Guild Wars 2

I know this has been put up on the forums a few times before and not really given a solid answer from one of the devs.

I am a T1 player in a serious WvW guild and I find it sad that we really want to move down a couple tiers simply so we can find good fights. This has to do with the AoE cap because if you roll in a 20 man well organized balanced group, it does not matter how much strategy you apply to a situation, if you try and kill a team that is say 1.5 times your size there are players that are basically invulnerable to your damage.

Since the number of people able to be hit by an AoE attack is 5, if you have a 5v6 and all fight within AoEs(hypathetically), one of these people is invulnerable to the damage at some point or another. So, using that logic Arenanet has created an open world game where zerging is encouraged and not strategic game play and tactics or working on team composition.

Also, the “small” team objectives on maps are now pointless to try and take as a small team because of the small maps and the ability to move anywhere in the map within <1 minute. This also encourages zerging which is I am sure not originally how Anet intended WvW to be played.

I simply want an honest answer on what the thoughts behind this are, whether it was because of overload to the servers because they cannot process that amount of data or whether that was deliberatly done because it was how they wanted the game to be played. Also, is this something that Anet may be looking into upping or removing in the near future or ever?

Thank you for any comments or questions.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Why-do-commanders-ask-us-to-stack/first#post2354587

Wouldn’t no AoE cap make bigger zerg more easily mow down smaller zerg, since they can lay down more AoE? Seems like it would work both ways.

If you stand in all their AoE like a kitten and let them roll over you, sure. But it would also allow a smaller zerg to use decent strategy to destroy a mindless map-zerg.

Silas.8630:

If you stand in all their AoE like a kitten and let them roll over you, sure. But it would also allow a smaller zerg to use decent strategy to destroy a mindless map-zerg.

Why would bigger zerg then stand in AoE like a kitten? I have to admit that I do not quite follow this logic.

Games without AE caps and games with much larger AE caps had zerging too.

The zerg exists because there is no depth to the pvp system. Tactics and strategy mean nothing in this game and there’s no tactic to employ other than zerging.

Bogey.5423:

Silas.8630:

If you stand in all their AoE like a kitten and let them roll over you, sure. But it would also allow a smaller zerg to use decent strategy to destroy a mindless map-zerg.

Why would bigger zerg then stand in AoE like a kitten? I have to admit that I do not quite follow this logic.

because enormous map-zergs are, by definition, unwieldy and not agile. It’s impossible for a map-zerg to NOT stand in the red.

You both are missing the point. Bogey, it’s called blindsiding and flanking so you don’t rush straight into an outnumbered fight (that is dumb and bad tactics). You can beat a superior force by positioning and controlled damage drops.That brings me to my next point in response to Atherakhia, of course you need larger numbers to assault larger objectives and yes I know there is zerging in both types of games. I am saying that the AoE cap is creating this attraction to the only viable tactic which is stack as many people as possible into one army and roll around because you can actually damage another zerg because your not AoE capped.

Someone else explain to me how it makes game more tactical without insisting that big zergs are dumb and smaller zergs are smart.

It really doesn’t matter in sense that technical limitations dictate AoE cap.

Excuse me:

If the AOE cap is removed, then that applies to everyone. Larger army still wins. You just drop even faster… eventually, when the server CPUs finish calculating all the damage, and your client CPUs finish calculating the AND YOU’RE DEAD.

AOE cap of 5 characters (including mobs) actually benefits small teams in excess of 5, while also allowing lesser than 5 to damage up to 5.

Next.

Virtute.8251:

Excuse me:

If the AOE cap is removed, then that applies to everyone. Larger army still wins. You just drop even faster… eventually, when the server CPUs finish calculating all the damage, and your client CPUs finish calculating the AND YOU’RE DEAD.

AOE cap of 5 characters (including mobs) actually benefits small teams in excess of 5, while also allowing lesser than 5 to damage up to 5.

Next.

Your post makes it pretty clear that you don’t understand what we mean when we talk about small teams with decent tactics. The way you talk about the AoE assumes that the small team will be standing in the center of the full AoE spike, which, if they’re using a remotely decent stragety, won’t be the case.

Imagine the following scenario:

A small group of players finds a good hiding place, sets up an ambush, and sends 1 player out to bait a large zerg. The large zerg takes the bait and runs past the ambush point, the smaller force drops a full AoE spike on their stacked map-zerg. With the current AoE limit, the small force’s AoE hits 5 of the 80 players in the zerg, achieving nothing before the zerg then turns and annihilates the small force. Without an AoE cap the small force’s AoE would have hit the full zerg, killing most of them and punishing them for poor situational awareness and taking bait.

