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A Big Problem: The Sea of Red "Too Many AoEs" = Dull Gameplay + Lag (Potential Fixes Here)


Whiteout.1975

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This post is going to be my second attempt at discussing the massive AoE spam ("The Sea of Red") problem. I believe I firstly, though others (in the past) also, were focused too much on fixing AoEs themselves outright and not enough in their relation to the player's character. Therefore, I will be looking to bring more focus towards the player's character in relation to AoEs here. Also important, is finding a way to reduce "lag" from "The Sea of Red" where many AoEs are present (doing their calculations) causing too much lag, generally speaking, overall. However, the goal is ONLY to make AoEs less effective in situations where their can be too many and NOT "nerf" them in situations where there is an okay amount. Say maybe about 20 generally non-specific AoEs in a general area; if we are just gonna guess here. Thus, I will now highlight the following question in respect to this...

  • How can we fix AoEs for 1 general problematic situation (The Sea of Red) without disrupting Lesser situations (No Sea of Red) to which they are not a problem?

After considering past discussions especially. I think the answer may lie more so from the player/characters perspective (character being affected). As opposed to more so from the AoE's perspective or the player's creating those AoEs. Therefore, if we could have a method that allows the player's character to only be affected by so many AoEs at a time. Well, I would like to think we should get more favorable results from that. While also theoretically creating an environment for more compelling gameplay; as opposed to this "Oh look a sea of red... Welp, time to play The Floor is Lava" messy & often laggy style of gameplay, in my opinion.

"So how do we fix this?"

Well firstly, consideration to the likely and various asynchronous AoEs is still important here. Player characters can be struck by AoEs at unrelated times based on when they were laid. I could be struck by 1 or how every many AoEs initially. Then another separate AoE(s) perhaps 1/4 a second or say 1/2 a second later from that. This in itself is very chaotic in my opinion. Thus, making "The Sea of Red" scenarios even more chaotic to deal with by default also.

  • A potential fix (partly) to this would be limiting how often the player's character (each player individually) can receive AoE tick's in general. If a player can only receive "AoE ticks" once say every 1/2 - 1 seconds in total. Well, then we have now just eliminated potential AoE tick's happening in between those times. Being from other AoE sources outside the point of initially receiving an AoE's tick within that time frame. So for instance here (following this pattern)... If you just got struck initially. Then you should not be struck by "x" AoEs triggering 1/4 a second later; until you surpassed the cutoff time to which you become susceptible to them again.

  • Having even a tiny bit more "breathing room" if you will, for both player and system could be nice to have; generally speaking.

The next potential fix to consider is to only allow the player's character to only be hit by a default/maximum set amount of AoEs at a time. Similar to how AoE's act, in that they can only hit up to 5 players initially based on the players position relative to the center of the AoE. I believe what could help here is having the player's character also "act" like an AoE; in the similar sense as to how many AoEs are allowed to hit them. In order to help balance this process out. I don't have an exact number to give here, but what might be considered "too many AoEs", as @"Ben Phongluangtham.1065" put's it via https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/34498/bring-pvp-passive-nerfs-to-wvw/p1, might be considered anything above 10 AoEs per player. That's more greatly to be decided.

"So how do we determine what AoEs can hit the player's character?"

I think that the player's character should be the one to primarily determine the amount of AoEs they can accept at a time. Based on the area the character is standing/active in. Not sure what the diameter is on this "area", but I'd imagine it to be pretty small. Regardless, using the characters "active area" we can try to establish a boundary as to how many AoEs they can accept at a time. If the player is standing in let's say 15, more or less, overlapping AoEs... Having a method to determine what AoEs are accepted and which are not, could be great; if that maximum allowed value is < "15". Though this still doesn't quite answer the question fully... So I will try to elaborate more to this.

