Aoe Cap feedback after playing with it

[wonshot]

Hello,

This post is in response to:

Combat and Careers

General Changes and Fixes

- The target cap has been lowered back down to 9 instead of 24.

The change from 9 to 24 was intended to make it easier to bust zergs, but to a large degree it has instead also made it more difficult for well organized warbands to face zergs. Many other things has also changed since then, so we are trying out a change back down to the original target cap of 9.

Note that this is a test for a limited period, after which the results will be evaluated.

While I personally applaud the will to test things, and the return of giving reasoning behind changes in patchnotes. I think it is also time for constructive feedback while the test is not fully over yet.

For background on where this feedback is coming from:
- Mostly been running EU primetime Empire event warbands, as main theorycrafter and shotcaller. This naturally already puts us in a disadvantage from full meta warbands and I am well aware of that but some of the issues I will touch on is gonna be the difference between before and efter aoe cap changes
- Ran two times in NA hours in organized meta warbands, where the action is different from EU primetime action to compare NA and EU take on the patch.
- Ran two with other warbandleaders shotcalling to see their take on the patch, if there were adjustments i was missing or get a finger on the pulse in general
- Ran two open pug bands in offhours to see how orvr pugbands feel with the change
- Tried both besieging and defending keeps and fortresses in discord organized warbands, pug 2-2-2 textlead defences, full pug attack/defence in funnel situations.

A) The reasoning
Already from reading the reasoning I disagreed with the approach. In my mind if you want a smallerforce to have a bigger chance against a bigger force, then you cant limmit how few targets all aoe abilities affect. Here we are not just talking about damaage but also out-of-group healing, Mitigation, Defensive stats such as Hold the Line. On a concept level, if a 24man warband faces 2-3 warbands the more narrow aoe cap will not help the smaller force as the bigger force have more players and numbers will just overwhelm, the reasoning is so backwards that even if I wanted to see the logic and follow it I just couldnt find it!

Had the aoe cap change been made with a reasoning saying "we want pug vs pug fights to be abit slower and chaotic" then that was be a much better reasoning and the change felt better to accept, but the current reasoning and further explanation from Balanceteam was just impossible to follow.

B) the oversights
There were alot of situations that just seem like a straight oversight with this test of lowering the aoe cap
- Pve dungeons such as Gunbad middlewing, if someone in a pug group breaks an egg and the group tries to salvage the situation they cant even hit all the little spiders now and will just drown in aggro (yes its a mistake, but this is the entrylevel dungeon)
- Oil hitting 9 targets surely cant be intentional
- Challenge getting soaked by 8/9 targetcap in most frontal engages makes ranged dps safer where as Challenge before would reduce some of the incoming Tail-tagging zergsurfing ranged dps following succesful warbands and this adds ontop of blobbing issue indirectly.
- Bellows being 9 target mitigation drastically reduces the value vs an ID M4.
- HoldTheLine covering 9 people argubly makes it so enemy ranged dps have an easier than ever time being in the bigger force more safe to the frontline and facing less defense checks from HTL. As an indirect result more solo or smallman ranged groups surfing behind warbands.
- Aoe damage needs to be stacked more centred and focused, but this doesnt help a smaller force against a bigger enemy force. You just make yourself a target that is easier devoured.
- The balance and Career changes that was done over time to adjust to the 24cap are still in place. Some tactics to increase your aoe cap on certain skills are making even less sense now during the 9test.
- Harder for tanks in a funnel-standoff to build and maintaine morales with less dots, puddles and attackers flying around giving combat

C) How the game feels on current Test 9cap vs 24cap
Whenever Im leading a warband now, I have to overly focus on setting up a tank frontline to soak incoming Challenges and the aoe cap on our tanks. That part feels good, untill I think about our challenges are mostly flying into the either bigger zerg with is 100% of the time getting soaked by enemy tanks, or in an even numbers fight we have to hold challenges untill tanks have passed eachother leading to us being more exposed to surfers.