Silas.8630:

Imagine the following scenario:

A small group of players finds a good hiding place, sets up an ambush, and sends 1 player out to bait a large zerg. The large zerg takes the bait and runs past the ambush point, the smaller force drops a full AoE spike on their stacked map-zerg. With the current AoE limit, the small force’s AoE hits 5 of the 80 players in the zerg, achieving nothing before the zerg then turns and annihilates the small force. Without an AoE cap the small force’s AoE would have hit the full zerg, killing most of them and punishing them for poor situational awareness and taking bait.

Except that 80 player zerg does not move as single unit that is inside 400 range, it has a tail, a long tail. When small group drops AoE on point, rest drop AoE on small group. Best you get out is that you can kill those that do take the bait and even that relies on fact that they do not know how to dodge out of AoE.

Silas.8630:

Imagine the following scenario:

A small group of players finds a good hiding place, sets up an ambush, and sends 1 player out to bait a large zerg. The large zerg takes the bait and runs past the ambush point, the smaller force drops a full AoE spike on their stacked map-zerg. With the current AoE limit, the small force’s AoE hits 5 of the 80 players in the zerg, achieving nothing before the zerg then turns and annihilates the small force. Without an AoE cap the small force’s AoE would have hit the full zerg, killing most of them and punishing them for poor situational awareness and taking bait.

Like say this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI250gU4Ct8

Angel of Anguish.4978:

I am a T1 player in a serious WvW guild and I find it sad that we really want to move down a couple tiers simply so we can find good fights.

People blobs almost in every Tier as long as they have the manpower for it.

And btw, the issue in dealing with huge zerg as small group is that all the tactical advantage vanish as soon as lags kicks in.

And if the blob is large enough, it WILL kick in even if you’re 15 players.

Virtute.8251:

Excuse me:

If the AOE cap is removed, then that applies to everyone. Larger army still wins. You just drop even faster… eventually, when the server CPUs finish calculating all the damage, and your client CPUs finish calculating the AND YOU’RE DEAD.

AOE cap of 5 characters (including mobs) actually benefits small teams in excess of 5, while also allowing lesser than 5 to damage up to 5.

Next.

This will probably apply out in the field where the larger (more coordinated army) will always win…

But..

How exactly does this apply in tower defense now.. where you stick say a couple rangers or elementalists in there dropping their payload on mindless zerg?

The results are going to be much different than a zerg trying to AoE the walls with 4-5 people spread out on it, when those 4-5 people are hitting say 50 targets at once..

That’s why the AoE cap needs to be removed. Anet already said they couldn’t due to all the calculations and what not basically saying it would make the skill lag infinitely worse than it is now.. fair enough..

But..

Arrowcarts have no problems with it.. so treat every other character with AoE capabilities the exact same way. Same as arrowcart, just different animation, problem solved.

DeadlySynz.3471:

This will probably apply out in the field where the larger (more coordinated army) will always win…

But..

How exactly does this apply in tower defense now.. where you stick say a couple rangers or elementalists in there dropping their payload on mindless zerg?

The results are going to be much different than a zerg trying to AoE the walls with 4-5 people spread out on it, when those 4-5 people are hitting say 50 targets at once..

That’s why the AoE cap needs to be removed. Anet already said they couldn’t due to all the calculations and what not basically saying it would make the skill lag infinitely worse than it is now.. fair enough..

But..

Arrowcarts have no problems with it.. so treat every other character with AoE capabilities the exact same way. Same as arrowcart, just different animation, problem solved.

How long you think people have to play to learn spread out in front of a tower, maybe even go to sides? I would guess less than taking one tower. There is plenty of room around towers to spread out, so those 4-5 can’t really lay down enough AoE to hit 50 targets at once and two AoE on single person won’t kill average WvW character. So, would removing AoE cap really help those 4-5 defend against 50 zerg?

Chorazin.4107:

Silas.8630:

Imagine the following scenario:

A small group of players finds a good hiding place, sets up an ambush, and sends 1 player out to bait a large zerg. The large zerg takes the bait and runs past the ambush point, the smaller force drops a full AoE spike on their stacked map-zerg. With the current AoE limit, the small force’s AoE hits 5 of the 80 players in the zerg, achieving nothing before the zerg then turns and annihilates the small force. Without an AoE cap the small force’s AoE would have hit the full zerg, killing most of them and punishing them for poor situational awareness and taking bait.

