Balance: AoE and crowd size

Feedback and Suggestions
1

For now and for most games AoE works pretty simple: the more area you cover with your skill - the better. If one skill covers X area and other one covers twice as big, well, that second skill is probably better. It depends on enemies / allies quantity you regularly meet. High quantity means huge growth of AoE effectiveness with each target, while low quantity mostly means that raising AoE is pointless. There’s a lot more problems with balancing single target effects and crowd effects and not so many solutions for every of them.

Last Epoch suffers from those problems also. And, honestly, I don’t know how PvP will look like with all this. Probably it will lead to a strict differentiation between PvP and PvE builds. But I suggest an old but pretty effective way to soften the difference between huge-AoE skills and small- / non-AoE skills.

Lowering AoE effectiveness with each affected target.

It’s easily understandable with an example of AoE damage done to one or several targets. Lets say it decreases like this …

1 target hit: 100% damage to a single target
2 targets hit: 90% damage to each target (180% summary)
3 targets hit: 80% damage to each target (240% summary)
4 targets hit: 76,3% damage to each target (305% summary)
5 targets hit: 72% damage to each target (360% summary)
6 targets hit: 68,3% damage to each target (410% summary)
7 targets hit: 65,6% damage to each target (459% summary)
8 targets hit: 63,4% damage to each target (507% summary)
9 targets hit: 61,6% damage to each target (554% summary)
10 targets hit: 60% damage to each target (600% summary)
…
20 targets hit: 50,3% damage to each target (1005% summary)
30 targets hit: 44% damage to each target (1320% summary)
40 targets hit: 40,5% damage to each target (1620% summary)
84+ targets hit: 35% damage to each target (2940%+ summary)

Full sequence of reduction per target

My formula is …

n > 3
Dmg [ n ] = (Dmg [ n - 1 ] * (n - 1) + oDi [ n ] ) / n

n - crowd size / targets quantity
Dmg [ n ] - damage to each target
oDi [ n ] - overall damage increase comparing to overall damage against a crowd of [ n - 1 ] targets. It starts from 65 on n = 4 and decreases with each next “n” …

