What consequences would antistacking mechanics bring?

[Aetheldrake.6395]

There are no consequences to getting rid of stacking content, only pluses (though it'd have to be done specifically not just randomly) , Ff14 being essentially the top mmorpg has proven you can have people spread halfway across the entire battlefield and everything works fine. They've proven this for years. Gw2 is just too stubborn to do anything that works. Anet always has to do things their way. Unique. Different. They can't just kittening try tried and proven content in their own system and designs it always has to be annoyingly niche. 

[Cael.3960]

This again? 

Why not ask for a tactical-nuke trap that deals 50k damage to an unlimited number of targets with a 3000 range that leaves walls and gates undamaged? You can mine every approach to a defensive objective and then complain on the forums about how wall repairs should grant participation because it's too hard to maintain pips without it. 

[Infusion.7149]

I thought the topic was going to be bringing some sort of Social Awdwardness (cannot overlap other players) idea if you are in the same squad ... but alas it is not.

Cyninja already conveyed why no target cap is a bad idea, but think of how laggy the server (AWS instances actually) would get with such a change. It already is a problem without target caps.

Arenanet seems to not care about restoring boon removal which is the real solution other than reducing protection effectiveness and/or duration when there are multiple targets affected by a skill. AoEs are sorted by the proxiity so unless the AoE is pulsed (such as lava font or other DoTs) removing the ability to overlap would reward better positioning even more than it does now as opposed to clouding.

[urd.8306]

More laggy than the boon spit meta? Doubt.

[Dinas Dragonbane.2978]

Yeah if people started dying quickly that lag would start to dissipate as well.

[Draygo.9473]

On 5/19/2024 at 3:35 PM, Infusion.7149 said:

I thought the topic was going to be bringing some sort of Social Awdwardness (cannot overlap other players) idea if you are in the same squad ... but alas it is not.

Cyninja already conveyed why no target cap is a bad idea, but think of how laggy the server (AWS instances actually) would get with such a change. It already is a problem without target caps.

Arenanet seems to not care about restoring boon removal which is the real solution other than reducing protection effectiveness and/or duration when there are multiple targets affected by a skill. AoEs are sorted by the proxiity so unless the AoE is pulsed (such as lava font or other DoTs) removing the ability to overlap would reward better positioning even more than it does now as opposed to clouding.

boon removal isnt that strong, it works sometimes in coordination with some CC, but its so finicky i wouldnt call it a real counter to boonball. The only actual counter that existed for a short while was mobile winds of disenchantment, and that was too strong.  

If you want to go way way back, the enabling change for boonballs to work as they do now is when they allowed stability to stack instead of extending duration. This is when boonballs became unstoppable. Anet did this because stacking CC in a choke was actually a problem (you really couldn't get into hills lord room with a decent size group dropping down lines of warding). If you want to kill boonball, revert that change for wvw. To compensate something will have to be done about ranged CC. Allow every CC to be dodged through, and nerf the range on single target pulls (pin sniping is a bit degen). These changes will let groups break apart boon balls enough to get opportunities to attrition the group. Which is really all people need, to get the occasional kill on a player in the boonball. Its a radical change, and would change how groups would need to operate. I don't think Anet has the guts to do something along these lines though.

The other change that allowed boonball was the boon target priority change and the subgroup changes, I dont think Anet will want to touch this as PvE absolutely depends on it. 

Some siege changes to consider: You could also up the target cap of ballista 1 (you can evade it by zig-zagging), and make the arrow cart rip barrier on a skill. Maybe visit catapult spread shot and make it not worthless. 

[latlat.4516]

On 5/19/2024 at 12:31 AM, joneirikb.7506 said:

* Friendly Fire
* Player Collision
* Boon Overload (fractal instability)
* Social Awkwardness (fractal instability

Player collision is what made me quit Warhammer online. 

Friendly fire could be fun, but not as a permanent thing. Something like the recurring no downstate event. 

 

However, I would not mind having a system where boons are actually a tradeoff instead of pure power gain. 

 

Another possibility if your goal is not to end "player stacking" but "no skill stacking being better than skilled smaller stacking", like allowing a 25 men group of skilled players to beat a zerg of 50 mid players would be to load a lot of power on combo fields/sequence of execution in combo fields. I don't count the number of times when someone put guardian staff 3 whenever the commander called for smoke fields, thus ruining the stealth bomb and giving a tremendous advantage to the opposing group. It would also require less work than redesigning all the combat system

[TheGrimm.5624]

1 hour ago, latlat.4516 said:

Player collision is what made me quit Warhammer online. 

I admit it's a feature I liked and we could use it to slow down and block larger groups. It also added a dimension to the fight where you needed to pay attention to where you were when a fight was going to occur. 

[XenesisII.1540]

2 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:

I admit it's a feature I liked and we could use it to slow down and block larger groups. It also added a dimension to the fight where you needed to pay attention to where you were when a fight was going to occur. 

