Guild Wars 2

Currently the common thing for large groups of players to do is stack. Whereas to prevent the masses of AoE and multiple target attacks from killing anyone. The reason this works is there is a cap on how many players you can actually hit with your attacks. So for example 30 players are all standing in the same spot and I throw 5 grenades and hit them I do damage to 8 players? (not sure on actual numbers) Even persistent AoE does nothing cause its divided between all the players in the area. This is ridiculous. Fire should burn them all just the same if it was 1 or 30. Remove the limits on hits let us actually hit everything in range. Not magically hit random persons in a stack. This alone would make zergs vulnerable and force players to spread out, avoid attacks, and oh maybe use some tactics. Zergs in reality work with mass numbers not because they can absorb damage but because absorb casualties. The zerg loses tons of units but can still plow thru because of its high numbers. Example D-day WWII.

I feel this will change the whole aspect of WvW tactics and make it feel like a real battle, as it should be.

Looking forward to your comments.

1. Its a technical limitation.
2. Classes are balanced around the aoe cap.

1. technical limitation is not true. Siege attacks do it.
2. The balance is broken in WvW, in PvE you can only aggro so many, this is where the balance makes sense and maintains its integrity, but this is not true in WvW, because if those 30 players all auto attack you, you get hit by all 30. So balance is broken.

by technical limitation he means that it would cause insane lag.

1.

DevonCarver.5370:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Simple question. Why is there an aoe cap? And no, please do not come up with that “technical limitation” lie. There has been thousands games before this with massive pvp and no aoe cap, why would your engine be somehow so infernior to that of these older games?

What you seem to be missing is that technical limitations are not about the fact that a solution somewhere may have existed for some other thing. Our game is using an engine that has these technical limitations. We could, for instance, display everything as text, which would solve the problem quite nicely, however we’ve found that our graphics offer something a text-based MMO couldn’t quite deliver. The point is, it is very much a limitation of our engine. The load on the server CPU would be quite simply unsustainable if we were to increase the AoE cap as the more players hit by skills the more calculations it has to do and it actually starts increasing exponentially, rather than sequentially. We continue to seek out ways to squeeze more performance out of our game and our servers, but it is highly unlikely we would ever make a change to the AoE limits on player skills.

2. That’s not what I meant. Compare the abilities to do aoe damage between the different classes.

Um… without a cap on AoE, couldn’t you just use something like Earthshaker with a single party of warriors to stunlock the full zerg?

Death from Above from the walls with Stability, then Earthshaker. Former launches the whole zerg, latter stuns them afterwards.

And Necromancers Epidemic just slain entire zerg.

Turamarth.3248:

1.

DevonCarver.5370:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Simple question. Why is there an aoe cap? And no, please do not come up with that “technical limitation” lie. There has been thousands games before this with massive pvp and no aoe cap, why would your engine be somehow so infernior to that of these older games?

What you seem to be missing is that technical limitations are not about the fact that a solution somewhere may have existed for some other thing. Our game is using an engine that has these technical limitations. We could, for instance, display everything as text, which would solve the problem quite nicely, however we’ve found that our graphics offer something a text-based MMO couldn’t quite deliver. The point is, it is very much a limitation of our engine. The load on the server CPU would be quite simply unsustainable if we were to increase the AoE cap as the more players hit by skills the more calculations it has to do and it actually starts increasing exponentially, rather than sequentially. We continue to seek out ways to squeeze more performance out of our game and our servers, but it is highly unlikely we would ever make a change to the AoE limits on player skills.

2. That’s not what I meant. Compare the abilities to do aoe damage between the different classes.

Yea DevonCarver is not a dev. I can blab a bunch of technical crap at people too just cause i think I know, but until a dev comes out and says its impossible, I still think it can work. This is based on the fact as I stated before Siege does it. Siege may have a cap also but its much higher than players, so a compromise would be to raise the cap. Or Change the algorithm to act more like vale. Which will hit all players once.

Olba.5376:

Um… without a cap on AoE, couldn’t you just use something like Earthshaker with a single party of warriors to stunlock the full zerg?

Death from Above from the walls with Stability, then Earthshaker. Former launches the whole zerg, latter stuns them afterwards.