65, 55, 50-30, 30 …

1 target hit: 100% damage to a single target
2 targets hit: 90% damage to each target (180% summary)
3 targets hit: 80% damage to each target (240% summary)
4 targets hit: 76,3% damage to each target (305% summary)
5 targets hit: 72% damage to each target (360% summary)
6 targets hit: 68,3% damage to each target (410% summary)
7 targets hit: 65,6% damage to each target (459% summary)
8 targets hit: 63,4% damage to each target (507% summary)
9 targets hit: 61,6% damage to each target (554% summary)
10 targets hit: 60% damage to each target (600% summary)
11 targets hit: 58,6% damage to each target (645% summary)
12 targets hit: 57,4% damage to each target (689% summary)
13 targets hit: 56,3% damage to each target (732% summary)
14 targets hit: 55,3% damage to each target (774% summary)
15 targets hit: 54,3% damage to each target (815% summary)
16 targets hit: 53,4% damage to each target (855% summary)
17 targets hit: 52,6% damage to each target (894% summary)
18 targets hit: 51,8% damage to each target (932% summary)
19 targets hit: 51% damage to each target (969% summary)
20 targets hit: 50,3% damage to each target (1005% summary)
21 targets hit: 49,5% damage to each target (1040% summary)
22 targets hit: 48,8% damage to each target (1074% summary)
23 targets hit: 48,1% damage to each target (1107% summary)
24 targets hit: 47,5% damage to each target (1139% summary)
25 targets hit: 46,8% damage to each target (1170% summary)
26 targets hit: 46,2% damage to each target (1200% summary)
27 targets hit: 45,6% damage to each target (1230% summary)
28 targets hit: 45% damage to each target (1260% summary)
29 targets hit: 44,5% damage to each target (1290% summary)
30 targets hit: 44% damage to each target (1320% summary)
31 targets hit: 43,5% damage to each target (1350% summary)
32 targets hit: 43,1% damage to each target (1380% summary)
33 targets hit: 42,7% damage to each target (1410% summary)
34 targets hit: 42,4% damage to each target (1440% summary)
35 targets hit: 42% damage to each target (1470% summary)
36 targets hit: 41,7% damage to each target (1500% summary)
37 targets hit: 41,4% damage to each target (1530% summary)
38 targets hit: 41,1% damage to each target (1560% summary)
39 targets hit: 40,8% damage to each target (1590% summary)
40 targets hit: 40,5% damage to each target (1620% summary)
41 targets hit: 40,2% damage to each target (1650% summary)
42 targets hit: 40% damage to each target (1680% summary)
43 targets hit: 39,8% damage to each target (1710% summary)
44 targets hit: 39,5% damage to each target (1740% summary)
45 targets hit: 39,3% damage to each target (1770% summary)
46 targets hit: 39,1% damage to each target (1800% summary)
47 targets hit: 38,9% damage to each target (1830% summary)
48 targets hit: 38,8% damage to each target (1860% summary)
49 targets hit: 38,6% damage to each target (1890% summary)
50 targets hit: 38,4% damage to each target (1920% summary)
51 targets hit: 38,2% damage to each target (1950% summary)
52 targets hit: 38,1% damage to each target (1980% summary)
53 targets hit: 37,9% damage to each target (2010% summary)
54 targets hit: 37,8% damage to each target (2040% summary)
55 targets hit: 37,6% damage to each target (2070% summary)
56 targets hit: 37,5% damage to each target (2100% summary)
57 targets hit: 37,4% damage to each target (2130% summary)
58 targets hit: 37,2% damage to each target (2160% summary)
59 targets hit: 37,1% damage to each target (2190% summary)
60 targets hit: 37% damage to each target (2220% summary)
61 targets hit: 36,9% damage to each target (2250% summary)
62 targets hit: 36,8% damage to each target (2280% summary)
63 targets hit: 36,7% damage to each target (2310% summary)
64 targets hit: 36,6% damage to each target (2340% summary)
65 targets hit: 36,5% damage to each target (2370% summary)
66 targets hit: 36,4% damage to each target (2400% summary)
67 targets hit: 36,3% damage to each target (2430% summary)
68 targets hit: 36,2% damage to each target (2460% summary)
69 targets hit: 36,1% damage to each target (2490% summary)
70 targets hit: 36% damage to each target (2520% summary)
71 targets hit: 35,9% damage to each target (2550% summary)
72 targets hit: 35,8% damage to each target (2580% summary)
73 targets hit: 35,8% damage to each target (2610% summary)
74 targets hit: 35,7% damage to each target (2640% summary)
75 targets hit: 35,6% damage to each target (2670% summary)
76 targets hit: 35,5% damage to each target (2700% summary)
77 targets hit: 35,5% damage to each target (2730% summary)
78 targets hit: 35,4% damage to each target (2760% summary)
79 targets hit: 35,3% damage to each target (2790% summary)
80 targets hit: 35,3% damage to each target (2820% summary)
81 targets hit: 35,2% damage to each target (2850% summary)
82 targets hit: 35,1% damage to each target (2880% summary)
83 targets hit: 35,1% damage to each target (2910% summary)
84 targets hit: 35% damage to each target (2940% summary)

As you can see, damage to a single target quickly reduces to 60% or even by half, but overall damage increases by ~50% per each additional target (or 30% against much larger crowd). This sequence may be shorter and simpler, but I’m trying to make “single target damage loss” and “overall damage increase” more smooth.

Of course, we can’t reduce only direct damage like that. This algorithm should also …

  • reduce duration of DoT effects if not damage dependent (“Ignite” or any other in LE)
  • reduce duration of lasting effects if not damage dependent (like “Slow”)
  • power of other damage independent effects should also be reduced (like freeze rate)

This also should affect your beneficial effects unless otherwise mentioned …

  • reduce health / ward gain on hit and other flat bonuses
  • reduce healing power
  • reduce duration of HoT effects and buffs

Now let think about some interesting consequences of this mechanics :slight_smile:

  • Swarms of enemies are much tougher now.
  • Enemies spawning enemies are harder to fight with AoE (good for Elites / Bosses).
  • If you wish to deal more damage to specific target in a crowd - choose skills with lesser area or use them as so to hit less secondary targets.
  • Enemy damage is also reduced against crowd of players…
  • So being inside a minion crowd is a defense.
  • You have no defensive skills but wish to help your mates? - just stay near them.
  • If you wish to heal more or to get a longer buff - keep distance from your mates :smiling_imp:.