Like say this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI250gU4Ct8

Haha, exactly. Even when they wipe, they take a crap ton of Kzar with them.

While I’m in favor of aoe not being capped, just imagine what retaliation would do to you though. If I was to grenade a gigantic zerg of 50 players, one grenade barrage could be doing anywhere up to 400 hits. Now let’s say we’re in a perfect world and 1) this doesn’t break my computer and 2) GW2 servers can actually handle this. I would instantly drop dead to retaliation anyway.

It doesn’t matter if you remove the aoe cap right now, because due to retaliation’s mechanics, the bigger zerg gets a ridiculous amount of free damage that is completely unavoidable if you plan on actually killing them.

Silas, Angel, and Shortcake are the only ones i’m not laughing at on this thread. To respond to Bogey, if your gonna 4-5 v. 50 then of course your gonna get stomped, but 20-50 you should be able to at least DENT them in some way, sure you may still loose. What I don’t understand is clearly Anet has server issues, why would you promote a numbers game when your servers can’t handle the numbers? You would solve two issues that there are numerous complaints about (those complaints being lag and blobs) if you provided more incentive for small team play. I’m in Angels guild and it is sad that we are considering moving down tiers because we don’t want to conform to megablobs that just press 1 and hope to win.

Silas.8630:

The way you talk about the AoE assumes that the small team will be standing in the center of the full AoE spike, which, if they’re using a remotely decent stragety, won’t be the case.

I assume nothing of the sort. In 80 vs 10, the members of the 80 are individually limited to damaging a maximum of 5 per each of their attacks. In that, the 10 currently have an advantage of moving amongst the 80 briefly without instantly dying. This advantage is reduced for every additional target that you allow players to damage.

Bogey.5423:

Except that 80 player zerg does not move as single unit that is inside 400 range, it has a tail, a long tail. When small group drops AoE on point, rest drop AoE on small group. Best you get out is that you can kill those that do take the bait and even that relies on fact that they do not know how to dodge out of AoE.

It doesn’t matter if they move as a single unit, they move stacked enough that a small, organized group would be able to kill the majority of the force with a concentrated spike. Once you kill the commander and those stacked directly on him, the disorganized tail isn’t usually that much of a problem to mop up. Even if you fail to clean up the tail, wiping 60 with 20 is sufficiently punishing for the large unskilled force of 80, even if the remaining 20 run for the hills, since in the meantime your other 3 groups of 20 have been off taking objectives without an opposing force to challenge them.

And again, the entire point of removing the AoE cap is to force the zerg to spread out and use tactics rather than numbers. If the majority of the zerg wipes because they were stacked within 400 range of each other, it encourages players to split into multiple smaller groups and use flanks and muli-pronged attacks to avoid the AoE spike.

As for the assumption that they don’t know how to dodge out of AoE, remember I said we’re talking about a skilled and organized force. That implies that they would have dropped boon strip and CC immediately prior to the damage spike to prevent them from dodging out.

Virtute.8251:

Silas.8630:

The way you talk about the AoE assumes that the small team will be standing in the center of the full AoE spike, which, if they’re using a remotely decent stragety, won’t be the case.

I assume nothing of the sort. In 80 vs 10, the members of the 80 are individually limited to damaging a maximum of 5 per each of their attacks. In that, the 10 currently have an advantage of moving amongst the 80 briefly without instantly dying. This advantage is reduced for every additional target that you allow players to damage.

Again, you’re writing with the assumption that the small group is standing in the large group’s AoE. If they’ve set up a proper ambush (ie: using superior tactics) they aren’t being hit by a single AoE because the large group didn’t know they were there in time to react.

shortcake.8659:

While I’m in favor of aoe not being capped, just imagine what retaliation would do to you though. If I was to grenade a gigantic zerg of 50 players, one grenade barrage could be doing anywhere up to 400 hits. Now let’s say we’re in a perfect world and 1) this doesn’t break my computer and 2) GW2 servers can actually handle this. I would instantly drop dead to retaliation anyway.

It doesn’t matter if you remove the aoe cap right now, because due to retaliation’s mechanics, the bigger zerg gets a ridiculous amount of free damage that is completely unavoidable if you plan on actually killing them.