Well if there wasn’t a cap zergs wouldn’t operate the same they’d spread out and conduct more tactical assaults creating a proper battlefield, rather than a blob. So true if a large group was silly enough to stand all in one spot while being attacked…well they should all get hit.

Now with the limits I can deal with compromise as I stated above, perhaps make the initial damage tick only hit all, and keep the AoE effect the same? IDK. I just feel they need to do something to destroy the stacking attack tactic. Right now “mostly” (i know there are amazingly perfectly built groups that can take down larger than themselves zergs) its all about numbers who has more at the time. And with these new updates those zergs will hold those points easily and be even stronger. And once they have one map they’ll be stronger to take the others. They think because one person can stop the zergs capture that will stop them…um yea one person is dead in seconds while out numbered 10 to 1 it will be another zerg thats the only way siege will not even play a part because its open terrain. The hardest place to defend is a place that can be attacked by any direction. Looking forward to see the Dev’s faces when they see the zergs rampage threw everything with 3 stacks of orb buffs on them.

knbBlackTemplar.3059:

And Necromancers Epidemic just slain entire zerg.

Epidemic only works on those who can’t remove conditions, but see post above, about tactics.

Engineers can even spec to where conditions can’t kill them. You have to hit them with real damage. And then turn all those lovely conditions into boons. So theres a counter to almost everything. Except 30 people stacked all together.

Here is a fine example to explain what I feel needs to be fixed.

You have two 30-man groups. One is stacked, while surrounded in a big circle by the other.
Who wins?
You all know stacked wins everytime.

This is the problem. IMO of course.

Aldjeron.1062:

Turamarth.3248:

1.

DevonCarver.5370:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Simple question. Why is there an aoe cap? And no, please do not come up with that “technical limitation” lie. There has been thousands games before this with massive pvp and no aoe cap, why would your engine be somehow so infernior to that of these older games?

What you seem to be missing is that technical limitations are not about the fact that a solution somewhere may have existed for some other thing. Our game is using an engine that has these technical limitations. We could, for instance, display everything as text, which would solve the problem quite nicely, however we’ve found that our graphics offer something a text-based MMO couldn’t quite deliver. The point is, it is very much a limitation of our engine. The load on the server CPU would be quite simply unsustainable if we were to increase the AoE cap as the more players hit by skills the more calculations it has to do and it actually starts increasing exponentially, rather than sequentially. We continue to seek out ways to squeeze more performance out of our game and our servers, but it is highly unlikely we would ever make a change to the AoE limits on player skills.

2. That’s not what I meant. Compare the abilities to do aoe damage between the different classes.

Yea DevonCarver is not a dev. I can blab a bunch of technical crap at people too just cause i think I know, but until a dev comes out and says its impossible, I still think it can work. This is based on the fact as I stated before Siege does it. Siege may have a cap also but its much higher than players, so a compromise would be to raise the cap. Or Change the algorithm to act more like vale. Which will hit all players once.

Veil doesn’t hit everyone at once. The reason it works is it’s a line AoE, it’s very thin so even when a zerg runs through it, it’s uncommon for the veil to have to calculate more then a handful of them at a time, where as circle AoEs have to factor everyone in them within the same instance.

A good analogy would be a counter at a fast food place. If they have a lines in place, rushes of customers are manageable, if there were no lines and customers could all give their orders at the same time, the rush would be an unmanageable nightmare for the staff.

I suggest looking at a few of Devon Carver’s posts, and see if he isn’t the WvW lead…

Its a technical limitation because there are so many more players that are so much more mobile than siege, and can place more aoe circles at any given amount of time. Like Devon’s explanation explained, CPU calculations go up exponentially with a raised cap. If, per se, you can only afford to do 100 calcs per second, you’ll reach that so much faster with each new body.

Siege have a 50-man cap because they were designed to be personnel lawn mowers. Staff Eles and Guards aren’t. They could remove the cap completely, but then your staff ele starts doing 100k+ damage per second with a single skill, and your game slows down to frames per minute while all those calculations take place. If they then wanted to remove the lag, we’d have a text based game, once again as Devon stated.

The game as a whole is designed around parties of 5 players. Even WvW. It just so happens, people like to combine 12-16 5 man parties to go do things. This then means you’ll either need to drum up your own group of 5 man parties to confront, or leave them alone and hit everywhere they aren’t.