So far we have played 4-5 guildevent warbands, we have tried to adapt to the change and not a single fight have seemed better in terms of us being outnumbered on the 9cap. (with the same ractial restriction and conditions before the test)
The fights have slowed down, this could had been acchived with other tools if that was the target, but that was not the reasoning we got in the patchnotes and followup explanation post.
It feels like Tank play is more fun, more relevant right now. But at the same time the mitigation tools seem indirectly nerfed in outnumbred situations so im not sure the endresult is better for tanks. And for damagedealers nothing much has honestly changed, you need to focus a tad bit more on stacking for criticalmass but outside of keep funnels you would almost never reach and touch more than 15targets ish anyways in orvr. The natural targetcap is built into aoe radius (25ft) and Collision. It is limmited how many character models you can stack in the same 25ft area when collision hits. So you wouldnt really ever hit 24people before and if you could it would be on abilities that are not stacking and with +width extending tactics invested.

for healers I can only rely what ive heard from healers we have played with from own roster, and alot of the fillers from all of the organized guils who have gusted us over the week(s). It seems like damage pressure is the same, but when you are outnumbered and swarmed then you go down with even less of a chance to trade some kills before you are dead so numbers just reign suppreme more than ever right now.

Zergsurfting and Ranged dps seem massive atm. It could be the Ring event, or it could be the aoe cap changes. Hard to tell. But with a lower aoe cap if a 24v24 and a few solo ranged dps tailtagging on both sides, those guys are having a much easier time now than ever. There is more safty in numbers, less danger being closer to the tanklines, less mitigation flying out far with Challenges being soaked by tanks+guarded dps. And ranged can now just leech pretty freely with lowest risk ever presented on RoR.

There was very little you could do when outnumbered before, if you managed to get the right conditions have more gear, better coordination, stronger players then you could overwhelm the numbers disadvantage mainly due to 2-2-2 and trim the unorganized numbers away and deal with the organized survivors. Right now, you dont have the tools as all of the tools are reduced. Naturally, when you are facing a bigger force and can only debuff, heal, hit 9 of them you go down when the target cap is over.

Id be very interested to hear from other Guilds and Warbandbuilders how they find it so far

[Rydiak]

I agree. I almost exclusively play in 6mans when roaming, so here is the current situation when a 6man encounters a warband:

6man hits 9 targets with its abilities
24man hits 6 targets with its abilities

When previously it was this:
6man hits 24 targets with its abilities
24man hits 6 targets with its abilities

So if the intention is to make it easier for smaller forces to bust zergs, then I'd say the design was flawed from the start. If anything, logic dictates that the target cap should be *increased* so the smaller force has an even greater effect on its engagement versus a larger force.

Devs, please revert the target cap back to 24.

[trh382]

Its important to acknowledge that testing things live and quickly adapting is a much better process - so kudos for being willing to try something

The aoe cap change has been net negative for the game:

1. Makes almost all PVE much less pleasant to play

2. Harder for smaller groups to fight larger groups - very hard to fight against the zerg when down AAO

There is a substantial positive to this change

Even number RvR fights are slower and more interesting. This is a desirable improvement that I think is worth keeping (if possible)

What I would recommend next:

1. Temporary revert the AOE cap to 24 or Consider a middle ground of 15ish targets

2. Consider whether its technically feasible to have different aoe caps for PvE and PvP

3. Seek feedback and develop a plan to quickly test RvR reworks focused on redistributing the zerg. There have been many detailed suggestions in the past, but basically they focus around providing incentives for doing things other than just killing players in the lakes so that groups will spread out and do objectives, thus leading to more interesting and spread out fighting instead of zerg vs zerg with the more populated side always winning.

Some elements of reworked RvR could include:
different incentives around BOs
changes to the way zones lock
more relevant campaign rewards

Reworking the campaign is essential to the health of the game. As you can see from the AOE cap, bad rvr incentives are making it very hard to move the game away from a spammy blobfest and undermining the viability of changes to move fighting towards more itneresting and drawn out fights.

4. Consider reworked ability target numbers so that there isnt a blanket aoe cap, but different options from different classes in terms of braoder, light dmg vs higher and focused dmg drops. This enables different playstyles.

5. Communicate clearly what the assessment criteria and timeline for changes like this are - 1-2 week test changes is a very good idea. Implement it in a way that provides palyers clarity on what their game experience will be.

6. Dont implement such changes mid events. Do them on off weeks.

[Rotgut]

TL;DR Feels great in 24v24 and awful everywhere else.

In an equal numbers fight the new aoe cap, together with the slower TTK it caused, made it more enjoyable. More time and less "spin to win" gives players more opportunities to make plays where they'll feel their impact, its great, and there are combat calls to be made in that situation.