Ideally, I think the player's character should function slightly similar to AoEs via https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Area_of_effect which states the following: "An area of effect skill may only affect a maximum of 5 targets, determined by proximity: Only the 5 closest enemies to the centerpoint of the area of effect will be affected. Similarly, when affecting allies, closest party members are affected first, followed by closest non-party member allies". However, instead now from the character's perspective it would go something like this...

  • "An area of effect skill A player's character may only affect be affected by a maximum of 5 (5?) targets AoEs, determined by proximity of the player's character: Only the 5 (5?) closest enemies AoEs to the centerpoint of the area of effect player's character will be affected accepted."

  • Clean version: "A player's character may only be affected by a maximum of 5 (5?) AoEs, determined by proximity of the player's character: Only the 5 (5?) closest AoEs to the centerpoint of the player's character will be accepted."

One thing to do determine here firstly, would be if the maximum value should in fact be "5". Though perhaps say the "maximum value" instead should be 10 of any (ally or foe's) AoEs. Or perhaps it's split (5 allies AoEs max & 5 enemy AoEs max) with still a maximum total of 10. A bit hard for me to say the correct # without the ability to test like a dev. However, I think the basis of this idea is enough of a means to build off of for further possible testing for a more well rounded conclusion. Having the player's character decide what is "too many AoEs" by default I think is an important step in deciding what to do about "The Sea of Red".

  • The other possibly nice effect here... Is when we find a reasonable maximum allowed AoE value to go by. This could potentially create more interesting fights between smaller group against larger group battles. Since now the player has a limited amount of AoE. Heck, probably battles with plenty of AoEs in general. Just something to else to consider.

"Alright, but how EXACTLY does an AoE determine it's "accepted" by the player?"

I am thinking somewhere in the beginning stage's of when the AoE is determining... The player's distance, whether ally or foe, and whether or not they're an ally in a squad, initially. We would add to that initial process of establishing "True or False"... If the player is also eligible to be hit based on the player's character firstly establishing themselves as an acceptable target for certain AoEs as "acceptable" for their effects. To then allow the AoE/system to read that player value in respect to that. Ideally saving the (assuming) longer processes of performing more actual calculations; by limiting the amount of AoEs characters can be affected by.

  • Working this way should prevent the AoE's from carrying out unnecessary calculations before fully responding to the player's character. As opposed to performing the calculations... Then later finding out the player's character can't be affected anyways.

In conclusion, reducing AoE effectiveness from the character's perspective firstly. Should help address potential problematic situations (like "The Sea of Red") within that particularly unique perspective. Rather than trying to completely adjust/rely on AoEs by themselves as is, to better handle this overall unique per player character "perspective". A potential method, partly, is to allow for more "breathing room" by adjusting how often players can receive AoE ticks over fairly short intervals. However, ideally allowing players to briefly "act like AoEs" such as... "A player's character may only be affected by a maximum of 5 (5?) AoEs, determined by proximity of the player's character: Only the 5 (5?) closest AoEs to the centerpoint of the player's character will be accepted." Should help establish what are "too many AoEs" on a per character basis by default. Hopefully by in large draining out the bad effects of "The Sea of Red" once and for good ✌️?.

Thanks for reading.

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Make every aoe skill require you to target a player (friend or foe, depending on the skill) to use it (with very few exceptions). Rewards skilled gameplay, and stops the mindless spamming of skills. Class mechanics could be exempt, like shade skills for example. It would also make walls usable during sieges, because when necros (which I main) try to paint the walls with wells, even with a player on the back of the wall targetted, it would give you a no line of sight to target, meaning walls could "actually" be used to defend. I would likely leave ranger longbow 5 separate, as it would still allow siege removal and give them a REAL role in wvw.There are a lot of other things that would need to be adjusted to accomodate, but it would go a long way towards promoting skilled gameplay vs just blobbing around the pulsing red circles of the scourges.

Edit: I would still also like to see all siege removed except rams and oil, limit rams to 3 on a gate, and require siege damage to contest structures.