And some about non instant multi hits. I think every NEXT target should be affected with weakened effect.

Example: you throw a piercing fireball - first target gets 100% damage, second one - 90%, third one - 80% and so on. At the same time, when chain lightning instantly hits several targets, all of them takes reduced damage.

Logic: in first case fireball requires time to reach the target and you, as a player, may miss with it, or your targets may find the way to defend themselves. In second case your AoE damage is guaranteed.

1 Like
2

I think you raised a valid issue and a solution worth considering.

3

I highly disagree with this solution. It will get obnoxious and offers no interesting gameplay. It’s an ARPG and I want to be powerful through my character building decisions and gear upgrades. Making a blanket mechanic like this will also limit the design space that the devs can explore in the future.

One thing you can do is to force the players to make the decision themselves in the specialisation tree. I’ve already seen skills going in that direction and that is a good thing. The Avalanche skill tree, for example, has a node that increases your boulder impact area but at the same time it will make it hard to hit a single target.

In Path of Exile, there is also a trade off of using Increased Area or Concentrated Effect, or you can use both but will need to deal with annoyances with having to swap gems very often.

4

I don’t understand why you think this suggestion makes your character not powerful? It doesn’t change the importance of any parameters you can raise for your skills. And since we’re talking about AoE - it remains important and its increase still is good gain.

But we don’t have such mechanics in LE, right? You’re picking your skill-nodes and character passives and… that’s it - you can’t change them every fight or even just before one rare fight. The only thing that functions similar to S.Gems - is Idols. So yeah, probably you can switch +AoE idols with +other needed stat between fights. But why do you think +AoE idols are now a worse choice? (if I’m understanding you correctly)

Can you explain, please? :slightly_frowning_face:

5

It would, by definition, make AoE less powerfull than it is at the moment, I see where you’re coming from, I would ask what you’re trying to achieve though.

If you’re trying to reduce the dominance of AoE skills, perhaps they should add more champions/higher hp mobs such that yes, you could AoE most of the pack down in a couple of casts, but then you’d still be left with a champion that’s still got a lot of hp left.

1 Like
6

You’re simply trying to make AoE less powerful instead of offering options to players. That PoE example was just an example of choices that doesn’t always make more aoe = better. I also gave you an example from LE, which was the Avalanche skill tree.

It simply doesn’t feel good to know that the more enemies you hit, the less damage you deal per monster. It’s better to give this choice to players. You also can have skills that are mechanically better at clearing but doesn’t perform well at single target. An example of this is Shield Throw, which has fantastic clearing potential but suffers against bosses that do not have adds. This dynamic makes en engaging gameplay and creative builds.

If a skill has a simple AoE mechanic, you can simply reduce the initial AoE and lock the AoE nodes behind other pre-requisites, so players have to choose between AoE or other perks like damage or mana efficiency.

7

I’d like to see more difference in single target damage between single target skills and AOE skills. But not depending on the number of enemies hit.

AOE skills should make significant less damage than single target skills. Also 0 or low mana skills should do less damage than skills with medium/high mana cost.

I like Lightning blast very much. It has good AOE damage and massive single target damage potential.

8

My goal is NOT to decrease AoE power, but to make balancing AoE easier.
That’s why I suggest to decrease GROWTH of its effectiveness with each additional target. Currently AoE allows some skills greatly increase their effectiveness with each target: +1 target equals +100% effectiveness and this is a default mechanics. Any non AoE skill hasn’t such good increase and, honestly, it SHOULDN’T as so I believe. Also, balancing AoE skills forces a designer to make them weaker because of understanding, that their potential may be increased greatly against crowds. But with this mechanics of slowing growth initial effect of AoE may be made even STRONGER, and overall balance between AoE and small- / non-AoE skills will be better (in my opinion).

Try to look from another side: your initial damage is stronger and you have a choise - to hit all enemies to maximize overall damage, or to hit some of them to deal more damage to high priority target. Isn’t this good?