In the other 95% of oRvR fights, the most relevant calls happen before combat actually starts, cuz all the tools you had with 24 aoe cap are nerfed. Even morale dropping isn't as effective now. So positioning, or blobbing, feels like the only high impact choices you can make, and those type of calls reduce the number of fights happening in the lakes. If i can't have a spot to kite back towards there is very little point in taking an outnumbered fight during Prime Time - its works better during low pop cuz you can kite in a circle for a long time without fear of yet another WB coming in, but it doesn't work for the majority of players.

Its just like the old "order only wants to funnel" and "destro never pushes Keeps" thing that Old Rampage forced - you give players a tool that works a lot better in certain spots, then that's where they'll play, so you gotta make sure its not a tool that limits the choices of fights that they can take.

[Tisaya]

What if AOE cap was a percentage instead of a flat number? Say: 'Rain of Fire damages 10% of targets in the area'

It would affect smaller groups less and bigger zergs more.

Group of 10: 1 player affected
Group of 100: 10 players affected

[Rydiak]

How does it target one person? Two people? Three people?

[Tisaya]

How does it target one person? Two people? Three people?

Depends on rounding in the formula. Thinking of it, 10% is, of course, too low. Even in full WB only a few people will be affected. How about 50%


one person is 1, 50% of 1 is 0.5

If 0.5 is rounded to the nearest highest integer (1), the person is fully affected, if rounded to the lowest nearest integer (zero) the person isn't affected. Probably a hard limit is needed here, so the number can never be less than 1.

[Rydiak]

What if AoE range/radius is reduced, instead of a lowered target cap? In warband vs warband situations, where everyone agrees that the 9 cap has been a benefit to increased TTK and more dynamic fights, having a smaller AoE range/radius would effectively produce the same results of having less targets get impacted per AoE attack. Conversely, in group vs warband situations, where everyone agrees that the 9 cap has been a major detriment in the ability to fight larger forces, a reduced AoE range/radius would mean that the more spread-out smaller group is less affected by AoE while the tighter-packed larger force is not. This rewards smart positioning by players without outright capping targets.

The devs could return the AoE cap to 24, reduce the range/radius of all AoE attacks by another 5-10ft, and I'd wager we'd have a much better combat system in place.

[SZ244663]

Agree with this part a lot:
"
There was very little you could do when outnumbered before, if you managed to get the right conditions have more gear, better coordination, stronger players then you could overwhelm the numbers disadvantage mainly due to 2-2-2 and trim the unorganized numbers away and deal with the organized survivors. Right now, you dont have the tools as all of the tools are reduced. Naturally, when you are facing a bigger force and can only debuff, heal, hit 9 of them you go down when the target cap is over."

If you want a smaller force to be able to deal with a larger force (eg an organized 9 man vs a PUG 24 man), it would make sense for the smaller force to be able to target or attack all of the targets at once -- otherwise they will only be able to attack 9/24 people at a time while the PUG 24 man can attack the entire 9 man, all at once, providing a clear disadvantage to the 9 man who were well geared and well coordinated.

[leubac]

Before reading me, take into account that I am not a RoR veteran. So my idea may be inaccurate.

There seem to have a debate whether the best cap is 24 or 9, or 12, or 15, or whatever. The point is: any kind of arbitrary number will always be... kind of arbitrary choice. In reality it is not exactly arbitrary because a WB is capped to 24 players but I hope you get the point.
Anywhere I see this kind of debate, it always makes me think of a symptom solution instead of a cause solution. And when solving symptom any solution will "always" (or maybe not always but most of the time) be a bad compromise making everyone losing something.

What if aoe cap was removed ?

This cap, however, should not just be removed without any other thing changed for the sole reason that this cap was introduced to avoid a massive force instantly killing anyone due to damage stacking.

And this is where Rydiak's idea shines to me (adapting aoe range/radius). The radius of any aoe ability could be determined by a mathematical formula. Maybe one could agree on a formula that defines the radius based on:

• A base radius

• The range on the ability (more range = less radius, less range = more radius)

• The damage done by the ability (more damage = less radius, less damage = more radius)

• The attack angle: frontal cone, "pure" aoe, etc. (the more aoe the less radius, the more directed the more radius)

• Radius penalty for any extra harming effect (heal debuff, armor debuff, etc.), radius bonus when no extra harming effect

Is it a good idea ? Is it even technically feasible for the devs ? Does it need a separate topic ?