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Casuals need to get carried with those aoe oceans of red against smaller servers, reason match tend to be big population vs medium vs small or empty servers.

Expect the game to actually get worse whe anet add new elites that need to look better and spam to 20 target aoes são the players have the need to buy new carry n stack toys.

Expect the 20 aoe target classes..w/o looking at balance.

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@"Sovereign.1093" said:so, no one dies? woot. zergs will be unkillable. :/Well, yes. Thats the point.

If a zerg cant die, that means a zerg cant kill it either so there is no point having a zerg to begin with. You should be able to say "lol they brought 70 man what a joke... 40 of them are utterly useless and could have squaded up elsewhere to spread out attacks/defense" while your own three 30 man squads completely dominate the border.

I would be more than happen to boost the default AoE to 10 man with this change - or hell even no AoE limit so that 1 man can literally AoE 50 man as good as those 50 can AoE 1 man (well assuming they are within range).

Is this not what people want?

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@Dawdler.8521 said:

@"Sovereign.1093" said:so, no one dies? woot. zergs will be unkillable. :/Well, yes. Thats the point.

If a zerg cant die, that means a zerg cant kill it either so there is no point having a zerg to begin with. You should be able to say "lol they brought 70 man what a joke... 40 of them are utterly useless and could have squaded up elsewhere to spread out attacks/defense" while your own three 30 man squads completely dominate the border.

I would be more than happen to boost the default AoE to 10 man with this change - or hell even
no
AoE limit so that 1 man can literally AoE 50 man as good as those 50 can AoE 1 man (well assuming they are within range).

Is this not what people want?

i think ppl just dont want to adapt and are lazy to experiment.

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@Swagger.1459 said:@Whiteout.1975 So code in more rules, that the system has to calculate and process in real-time, around aoes that will only contribute to more lag and not address the problems.

Anet need to make a new iteration process and skill review if they reduce the aoe overall we could get few more target skills, like meteor shower having more targets, 20 target sanctuary and few others that could be improved for Zerg busting gameplay.

Scourge and fb were bad implementations for casuals get carried with roles, altough scorgwbis a huge Fail from anet since game can’t handle that much calculations and easilly bottlenecks info for clients.

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@Psycoprophet.8107 said:

@Sovereign.1093 said:so, no one dies? woot. zergs will be unkillable. :/

Nah they'd just be actual battles instead of a 5 minute or less genocide by aoe spam. And if zerg battles are taking too long without mindless aoe spamming than maybe fb needs toned down :) Be a nice change

How would it be actual battles if 80% of the aoes would be ignored and the 20% of the remaining ones have 5 target cap on them anyway?

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I feel like they all ready had the (AOE) red carpet answer, and tossed it away. Scrapper before changes could be in group and assist with FB's in condi removal, and I recall thinking, THIS is finally fair, a counter to Scourges, we where given a tool, so zergs could counter, but ya, about that...

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the 1 sec cd aoe tic might work, with the first placed aoes having priority.would be interesting to try that with maybe a 10 hits per sec cap (multi hitting skills count as one). also make aoe skills hit harder but last shorter. for example, well of corruption corrupting 2 boons per pulse but lasting only 2 sec. give all aoes a 1 sec delay before activating to give more counter play. reducing cleave would help with lag while also helping out smaller groups too I think. 1 handed weaps hit 1 person, 2 handed hit 2, and things like staff or longbow hit 3.

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I'm just gonna put this out here in general... We need a safegaurd/limit to the AoE spam. I like to think of this situation similar to IRL traffic.

Imagine you have a high traffic area; with general methods to help keep traffic running smoothly. How fast you can go, sharp turn warning signs, speed bumps, traffic cones etc. What I am trying to do is offer a few ideas with "methods" (whatever deemed necessary) to help something worse from happening. Expect here we already reached the point of "something worse"... "The Sea of Red". Therefore, because I feel the need to add ideally and theoretically lesser calculations/other methods to prevent bigger "worse" calculations and player experiences from happening; to help create this ideal smooth & fun gameplay standard to live by. Well, quite frankly, then that's what I'm gonna look to do.