Ever played a glamour mesmer? It didn’t have an AOE cap and retaliation did hurt but its not as crazy as you make it out to be. I did get downed a few times dropping it on a blob outside a keep gate etc but I was already damaged when that happened.

I am all for removing the AOE Cap or if thats not possible increasing it from 5 to say 10-15 or something. I understand zerging is important and so is blobbing in the higher tiers and up to 30-35 people I feel there is still value given to class builds, chemistry, group composition, tactics, individual skill once we start crossing that threshold the zerg starts relying solely on the skill of the commander exclusively and his core support group of players (2 to 3 players), when mapblobs occur composition, chemistry etc go out the window.

Paxi.1386:

Silas, Angel, and Shortcake are the only ones i’m not laughing at on this thread. To respond to Bogey, if your gonna 4-5 v. 50 then of course your gonna get stomped, but 20-50 you should be able to at least DENT them in some way, sure you may still loose. What I don’t understand is clearly Anet has server issues, why would you promote a numbers game when your servers can’t handle the numbers? You would solve two issues that there are numerous complaints about (those complaints being lag and blobs) if you provided more incentive for small team play. I’m in Angels guild and it is sad that we are considering moving down tiers because we don’t want to conform to megablobs that just press 1 and hope to win.

I haven’t actually formed opinion on this matter, just all pro-claims seem to be that massive zerg just stand still in AoE while smaller force leap around like gazelles and avoid all AoE/CC. 20 defenders already can hold their own really good against 50 zerg, but of course it does require well placed siege (that awful curse word). Can’t deny that server issues are bad, but neither am I convinced that removing AoE cap would help at all.

You play in Tier 1? because most dont actually mind or care, are you in Jade Quarry?

Silas.8630:

Chorazin.4107:

Silas.8630:

Imagine the following scenario:

A small group of players finds a good hiding place, sets up an ambush, and sends 1 player out to bait a large zerg. The large zerg takes the bait and runs past the ambush point, the smaller force drops a full AoE spike on their stacked map-zerg. With the current AoE limit, the small force’s AoE hits 5 of the 80 players in the zerg, achieving nothing before the zerg then turns and annihilates the small force. Without an AoE cap the small force’s AoE would have hit the full zerg, killing most of them and punishing them for poor situational awareness and taking bait.

Like say this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI250gU4Ct8

Haha, exactly. Even when they wipe, they take a crap ton of Kzar with them.

Only problem with that video is it wouldn’t work int his game besides there also being an AOE, you also have the god awful down system to go a long with it.

Lets just face it, None of the developers played DAOC, despite them insisting that they did…It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that GW2 WvW is a pale horrible comparison to DAOC….

Warhammer Online with 2 Factions was more like DAOC then this game with 3 Factions..That should tell you how bad the WvW system is in this game

And now it’s time for “fun with math: zerg edition”

This scenario will assume a 100v10 fight. For simplicity’s sake, each member of both forces will drop a single ranged AoE and both forces will be perfectly stacked on their respective commanders.

100-man zerg drops AoE on 10-man force, each AoE hits 5 targets. Each member of 10-man force gets hit by 50 AoEs. (probably insta-melted despite AoE cap)

10-man zerg drops AoE on 100-man force, each AoE hits 5 targets. 10-man zerg hits at most 50 of the 100, realistically even fewer. Half of the force is left untouched, the other half is hit by a single AoE each. (damage output completely crippled due to AoE cap)

So tell me, who does the AoE cap really benefit? The force that couldn’t output any damage because the opposing force was so large the cap absorbed all the damage, or the force that took almost no damage, because the cap allowed to them stack and negate all the damage coming from the smaller force?

AoE cap is a technical limitation so you’re going to have to deal with it. Also, it is a double edged sword as someone mentioned aswell. Larger zergs will mow down smaller zergs faster aswell.
Not that it matters because when two big blobs collide you dont even get to use more then your #1 skill anyway. Cause of the skill delay.

But there are other mechanics that can be looked at that currently aid zerging. Such as Retaliation. Mass retaliation, which is on by default in a zerg cause of how many skills are spammed and guardians run around, returns stupid amounts of damage to people who drop AoE on a zerg.
So rather then punishing the people for standing in AoE, you punish people for using AoE on a cluster of enemies.