The real battle was getting past your own teammates in chokes. 🤭

 

[TheGrimm.5624]

5 minutes ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

The real battle was getting past your own teammates in chokes. 🤭

 

That too! lol

[Draygo.9473]

and the banner/flags people would put down that had collision :o

[roamzero.9486]

Make mounts fill that role with their dismount attacks. Make flanking using riders a thing like you see in those strategy games like Total War. Dismount attacks could trigger an uncapped AOE like a slightly stronger cannon siege shot and remove some boons. So a couple riders flanking into a distracted blob could severely weaken it. The counterplay would be general awareness to dismount the riders before they can get close enough.

[Zyreva.1078]

1 hour ago, roamzero.9486 said:

Make mounts fill that role with their dismount attacks. Make flanking using riders a thing like you see in those strategy games like Total War. Dismount attacks could trigger an uncapped AOE like a slightly stronger cannon siege shot and remove some boons. So a couple riders flanking into a distracted blob could severely weaken it. The counterplay would be general awareness to dismount the riders before they can get close enough.

So whoever has bigger numbers - so they can actually afford to have some players on mounts - autowins? How about no?

Mounts should have never been added to WvW, so better keep their impact as low as posssible. They are bad enough as it is.

 

Edited May 23 by Zyreva.1078

[MedievalThings.5417]

14 hours ago, XenesisII.1540 said:

The real battle was getting past your own teammates in chokes. 🤭

 

With GW2 players, the only thing that player collision would do is instead of enemies running their alts AFK into walls all day, they would just AFK block doors all day preventing actual players from getting into things.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

What should be mentioned is that, people are only considering dropping target cap for damage only, ignoring dropping target cap for healing. Logically, and ideally you'd drop target caps for both (for all skills). Additionally, the purpose of dropping target cap isn't to ruin zerging. It's to get rid of the extreme advantage of damage dispersal, where groups of larger and larger numbers stacking in tighter and tighter volumes, have exponentially increasing advantage over groups of smaller sizes, due to how damage gets dispersed between those players when those players use skills of finite target cap.

When the advantage disappears, then optimal strategy equalizes, such that for each additional player introduced into a given volume, it becomes more optimal to spread out when fighting groups of smaller sizes. Conversely groups of smaller sizes optimal strategy becomes grouping up with other players, since you need players using more skills. Just to quote that linked thread:

"...it gives no inherent advantage to grouping together, or splitting apart. When the enemy splits apart, you as an individual want them to ball together so that you get more value in your skills. When they ball together, they get no advantage in numbers, but they are two players using two times the skills you can use, and those aspects balance/cancel each other out."

This back and forth between grouping, and de-grouping is like you know...a ying and yang...constantly shifting back and forth from one to the other. 

Penultimately, when target caps get dropped for both healing and damage, then mathematically, the state of gameplay should just increase in volatility, meaning your health bar increases and decreases at a much faster rate as the scale of combat increases, meaning smaller margins of error, and thus a higher skill floor required to stay alive. So in addition to zerging no longer always being the optimal strategy, zerg gameplay should shift to being more skill based, due to that volatility.

If anyone is wondering, all this stuff is based on math. It's not my opinion, its just information, a stating of formal facts and proofs about target cap and it's effect on the game. My opinion is that dropping target cap is not completely realistic...it's a little too late and the design of the game in its current state doesn't support it (Some skills are not designed to hit infinite number of players...and there's a whole conversation that could be had on that). Plus Anet stated that relaxing target cap has a non-trivial impact on computational complexity, which is not an Anet problem, it's a mathematical, theoretical limitation related to computing algorithm's problem.

None the less, I like threads like this because the discussion makes more apparent what the design flaws of this game actually are. My stance is to just find and exploit the games fundamental design flaws...being that increasing target cap is the only real solution they will never do, then exploit it...have fun with it...

Edited May 23 by JusticeRetroHunter.7684

[Cyninja.2954]

22 hours ago, JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

snip

Removing the target cap on healing and damage would make the game more volatile. It would also benefit damage far more than support by the simple nature that one is active, the other is reactive. You can't heal a player which is dead from an alpha.

Barrier helps with this, given it's the equivalent of active healing, but given its scaling limitations, it only partially makes up the difference.

It would also mandate that now healing skills need to be used off cooldown and on rotation, given the time to react is cut far shorter, essentially mirroring damage dealer game play.

Quote

Penultimately, when target caps get dropped for both healing and damage, then mathematically, the state of gameplay should just increase in volatility, meaning your health bar increases and decreases at a much faster rate as the scale of combat increases, meaning smaller margins of error, and thus a higher skill floor required to stay alive. So in addition to zerging no longer always being the optimal strategy, zerg gameplay should shift to being more skill based, due to that volatility.

This statements assumes that all interaction happens within a regular players health-bar, which it does not. As combatant count increases (and thus the damage to target and alpha) the margins of error will trend towards 0, at which point any player caught in an alpha immediately dies.

Otherwise I agree, though "higher skill floor" can be synonymous with "who ever gets their alpha in first". Yes, zerg game play would become far more difficult, and eventually outperformed by roaming clouds in less skilled players hands (and as mentioned, huge zergs would likely dissipate entirely getting replaced by squad sizes of 5-15 players tops is my estimate).