We clearly know that the current processes behind there being too many AoEs is not at all working. Put "lag" aside for a moment. We are still left with Dull Gameplay where you are almost mindlessly and (from that point) also passively being bombarded with a sea of AoEs. Honestly, I don't find this really skillful at all at this point. Granted you can still have fun with their being a fair amount of AoEs on the ground.

However, when you are almost having to practically swim through a sea of them... Skill gets lost in the AoE ocean that's created. It's not fun. Now bring back the "lag" and any sense of whatever slight feelings of "fun" might be left... Then that "fun" easily get's diminished. Thus, because if this dull, passive, laggy feeling of gameplay... Is exactly why there should be some kind of "limit" to the amount of overwhelmingly "high traffic" AoEs. There just simply needs to be a way of establishing an ideal limit here in response/respect to that high traffic.

Say the AoE limit for the player is actually 15. That's literally still 15... fif-kitten-teen AoEs you can still get hit by maximum. If your group doesn't kill someone with 15 or even another round of 15 AoEs... lol wtf dude. Ether the game's horribly balanced or that group desperately needs to l2p at that point. Considering all the other skills too that exist outside of just AoE damage. 15 don't work for you? ok replace it with "20+" because we still haven't figured out what the ideal value is yet.

Anyways, I like what @Dawdler.8521 said. My friend actually told me the same thing dating back to 2014 era... However, I was under the impression that this was an intended feature that just wasn't working properly at the time... Or maybe he was full of it lol. He doesn't play the game anymore because of life reasons, but I do agree that could be an ideal way of handling this as well. Unfortunately, we get what @"Sovereign.1093" was saying about the zergs not dying especially. However, if Anet could allow a fair amount of AoEs to remain active and some turn dormant (till it's their turn) or not dormant. That might work fine enough too.

Aside from that... This is still just a matter of finding what ideal method to actually go by to keep the game better balanced, more fun and less laggy. And again, sometimes you just have to establish a safeguard that may involve some different (than the norm) calculations in order to prevent more the systematically strenuous/game breaking calculations,"something worse", from happening. We definitely need some kind of safeguard that absolutely establishes some kind of AoE effect limit on the players. While still leaving the vast majority of AoE highly purposeful in still reasonably assisting and effectively killing players. No changes for more zerg advantages. A fair, balanced, reasonable, effective anti-AoE spamfest safeguard is all I'm asking for. Not saying it's easy... But that would be ideal.

... Or Anet purges the vast majority of AoEs from the game. Which would still create dull game play; just on the other end of the spectrum, but hey... Maybe less lag at least.

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@Stand The Wall.6987 said:the 1 sec cd aoe tic might work, with the first placed aoes having priority.would be interesting to try that with maybe a 10 hits per sec cap (multi hitting skills count as one). also make aoe skills hit harder but last shorter. for example, well of corruption corrupting 2 boons per pulse but lasting only 2 sec. give all aoes a 1 sec delay before activating to give more counter play.

Great points to look into IMO. I of course especially like the idea of putting a ideal hit cap on how many AoE ticks you can receive within a certain time frame. Maybe it is 10? Though the value & rate should definitely try to replicate something you would expect from absurd AoE spamming situations I think.

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@Sovereign.1093 said:i think ppl just dont want to adapt and are lazy to experiment.

It's hard to experiment, when a zerg comm only accepts the same five meta builds.But don't purely blamke the comms: Many builds do not offer enough in a zerg context. For example: Surely I could switch from SB to Berserker, and I could even offer some Might generation to my teammates, but the loss in terms of boonstrip is way too great, while the return (more damage, might generation, similar or even better control) is too low.