Line skills like Veil and Line of Warding are interesting because you almost never have 5 people collide with its hitbox at the same exact moment the game is doing calculations. These can theoretically (or literally) have the 5 person cap, but its only in 1 dimension. 2 dimension aoes have a much easier time reaching that 5 object limit per calculation moment, and 3 dimension (like many underwater aoes) have an even greater opportunity for reaching that limit.

Don’t get me wrong though. I’d find it pretty interesting to see how WvW and PvE would change with no aoe limit, but its so prohibitively expensive in whatever costs it might take, thakittens effectively and impossibility.

So they design the game to look pretty instead of making sense? I just started playing and to be honest I thought people were stupid for staking so tightly in WvW, but now it makes sense as to why they would choose that tactic. While we are are the subject, update tool tips to include the max number of enemies that the spell can hit. The tool tips actually lied to me if this is true, given that is does NOT hit ALL nearby enemies.

OP has not played WvW recently I see.

Take the skill lag we have today, then multiply it by 5-10 and you can imagine what it would be like without the cap.

And Politsu, graphics have nothing to do with it. It’s a purely mathematical problem with too many calculations in too little time.

Dual.8953:

Aldjeron.1062:

Turamarth.3248:

1.

DevonCarver.5370:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Simple question. Why is there an aoe cap? And no, please do not come up with that “technical limitation” lie. There has been thousands games before this with massive pvp and no aoe cap, why would your engine be somehow so infernior to that of these older games?

What you seem to be missing is that technical limitations are not about the fact that a solution somewhere may have existed for some other thing. Our game is using an engine that has these technical limitations. We could, for instance, display everything as text, which would solve the problem quite nicely, however we’ve found that our graphics offer something a text-based MMO couldn’t quite deliver. The point is, it is very much a limitation of our engine. The load on the server CPU would be quite simply unsustainable if we were to increase the AoE cap as the more players hit by skills the more calculations it has to do and it actually starts increasing exponentially, rather than sequentially. We continue to seek out ways to squeeze more performance out of our game and our servers, but it is highly unlikely we would ever make a change to the AoE limits on player skills.

2. That’s not what I meant. Compare the abilities to do aoe damage between the different classes.

Yea DevonCarver is not a dev. I can blab a bunch of technical crap at people too just cause i think I know, but until a dev comes out and says its impossible, I still think it can work. This is based on the fact as I stated before Siege does it. Siege may have a cap also but its much higher than players, so a compromise would be to raise the cap. Or Change the algorithm to act more like vale. Which will hit all players once.

Veil doesn’t hit everyone at once. The reason it works is it’s a line AoE, it’s very thin so even when a zerg runs through it, it’s uncommon for the veil to have to calculate more then a handful of them at a time, where as circle AoEs have to factor everyone in them within the same instance.

A good analogy would be a counter at a fast food place. If they have a lines in place, rushes of customers are manageable, if there were no lines and customers could all give their orders at the same time, the rush would be an unmanageable nightmare for the staff.

Hmm so they COULD change the way area aoe tags. To simply put it just leave the graphics the same but the circle could have an effect line like a hand of a clock and cycle around every tick the aoe last. Might work.

Tom Gore.4035:

OP has not played WvW recently I see.

Take the skill lag we have today, then multiply it by 5-10 and you can imagine what it would be like without the cap.

And Politsu, graphics have nothing to do with it. It’s a purely mathematical problem with too many calculations in too little time.

Yea the skill lag would only be there IF players continued to use the stack tactic, which would fail with the change, hence forcing players to spread out and attack more open field, so this may actually improve the skill lag, rather than increasing.

Aldjeron.1062:

Dual.8953:

Aldjeron.1062:

Turamarth.3248:

1.

DevonCarver.5370:

Master of Timespace.2548:

Simple question. Why is there an aoe cap? And no, please do not come up with that “technical limitation” lie. There has been thousands games before this with massive pvp and no aoe cap, why would your engine be somehow so infernior to that of these older games?