1. Spike lag would likely be intolerable
2. It won’t solve any specific problem, certainly not zerging
3. Single target classes would be obsolete immediately
4. Condition damage would be obsolete
5. Many would reroll to an Ele or Guardian
6. Every defense sans retaliation would be useless
7. Retaliation would be incredibly powerful… one person buffing could essentially wipe a group

IMO, leave the cap alone but allow control abilities to hit everything in range. This would add an extra dimension to zerging because stacking would be dangerous as would spreading out. It might also help with lag since more players would be on cool down in large fights.

the funny part is that the aoe cap saves the single player and punish big zergs the most.

lets take a scenario where there is no aoe cap:
the 50 man zerg now runs and gets baited for the smaller groupe to a choke point and gets spiked but because the 50 man zerg is running with a guardian(or someone else with aoe retaliation possible) the spike does some damage to the groupe but the ambush groupe is dead before the rest of the 50 man zerg notice they are attacked an from where as the guardian poped a retaliation that made each amusher get 241 damage times 50 per aoe attack they make

with the cap then the same scenario would not happen as the kitten by the aoe might not be the same 5 that now has retaliation

so i see no reason to remove the 5 man aoe cap unless there is made something to almost all the buffs and conditions

Lag, retaliation, classes with little access to high damage AoEs, and every chokepoint on the map.

Seriously people, put a little forethought into your suggestions.

Silas.8630:

Again, you’re writing with the assumption that the small group is standing in the large group’s AoE. If they’ve set up a proper ambush (ie: using superior tactics) they aren’t being hit by a single AoE because the large group didn’t know they were there in time to react.

Okay. Since that answers and accounts for all possible scenarios, then you win the debate we weren’t having. Thank you.

Silas.8630:

And now it’s time for “fun with math: zerg edition”

This scenario will assume a 100v10 fight. For simplicity’s sake, each member of both forces will drop a single ranged AoE and both forces will be perfectly stacked on their respective commanders.

100-man zerg drops AoE on 10-man force, each AoE hits 5 targets. Each member of 10-man force gets hit by 50 AoEs. (probably insta-melted despite AoE cap)

10-man zerg drops AoE on 100-man force, each AoE hits 5 targets. 10-man zerg hits at most 50 of the 100, realistically even fewer. Half of the force is left untouched, the other half is hit by a single AoE each. (damage output completely crippled due to AoE cap)

So tell me, who does the AoE cap really benefit? The force that couldn’t output any damage because the opposing force was so large the cap absorbed all the damage, or the force that took almost no damage, because the cap allowed to them stack and negate all the damage coming from the smaller force?

This is appropriate, fair, and I’m glad that it is that way. The 10 deserve every “Finish Them” spike they get for thinking that they would stack up and confront the 100 head on.

Remember that your earlier argument presumes that the 10 are skilled enough to avoid enough of the 100’s AOE attacks that the 10 can survive without any AOE target capping at all. Then notice that you are asking ANet to reconfigure the game so that every one of the 100-group’s AOE attacks is allowed to damage all 10 of the 10-group.

Now show how the 10-group is any less likely to die instantly to the 100-group in your requested configuration. It won’t happen. When both groups are given equal footing in damage output possibilities, then the more numerous group is always at an advantage. The smaller group must still significantly out-maneuver the larger one.

Enjoy GW2 WvW.

Chorazin.4107:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI250gU4Ct8

Take a good look at that video. It may not be the best quality recording, but take notice of the large, open field. Now look at GW2’s WvW fields. Now look at DAoC open fields again.

That is why uncapped AoE works for DAoC to make people spread out, but does not work for GW2. There is no place to spread out to. There was once a time where there was no AoE cap in GW2, and as mentioned earlier, all it does is make no zerg even get close to each other and creates a huge gap of a no-man’s-land killzone.

GW2 mechanics are just so different from DAoC that it can never emulate the tactical gameplay that DAoC provided. You have to stack to support, and HAVE to stack to gain any boons.

“AoE Cap making GW2 a Zerg Game”

Aoe is not the only reason. Players not sharing exp, karma, drop and wxp in the same zone is another. Gates melting in 15 sec and amount of supply needed to build sieges too. Far away tower paying the same amount of points as the one next to border wp as well. And of course the efficiency of running in large group for offense/defense.

There are many ways to at least try to split server forces but i think all Anet team is currently busy designing the next JP so…

Virtute.8251:

This is appropriate, fair, and I’m glad that it is that way. The 10 deserve every “Finish Them” spike they get for thinking that they would stack up and confront the 100 head on.

