hear in map chat. The larger the zerg, the more effective this tactic is. This is outright stupid, and anyone who can’t see that might as well be a brick wall.

I understand were some of this is coming from but have to disagree overall. I think with existing AOE you can damage more of the group of 50 clumped up then the 5 people always quote. I also have seen the more coordinated groups dps, knock down, and AOE the crap out of large clumps

“Your assumption is wrong. No one wants an AoE cap removal to be “gods of WvWvW” as a few others have put it. "
This part I actually completly disagree on. I think it is exactly what they are asking for. If you have played past games they are looking exactly for what Bright wizards did in warhammer or Enchanters did in DAOC
I dont buy into the server lag that some people are saying is the reason for 5 limit. You can control the amount of effects. I totally agree that if clumping is the best defense then they need to fix how the 5 limit is distributed when hit by multiple AOEs on 1 large clump of players
The most compelling argument I see for limit of 5 is that there is simply so much AOE, it does silly stupid high DPS, and would completly be OP if the limit was not 5. I dont see how it would stop zergs. Whats the difference in being wiped out in 3 seconds in large zerg vs zerg, or smaller groups vs smaller. What it would change is everyone moving to the best AOE class/weapons
For the player that truly want to test skill as they say, there is sPvP I know it is not the WvW experience but it is the “skill” version of PvP
With AOE designed as it is from class to class, I think removing the limit of 5 would be disasterous

An idea I had a while ago that I still like is to remove the AoE limit but use diminishing returns based on relative proximity. The nearest enemy to the center would take full damage and then it would diminish per enemy in order of how close they are. Also I would tier it so the first 5 enemies take more damage than the others, just so the current balance isn’t changed very much.

Example:
Nearest enemy: 100% damage
2nd nearest: 95% damage
3rd nearest: 90% damage
4th nearest: 85% damage
5th nearest: 80% damage
All other enemies: 20% damage

Those numbers would be a net nerf against 5 or less targets but obviously a huge buff against larger numbers. However, it would prevent situations where a bunch of stacked AoEs instantly down a ton of people at once.

This would give you some control over how the damage is distributed so your AoE wouldn’t become useless. It would be simple and intuitive because the enemies closer to the middle would be taking the most damage. You’d also be able to tag all the enemies reliably.

As much as you want to say people should just spread out, think about this: It’s hard to tell just how many AoEs could be stacked on a given spot, especially in WvW with the huge numbers in zergs. You could have a large number of people killed in a moment without any distinct “tell” beforehand. It wouldn’t be possible for players to reliably tell the difference between say, 3-5 AoEs vs. 10-20 AoEs. The assessment of risk in that situation can’t be accurate no matter how good the players are. Sure you could tell if there are an insane number of meteor showers or fire storms, but not all AoEs would become that obvious. Like could you tell the difference between 20 necro wells or 5 necro wells?

Although this gives me another idea. They could add tells for when enough AoEs overlap that indicates just how hard you’ll get owned if you go in there. If there’s a reliable way to tell between a moderate number of AoE and a massive number of AoEs that is consistent for all AoE abilities, then sure just remove the cap and it will probably work. I think there would be edge cases that don’t work though.

Warhammer Online, Bright Wizard. That’s all the reason you need to justify the AoE limit.

That being said, scaling down the damage based on the number of targets affected wasn’t a bad idea.

Gaudrath.6725:

The best thing would be a sort of counter gameplay… light fields cancel out with dark fields, water fields cancel out with fire fields etc. So you could cast a water field and actually literally put out that fire field a warrior placed on your allies. Or a necro could cast a dark field and have it cancel out with that Symbol of Protection a Guardian placed.

This is by far one of the best ideas I have ever heard on these forums. +1

I don’t understand why people think a single player would be stronger than 30 other players that could all just drop area heals. If a zerg wants to survive as a group, then it should learn to defend as a group imo.

The way it’s set up now is that combos are the key, period. Commanders say stack on me because of it, even mindless zergs that stack on a commander are triggering massive combos that have only a size limit, not a number limit. A zerg running around with might stacks, ret, rejuvenation and a couple d/d eles spamming auras (not combo obviously) is a force to be reckoned with. In counter to that, imagine an aoe without a cap hitting a zerg of 30 all with retaliation. A met shower would drop the caster before he could channel the whole skill.

