Dude, you are drawing comparisons that have nothing to do with RvR. If you cannot see why you cannot equate a single dude herding and farming dozens of mobs and being the one primarily processed in this equation to hundreds or thousands of people being processed at the same time dealing DPS/buffs/debuffs back and forth in the vicinity then im afraid i cannot help you on that end nor make it clearer. RvR is leagues more tasking then someone farming mobs in PvE. If it wasnt things like skill lag wouldnt exist to this day im sure. The reasons you mention there are basically those that apply to why it was introduced in PvE situations. Well you can call him whatever you want (though i quoted Michael not Miguel), but there is already tangible examples in RvR games where it leads to massive skill lag. I dont play TESO but a friend told me they are experiencing the exact same issues with skill lag, granted lesser then GW2 by his account. On the bolter and the lessening of burden on network traffic....yeah they are already doing that. I very well recall Patrick mentioning that due to performance shots will be "packaged" together to actually help with performance. I dont recall the exact thing he wrote, but seeing as ive asked him to read through the thread he will probably recall where he said it himself.
I've played plenty of MMOs in situations where hundreds of players and thus damage calculations have been running simultaneously with mixed results across the board. Massive World of Warcraft city sieges, for example, or when people lured Kazzak into cities, or the scourge events around WotLK where hundreds of people are fighting and dying to both players and mobs. Warhammer Online fortress sieges where FPS for all players dropped to below 12, input delay was astronomical and the server booted up Warhammer Online: Slideshow mode. Large-scale PS2 battles that have been both playable and completely unplayable. That's why I'm not sure I agree with that quoted statement, Djemo. I don't see how the strain from massive AoE mob farming or large PvP battles would differ so greatly. They're both going to put a strain on the server because that's just what large spikes of activity do regardless of the source. I could believe that players might contribute more, but even so. Without tangible experience in MMO server networking and/or some solid idea of how good PikkoTech is, I don't really see how either of you can convincingly settle this argument at this point. All I have myself is that contradictory anecdotal evidence which shows that both large and small scale battles have both succeeded and failed in being playable across different games. Since EC is a shooter I'd be very much against AoE capping; but again, we haven't seen how powerful the AoE weapons are, whether their drawbacks really counter their strengths, how well they can be used in offensive and defensive play, how well they tie into map design etc. etc. etc. Like most other sensible discussions about the game at this stage in development, I think I'd still chalk this one down to 'we have to wait and see.'
Here mate, I was looking for that quote a few days back myself. Although do yourself a favor folks: Follow the link to the thread and read it in the context of the preceding/subsequent messages. Usually a smart move to not read dev quotes in isolation And I do believe that capping AE will only be necessary if the burden is so great that there is ridiculous lag. It's possible, maybe probable. Won't know until it's tested. I think friendly fire will go a ways to preventing it from being wildly damaging, but who knows ? Need to see it in action. I won't put it past a commander to detonate an Orbital Strike over his fellows just to wipe a vehicle rush, what will that do to the lag ? War is a cruel and calculative bitch.
I would rather see a (decaying) potential damage pool model. Ie: Any aoe has a (high) percentage chance to hit any target in the area (starting from center and travelling out) where each 'hit' does (made up numbers here) 100-500 damage (- 50 per (1 meter) from the center of the blast if it is a decaying damage type) with a max damage total available of 5000. If rays are used to draw the line out from the center than any ray has a (based on damage type) percentage chance to be blocked from travelling beyond the impact. It makes sense that shrapnel hits the first guy but he blocks it from hitting the next guy out), but some types (as an example) plasma/fire weapons shouldn't always be blocked in the same way as shrapnel. Aoe cap is often used to reduce the number of calculations performed by the servers and as an artifical way to manage play balance, but it feels 'gamey' and I doubt it will be in EC, at least I hope not.