And yes, I must remind two aspects of my suggestion that may be missed or misunderstood …

  • overall effect on the crowd is growing - it’s not constant or weak
  • this mechanics affects not damage only - all effects, even beneficial

See? This is a restriction. Every crowd or at least important fight should contain specific mob-set: (example) 1-2 Bosses, few Elites and a bunch of regulars. You can’t create a couple of mods like (examples) …

  • blitz duel with bosses
  • unending horde of weaklings with rare Elites inside
  • hunt for squads of Champions and their elite bodyguards
  • wide range PvP like 3x3 - 10x10

It will lead to a strict splitting players with their builds between those mods. Because large AoE-focused characters will grind horde mode, with less AoE skill-set will grind duels and hunt, and PvP requires completely another focus.

I just suggest to reduce that difference.
I suggest to make overall mechanics more complex (second part of my original post), where targeting becomes more important, crowd control becomes more important (I’m not talking about Stuns etc.), your own positioning becomes more important.

And I must remind that AoE is not just about affected targets quantity, but also about an opportunity to affect some targets at all. Larger AoE - easier to hit a maneuvering enemy. And this advantage cannot be taken away from AoE. Yes, there’s not so many mobile enemies in LE, and zero of “maneuvering” ones (I guess), and we have no PvP fro now. But this game evolves and someday all those features will appear.

And if you’re talking about choice: I can’t see how this can take it away.
I was thinking to give more of them :slightly_frowning_face:

Yes, but I’d say that any advantage should cost you something, and this cost (type, scale) may significantly vary.

Why not?
Any AoE has some initial balancing penalty. I suggest to make this penalty dynamic. And yes, it will require to make all initial AoE effects STRONGER.

9

I must be being obtuse then, 'cause that (& the rest of your post) just sounds like you think that AoE skills are “too effective” in situations where AoE skills should be effective, where there are lots of low hp mobs. Put that same skill in a situation where there’s just a single high hp mob & it won’t perform very well.

Apparently I misunderstood your initial suggestion then. It does sound a bit overly complicated, good luck with a tooltip to explain it in a succinct manner… It kinda feels like you’re suggesting that the skill should do XXX damage over a maximum of Y targets, so if there are fewer targets it does more damage per target.

It’s not a restriction though, it’s just changing the scenario to one that doesn’t favour an AoE skill. If it were a restriction then it would affect the skill in some way.

I was “only” suggesting that the variety of packs be increased a bit, so it’s not always just a pack of small low hp mobs, sometimes there would be packs of low hp mobs with 1 or 2 higher hp mobs mixed in so that people can’t just rely on just an AoE skill to get through (which I don’t think they do at the moment, since in Arenas you get several packs of trash plus every few waves you get some harder mobs).

So make AoE skills less effective in AoE situations and more effective in single target situations (or just less effective in AoE situations)…

But it does (or should), AoE skills are less effective against single targets.

10

Because it leads to a weird playstyle. If you want to do max damage you can’t aim into a crowd of enemies. What happens, when the rare enemy you solely want to target stands in a crown of trash mobs? It’s not the players choice if he wants to hit many targets or single target. Most of the time there is a pack of enemies going against you and you fire your skills at the first target or try to aim for the middle of the pack. If you want to do max damage on a few targets at the sideline you need to aim for empty space and hope that you hit as few targets as possible with the edge of you effect.
Do this with moving targets.
I don’t think this is very intuitive.

11

Ummm… yes and no.

  • AoE is still AoE and with each additional target your overall damage increases.
  • It all is not about effectiveness - it’s about effectiveness GROWTH. If you have some damaging skill with average AoE and mob-packs also move in average area, then you don’t care about mob-quantity. One, 2, 10 or even 100 - they all die from the same amount of skill-shots. Where’s limits? So I’m talking about limits. At the same time I don’t like hard limits in games where such parameter as “enemy pack size” can vary greatly.

Current mechanics affects not just AoE skills - it affects overall design and its designer, IF the designer wishes to create comfortable gameplay for any player and build. In practice this means that mob density or size of your team (NPC included) will always equal some average value. Because you know that on decrease these parameters AoE skills will suffer greatly, but otherwise their effectiveness will rocket.

Same with your allies and buffs. You have to guess about some average team size, guess the best numbers for such average team. You may play with 1-2 friends of yours? Good. But what if you wish to change this limit to 5? to 10? Where will be your average values?

So I’m talking more about balancing AoE itself - not AoE and single target.
While AoE effectiveness doesn’t change with the change of crowd size - you (designer and player) are restricted to some average values. And I suggest to make these values - dynamic.