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@Whiteout.1975 said:

@Stand The Wall.6987 said:the 1 sec cd aoe tic might work, with the first placed aoes having priority.would be interesting to try that with maybe a 10 hits per sec cap (multi hitting skills count as one). also make aoe skills hit harder but last shorter. for example, well of corruption corrupting 2 boons per pulse but lasting only 2 sec. give all aoes a 1 sec delay before activating to give more counter play.

Great points to look into IMO. I of course especially like the idea of putting a ideal hit cap on how many AoE ticks you can receive within a certain time frame. Maybe it is 10? Though the value & rate should definitely try to replicate something you would expect from absurd AoE spamming situations I think.

So same amount of aoes in wvw fights, but with more rules to calculate that will contribute more to lag. Ok then...

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@Swagger.1459 said:

@"Stand The Wall.6987" said:the 1 sec cd aoe tic might work, with the first placed aoes having priority.would be interesting to try that with maybe a 10 hits per sec cap (multi hitting skills count as one). also make aoe skills hit harder but last shorter. for example, well of corruption corrupting 2 boons per pulse but lasting only 2 sec. give all aoes a 1 sec delay before activating to give more counter play.

Great points to look into IMO. I of course especially like the idea of putting a ideal hit cap on how many AoE ticks you can receive within a certain time frame. Maybe it is 10? Though the value & rate should definitely try to replicate something you would expect from absurd AoE spamming situations I think.

So same amount of aoes in wvw fights, but with more rules to calculate that will contribute more to lag. Ok then...

Yes to same amount of AoEs. No to more rules that will contribute to more lag.

Those "more rules" are specifically there to prevent more lag as one factor. That is nearly whole purpose in having those "rules". The rest of the purpose is to better limit the dull passive gameplay of "too many AoEs". All while trying to maintain balance in fights... So that AoE's aren't carelessly nerfed in situations for which they are not a problem... Not "too many AoEs". My first and general response describes this in new detail outside of the OP... Assuming you didn't read it because of your response.

  • If those "rules" for some reason don't live up to that purpose. Then they unfortunately just don't live up to that specific purpose. However, that does not take away from their intended "purpose"... And I currently have no reason to think they would otherwise. In this case, unlike population imbalance, quantity does not necessarily dictate a negative quality (experience). When the purpose of that "quantity" (of rules) is there the drive a very specific "quality" of "smooth & fun" game play; as stated in my general reply.

I don't know if you remember the days when we had drastic caps (compared to now) to our conditions. We could only stack up to 25 conditions... This was a safeguard. That got taken away and IMO the lag got way worse and so did the power creep. However, there was also that set "rule" to limit conditions to "25" too. If it takes a specific, perhaps higher, but also careful quantity of rules with the purpose to create that "smooth & fun" quality. Then so be it.

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"All I wanted it Firebrand and Scourges." <--- The two most top AoE condi DPS in WvW currently. And when your commander puts together a team of 15 Firebrands and 10 Scourges...you pretty much lost already. Intersperse that with roughly 5 Ele healers....you don't have the "Stamina" to last in enemy red fields of a force with that much firepower at close range. You can only match the enemy build with same class, quantity of players, and skills. And then it comes down to true Stamina. At the very least, both teams might fight to a draw and be unable to kill each other after that. Permaboons are a real pain in the ass, and when you can't strip that many players of that many boons, and keep those boons from being thrown back up, your still dead. Watched last night 15 players attempting to kill 1 single warrior. Warrior had the stamina to fight for ten minutes. Should not take 15 players , over ten minutes to kill one Warrior. But this is how the game is now.

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My AoE for Barrage #5 from longbow doesn't really DO any damage to begin with. And with permaboon invulns and condi clears, my ability to SLOW the enemy down is already completely useless in WvW. Three rangers with Barrage #5 can whittle down an opponent pretty quick if their unable to clear condi's, and their stuck dying under that AoE of Arrows. But taking away my AoE damage makes those three rangers ability to work together, nothing more than a DPS tickle. Completely useless.

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