Like I said, the scenario was simplified for the sake of easy math, I would never expect a group of 10 that attacked head-on to end up winning, but this right here is why the two sides of this discussion will never be able to agree. Poor players believe that a blob of 100 people should be invincible to everything but another 100-man blob, no matter how bad their tactics are, and Anet has provided a game that caters to this mentality.

Skilled players believe that they should be able to wreck a map-zerg with a small force, provided their tactics and gameplay are sufficiently superior, but the AoE cap prevents this. No matter how much you outplay the 100-man zerg, the inability to damage more than 5 at a time makes defeating them with anything other than another zerg of comparable size all but impossible.

aoe cap is not the real issue here

i think the whole balancing is making it a zergfest, as anet wants to boost spvp and started balancing it with wvw, because they didnt wanna spend time to make a separate balance for wvw. now we are stuck with stuff like 1 block attack that hits 1 enemy with 5 stacks of torment….very useful for big group fights and on the other side the necro and thief meta.

I agree with removing aoe cap if Anet also remove buff cap, make retal working from dot application and increase retal damage x2-3. Wanna win AoE fight? Be smart and remove buffs first, or lay AoE smartly. Wanna mindlessly spam AoE? Here is your instagib, happy respawn, l2p.

Rednik.3809:

I agree with removing aoe cap if Anet also remove buff cap, make retal working from dot application and increase retal damage x2-3. Wanna win AoE fight? Be smart and remove buffs first, or lay AoE smartly. Wanna mindlessly spam AoE? Here is your instagib, happy respawn, l2p.

I’m not sure about increasing retal by such a huge amount, since it’s quite potent already and would be more so without the AoE cap. Small incremental changes to see how it plays out are the way to go. Buffs/nerfs of ±100% or more are stupid from a balance perspective, but historically speaking, Anet disagrees with me there. Either way, buff removal kinda goes without saying, as at this point any group worth their salt is already dropping boon strip when they engage and the removal of the AoE cap would only make that more effective at stripping the retal as well.

I always said that the AoE cap in this game is extremely low in this game. In other games an average AoE cap was around 20 and i find that extremely reasonable. I don’t see why the AoE cakitten ?! So, extremely low… I get it though, I know NCsoft doesn’t seem to invest any money in their servers. Silas put it exactly how i see it as a massive crippler to smaller forces. And to you guys saying the bigger forces would do better? There are such things as radius caps to the AoEs and cool downs. I would like to see a mindless zerg that coordinates their cool downs and placements. I hate to say it but look at when RG came to T1 NA and fought the massive zergs. They are literally the number 1 PvP guild in the game rite now but were completely owned by mindless damage because of the AoE cap.

Regards,
Arkhon

I wouldn’t mind increasing the AoE damage cap for player attacks, but I am afraid of what would happen if the AoE cap is removed for boons and heals.

The problem is that, the bigger group is going to have more and better boons, as well as more and better heals without a cap to them. A single engineer could heal 30 players for 11k each in zerker gear just by smashing all of their blast finishers inside of a water field. Then combine that with every other blast finisher and heal. It doesn’t sound very fair, now does it? Or imagine players stacking several guardians together to give everyone permanent retaliation, making fighting that group impossible due to the kickback received from a single attack. Or, shudder to think of it, limitless stacked stealth rendering entire zergs permanently invisible.

This requires more coordination to pull off, but this reinforces the numbers problem that happens in WvW. So, the end result is that only offensive and damaging skills can have their caps increased without causing too much imbalance.

Now, increasing the AoE cap would benefit smaller groups over large ones, and also better tactics over worse ones. So many people keep using the ridiculous example of 10 vs. 100, so I’ll stick to more realistic numbers.

In an equal sized zerg of 30 vs. 30, the group that wins is usually the one that balls up then melee trains all over the opponents, slaughtering enemies that get caught in the wake. Increased caps punish that tactic of balling up, which means that the zerg ball becomes as stupid a tactic as it sounds.