What you seem to be missing is that technical limitations are not about the fact that a solution somewhere may have existed for some other thing. Our game is using an engine that has these technical limitations. We could, for instance, display everything as text, which would solve the problem quite nicely, however we’ve found that our graphics offer something a text-based MMO couldn’t quite deliver. The point is, it is very much a limitation of our engine. The load on the server CPU would be quite simply unsustainable if we were to increase the AoE cap as the more players hit by skills the more calculations it has to do and it actually starts increasing exponentially, rather than sequentially. We continue to seek out ways to squeeze more performance out of our game and our servers, but it is highly unlikely we would ever make a change to the AoE limits on player skills.

2. That’s not what I meant. Compare the abilities to do aoe damage between the different classes.

Yea DevonCarver is not a dev. I can blab a bunch of technical crap at people too just cause i think I know, but until a dev comes out and says its impossible, I still think it can work. This is based on the fact as I stated before Siege does it. Siege may have a cap also but its much higher than players, so a compromise would be to raise the cap. Or Change the algorithm to act more like vale. Which will hit all players once.

Veil doesn’t hit everyone at once. The reason it works is it’s a line AoE, it’s very thin so even when a zerg runs through it, it’s uncommon for the veil to have to calculate more then a handful of them at a time, where as circle AoEs have to factor everyone in them within the same instance.

A good analogy would be a counter at a fast food place. If they have a lines in place, rushes of customers are manageable, if there were no lines and customers could all give their orders at the same time, the rush would be an unmanageable nightmare for the staff.

Hmm so they COULD change the way area aoe tags. To simply put it just leave the graphics the same but the circle could have an effect line like a hand of a clock and cycle around every tick the aoe last. Might work.

That wouldn’t reduce the needed calculations per tick at all.

Aldjeron.1062:

Tom Gore.4035:

OP has not played WvW recently I see.

Take the skill lag we have today, then multiply it by 5-10 and you can imagine what it would be like without the cap.

And Politsu, graphics have nothing to do with it. It’s a purely mathematical problem with too many calculations in too little time.

Yea the skill lag would only be there IF players continued to use the stack tactic, which would fail with the change, hence forcing players to spread out and attack more open field, so this may actually improve the skill lag, rather than increasing.

It might reduce stacking, but wouldn’t help in the most critical situations, which at the moment happen in chokepoints. The sieges would need to be redesigned, because if the AoE cap was removed, no one could ever enter through the gatehouse if there were ~10 defenders AoEing the entrance.

But, if it would lead in us getting siege towers and ladders, I’m all for it!

I believe a raised target cap on AoE skills is the way to go, but there are problems that needs to be adressed before this happens.

AoE is already useful in PvE, due to bigger fights typically containing a large number of trash mobs, and the fact that they don’t move away from AoE, and can easily be tricked into staying within your AoE spells. This is a huge difference from PvP/WvW, and it’s difficult to balance AoE so it works for both occasions.

Before increasing the target hit cap, they should address the problem of AoE in PvE. A solution is to more frequently use stronger mobs in larger fights. An intermediary between normal, and veteran rank might be ideal. In particular they should have abilities in line with veterans, but with a base health/damage somewhere between normal and veterans. They could name the rank: “Strong”.

Tom Gore.4035:

It might reduce stacking, but wouldn’t help in the most critical situations, which at the moment happen in chokepoints. The sieges would need to be redesigned, because if the AoE cap was removed, no one could ever enter through the gatehouse if there were ~10 defenders AoEing the entrance.

But, if it would lead in us getting siege towers and ladders, I’m all for it!

A smaller group of players should be able to defend against a significantly larger group of players at a choke point, if they know what to do. 10 defenders with high AoE damage would imply that there’s a decent bunch of other players there aswell, making them a fairly large group, and large enough such that that they should be able to hold off a zerg at a choke point.

The zerg will have to use special tactics to get through this chokepoint. One way that seems very potent to me, is have support stack a mesmer with protective boons, the mesmer will then create a portal outside gate, blink in past the chokepoint, and finish the portal. Now a stream of players can get safely through the portal, and push back the defenders.

This will require some tactic on the zerg’s behalf, rather than just mindless steamrolling. One of the cool things in warhammer were the keep chokepoints and player collision detection. A small group of players could defend a keep against a zerg, but not against a zerg that knew what to do.