I use aoe lots and I completely understand why it would be overpowered hitting more than 5 people. I would, singly and with others, devastate massively at every chokepoint, more than already. I cant see why anyone would think otherwise except blatent self interest.

As far as saying zergs own fault if they dont spread out more, commanders have a hard enough time getting them together oftentimes, it would be counter to the whole system. There are still well enough reasons to spread out without making it standard formation since AOE spam will still hurt plenty when cast by another zerg.

For those worried that small groups of ellies would hold forts against zergs…

I guess it’d take maybe a day, worst case two, before setting up trebs outside of elly range became the tactic of choice. You already see that a bit in EB for the teams attacking some of the trickier keeps. I’m all for this. If the elly’s stay inside the walls, they’ll lose when the walls go down and the zerg rushes past their meteors with little to no damage.

On the other hand, the ellies will want to blast the people around the trebs which sets up a fight to keep people away from the trebs, and since AoE is now dangerous, this fight will naturally spread itself out with people dodging out of red circles and having to pay attention and whatnot.

Gaudrath.6725:

The only problem I see, even though I’d love to be able to Meteor Shower the excreta from a big zerg, is that a big zerg will have a ton of elementalists and necros in it and they could potentially create instagib death zones. Forget about even getting near a door then, rams would be completely useless.

It could create interesting gameplay, but in my opinion if ANet was to lift AoE cap, they would have to introduce some sort of AoE protection as well, something which requires a bit of coordination but which can protect areas from massive AoE spam that would ensue. Something along the lines of bubble shields that work on stuff like Meteor Shower, or ground “anti-AoE” spells that nullify necro wells, fire fields etc.

The best thing would be a sort of counter gameplay… light fields cancel out with dark fields, water fields cancel out with fire fields etc. So you could cast a water field and actually literally put out that fire field a warrior placed on your allies. Or a necro could cast a dark field and have it cancel out with that Symbol of Protection a Guardian placed.

Might be interesting. Doubt any of that will ever happen.

I like this idea. I haven’t fully thought out any potential negative or unintended consequences yet, but on first read I think this is a fantastic suggestion. It would add depth, complexity, and cost:benefit analysis to skill usage. Do you use your field to cancel an opponent’s field (which will cancel your field as well) or hold it in reserve to gain the benefit of the skill?

This really deserves to be made it’s own post in the suggestion forum. I hope you consider doing so.

Phoenix.3416:

Did you really ask this?

Its incredibly simple, for the AOE limit not to exist AOE would have to be nerfed to the point of uselessness.
Not all classes, builds or skills are AOE, many are single target so because of this you have to balance AOE not to be overpowered against single target damage.

If you can do 500 damage to 5 targets the max damage a 1 target player can do is around 2500 to one target.

If you can do 500 damage to 50+ targets those one target players would have to be able to 1 hit kill everyone to have a balanced damage level.

It also messes up the balance, if I can do AOE damage at 1500 range and you need to be within 1000, If my 10 engineers all fire AOE into your group of 60 at 1500 range you will be dead before you can defend yourself since if we can kill one of you we can damage all of you if you are within that aoe.

Are you serious? So because a skill has the potential to hit 5 targets, its damage per target must not exceed 1/5 of a skill designed to hit one target?

So what happens when the AoE skill hits less than 5 targets, is that a nerf?

Damage potential and actual damage are not the same thing. If AoE is SOO dangerous with no AoE cap then here’s a thought, don’t stand under a meteor shower. Its even easier in GW2, you simply dodge out of it, in GW1 there was no increased move speed, no dodge, and meteor shower had a knockdown.

The argument that Eles would become OP is ridiculous. AoE is only good if it hits something. If players learn not to huddle together for warmth inside red rings of death, then that can only be a good thing.

Lastly, I keep seeing people say that no AoE cap would be unfair to zergs, etc., etc. Well, good! Zerg gameplay is idiotic, WvWvW should require tactics and strategy, not rolling around the map like a locust swarm. Seriously, its like the mentality of Wammo players from GW1 has found a home in WvWvW. The zerg strategy is the meta, and without significant changes will stay the meta as its the most efficient and survivable form of grouping. Without something to dissuade people from zerging (either out of fear of actual AoE that’s dangerous, not a tickle; or incentives throughout the map that require simultaneous smaller groups) WvWvW will always be just a matter of ZvZ, and that is pretty sad.