In a mismatched fight of 10 vs. 30, the AoE cap favors different groups depending on different circumstances.
A) In an open field zerg vs zerg direct fight, it favors the 30, simply because they can do more damage overall than the smaller group can.
B)In an ambush scenario, it favors the 10, largely because it makes their AoEs proportionally more potent to the 30 than if the 30 ambushed the group of 10.
C)In a defense scenario, the AoE limit favors the 10, letting them hit stacked up enemies from upon towers harder and more reliably, making the tactic of “spam water fields at the gate” riskier. 30 would not defend the tower against 10, but would rather run out and chase the enemy. However, this makes focus fire from the 10 on the doors more effective, since that is a form of zerg balling.

Overall, I would prefer if the offensive AoE cap were increased.

This is so easily taken care of..

I think most would agree, reducing the AoE cap out in the field itself will not make much of a difference unless your hiding, baiting, and ambushing the enemy. Other than that, the larger force always wins.

In a tower/keep though, this isn’t the case. As I said earlier, you stick say maybe 4-6 people in a tower spread out who can destroy a zerg with a concentrated spike, whereas the zergs AoE on the wall isn’t going to do much because there are so few players that are spread out. This will inevitably force the zerg to split up or use different tactics. So, mission accomplished.

We can take this one step further: Players in a tower cannot be debuffed with retaliation (advantage of being in a tower)

Arrowcarts do not have the problem with skill lag, so treat all AoE “calculations” like Arrowcarts calculations except with different animation.

In this scenario, the zerg has no choice but to spread out instead of clustering up in front of the gate or either of the walls.

Bogey.5423:

Someone else explain to me how it makes game more tactical without insisting that big zergs are dumb and smaller zergs are smart.

It really doesn’t matter in sense that technical limitations dictate AoE cap.

Frankly, it boggles my mind too…still, I was in groups of 8 in DAOC that destroyed 100+ and in group of 2 that killed 40+, numerous times
Why and how they allowed us to kill them remains mystery to me, even 7-8 years after it happened

DeadlySynz.3471:

Arrowcarts do not have the problem with skill lag, so treat all AoE “calculations” like Arrowcarts calculations except with different animation.

I’ve seen this mentioned several times, and it wouldn’t work.

The calculations are very likely to be the exact same between AC skills and Player skills, since the AC acts as a bundle. It simply replaces the player’s skills with different ones. The difference is that AC are restricted to 5 within a certain radius. In most fights, only 5-10 players will have access to the 50man AoE cap(AC usage), while everyone else is still at the 5man limit. In this case, the servers can “mostly” handle it. But if everyone was able to have an increased cap, the calculations would be far greater than the current system, a.k.a more skill lag.

DeadlySynz.3471:

Arrowcarts have no problems with it.. so treat every other character with AoE capabilities the exact same way. Same as arrowcart, just different animation, problem solved.

Arrowcarts don’t have a lot of the animations that much of our AoE does and I also don’t think their calculations are as complicated.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

DeadlySynz.3471:

Arrowcarts have no problems with it.. so treat every other character with AoE capabilities the exact same way. Same as arrowcart, just different animation, problem solved.

Arrowcarts don’t have a lot of the animations that much of our AoE does and I also don’t think their calculations are as complicated.

I’m no dev, but as far as I understand how most online games work, the animation is done on the client-side and has little-to-no effect on how much stress the server is under while it processes the underlying math.

This game has been a “zerg game” since it came out unfortunately and will be until it dies. I’ve finally accepted that fact a few months ago, much happier that way.

There’s a way to get rid of Retal, its a little thing called Boon Stripping, but wait because theres an AoE cap there isn’t a way to effectively remove it from a huge 80 man ball unless you have a proportionate amount of a certain class in a zerg. Not only does that issue create bigger zergs it also puts one class in high demand meaning more people playing just that class and a lack of build diversity. You ask us to think what we are saying through but I ask you have you really thought about your counter arguments? DR literally sits in TS daily trying to theorycraft builds and movement strategies to beat bigger groups, in a 20v50 situation we cna actually win a good amount of the time, but as soon as a certain thresh hold is breached from our opponents we can literally do NOTHING to them.

If you want to get technical in an actual combat situation the side with the biggest numbers DOES NOT win, its the side which employs better tactics. Look at the Spartans in Ancient Greece, look at the Battle of Bunker Hill or the American Military today, all of those are perfect examples of how tactics and actually thinking about combat strategically wins fights. Sure this is a game, but logic and thinking should be rewarded not shunned.

There was a similiar topic were a Anet dev answered that if AOE target were raised, game would lag more, imo i think is more due game mechanics not prepared for +X targets, if increased game might had problems.