I was asked to give a comment here by @Djemo-SRB so here I go In general I don't believe an AOE cap will be needed, because e.g. I do one shot, I already need to propagate that one shot to all observers, meaning the network package will be sent to everyone who can see that shot. Which is usually even further than any AOE would probably be - so the argument that it costs more network traffic is mute. The cost on the cpu vs. a single shot ofc is much higher, we need to calculate everyones positions relative to the center of the AOE and do first simple range checks and then eventually line of sight check (you could stand behind a wall). That is ofc a lot more power than a single ray-cast that does all needed in one call (a physics call that is not cheap, but still overall cheaper) - so I could see the problem of having a lot of players very close to each other in an aoe become a problem. Also the pure amount of data sent could be a lot more if we want to e.g. send all health changes at the same time or tell the observers who has to show hiteffects etc - but a good client side calculation (deterministic) could take care of that problem. Ultimatively it's a game design question - I am always maintaining that everything is possible given time and manpower - so if we need it and game design wants it, we will find a way to make it happen (the no cap part). And that's where I need to stop, because you all have good arguments on why it makes sense and why not - so @BrentEllison and his team are probably the right people to make that call!
You yourself just dropped two examples AoR and PS2, adding to the pile GW2 and TESO... i think you can see why im skeptical. Heard it from Colin, heard it from Michael, and heck it seems even Patrick isnt fully on one side of the fence. Its not a walk through the park as some might feel it would be. Like i said before, i wish them luck, but also to be careful. And yes, you are right in that the argument cannot be settled till we actually see AoE in action, its radius and how effective it actually is. I didnt really come in the thread and say "im right and have magic beans to see into the future, and you are all wrong!", simply reading my posts would attest to that. I stated it might be a problem, seeing as how it is in other tangible examples. There are like i myself said many variables, from new tech being used to different ways the problem could be approached (by the programmers/game designers that is), so thats exactly why i never claimed what will happen in the future, but what actually happened in the present as a sign of caution. Thanks Patrick, it does help to see that it can technically work. However it doesent dispel my worry, seeing as Anet was sure they could do it, then saw they couldnt do it, and then just left it as is to this day, two years after the game is launched. Which leads me to believe that if something on the programming/design end isnt done well it isnt that easy (or possible) to tweak, lest Anet would have done more to destroy this problem to which everyone to this day points their finger at. Nevertheless, i wish you luck in making it work and hope my worries end up being nothing in the face of this new Pikko tech. But till i see the thousand player battles, and by relation this lack or presence of a target cap, i cannot really say im 100% without worries.
Oh and i guess its just fair that i copy Brents response to a PM i had about AoE quite some time ago: Well, there'll never be a situation where you can just make a continual death field forever. The person (or persons) performing an AoE will run out of ammo or warp charges, and you should always be able to go around and shoot them from another direction. Also, since this is not a standard MMORPG, you shouldn't expect players to be huddled together all the time like in GW2 or WoW. There's friendly fire, TTKs are much shorter, and max ranges are much longer. AoE attacks are very useful in games like Battlefield and Planetside 2, but they're far from the be-all, end-all like they are in standard MMOs and are generally quite limited. So to start, we're going to allow AoEs to do their full damage like in any shooter. If it becomes a problem, then we can easily change things.
I honestly believe, that anet is just very bad on programming end. They are cheap on paying their workers and there are alot of workers, who left anet, when gw2 was launching. One day, this guys broke one of the mesmers skills. It took them more, than 1 year to completely fix it. 2 times in this year they said, that they fixed it, but it still did not work. 1 year mesmers had to deal with broken mechanic. Anet is very slow and terrible on programming end .
I am no server architect or whatever they're called, and I don't write software or anything like that. My understanding is that the burden server-side from noncappeed AOE is that its sending all its info in one chunk. Many calculations instantly per user, whereas shooting a bolter has a fractional delay in between calculations that allow the system to "catch up". We all know what happens when you give technology many things all at once. You can test it on your computer, open 40+ tabs from a session you manually crash all at the same time running animated gifs or videos. Now Open them one by one and see if it works. I am torn the more I read, because I agree with Djemo on a lot of levels, mainly that its going to effect stability, but also that its needed to make AOE matter. If you uncap AOE then it has to be balanced as if its hitting some magical number the devs determine is "worst abusable case scenario" that isn't the average scenario. This winds up leaving AOE weak in comparison for average engagements. AOE should be a specialist role within classes that provides a needed job. I don't know that that's possible if AOE is gimped so heavily because its balanced off of hitting 60 people a shot and you're mostly shooting and hitting 5-10.