It’s not, indeed. As the fact that DoT damage or freeze chance don’t scale with initial damage, or the fact that 20% critical chance bonus increases your crit by 1% :slight_smile: . All this is details of mechanics, even features sometimes, and you’re skillful only when you know them, discovered them.

Yep, something like that. I wrote this …

…and this …

But if you don’t bother with aiming or unable to do so, then the result is still good enough - your overall damage is maximized.
As for this remark …

This is an ACTION-rpg, right? And we will get PvP someday, as I remember? So is it bad to have some more tricks? You hit more targets, well that’s ok, because you still made a lot of damage - more than you would deal to fewer targets.

Also, I must ask, and no offense, just curious: is it possible for you to define the limits of acceptable reduction? Or you refuse even a minimum effect of that?

P.S.

Yes :smiley:
I just converted @XLVI_carpo 's words to a… more generalized form :blush:
I mean… I agree with him and you.

P.P.S. Sorry for this wall… again. I’m just trying to be specific and to give a detailed feedback on your words. :pleading_face:

12

i don’t think the problem described by the original poster is an actual problem. I think LE does this fairly well as of now with a skill like Avalanche, as mentioned before, and I don’t see a reason to change the current AOE system. I think you could balance bigger AOE skills compared to smaller AOE skills, but I would do that manually, so you have room to move around. A generic equation is going to be problematic for balancing because it includes another element to the equation, and I haven’t seen a good reason why that element should exist.

13

Well, mostly not, indeed. And may be it’s all about my own taste.
But here’s a quick question: you think affecting 1-4 targets should have completely the same result for every target as affecting 15-25? or even 50? (affecting = damaging, gaining health / ward from hits, slowing, healing and any other effects).

And here I lost :flushed:
Sorry, probably my bad knowledge of English. Can you explain this… in other words :blush:

14

I was referring to the playstyle not the mechanic you described. Imho it’s not intuitive to aim for empty space. An aoe skill is for covering a large number of enemies. By nature you will try to get as many enemies as possible affected by a skill. Decreasing the damage per target hit does feel like a nerf no matter how high you initial damage is. You will always think “It could’ve hit harder if I’d not had hit that many targets”. That’s counterintuitive.

And as long as there’s not indicator for your aoe before you cast it it’s more a gamble if you hit the targets you aimed for.

But it’s a very creative attempt on this topic.

Nonetheless I have to agree with @Thyworm, that you cover a mechanic that isn’t in a bad state, actually.

15

Well, I guess I got your point.
Though, same question:

16

I am a big advocate of giving skills some baseline characteristic like AoE, Singletarget and Maybe soem skills like Lightning blast which serve kinda a hybrid.

And with the awesome foundational System in LE, aka skill specilization trees you can (on most skills) either increase on the baseline characteristic or try to fix some of the “weaker” characteristics.

Togehter with this alot of nodes that already give AoE baseline skills mroe aoe often come with disadvatages like decreased dmg etc.

I think balancing each skill on a individual basis with the specialzation tree is the way to go here.

One Thing i could argue with is that maybe nerf FLAT on hit effects on AoE skills, like HP/Ward on hit and alike.

Those are my two cents

1 Like
17

This! Ward on hit with aoe is a combination that outperformes other defences right now. Maybe this would be a good spot to put @JustLoveHnS idea in. :thinking:

18

My main issue with this approach is the weird gameplay consequence of having to aim at empty space to target specific enemies. That’s just not very intuitive.

I think Glacier with the node that allows you to drop it anywhere on the screen would be more intuitive. You can aim at specific targets so that they get hit with the most damage at the center and use the weaker large explosion for trash clearing. Very fun skill that requires timing and aim.

Or maybe some kind of a system where you hold down a button/key to have the AoE expand more, but deal less damage. Or the reverse where you hold it down to focus the blast. Could make for some fun gameplay without the weirdness of having to aim at empty space.

2 Likes
19

This mechanics where you can hold down the button and choose if it shoudl expand and do less dmg or the reverse where the aoe gets smaller with mroe dmg sounds very fun i really can Image that for some mages skills as optional skill nodes within the Talent tree.

Also some skills could maybe have nods that say smth like “if you hit less then X targets damage is increased by Y” this Maybe doesn’t fit for all Kind of skills but certainly could be a possiblity for some skills

And yeah skills that deal mroe dmg in the centre like your glacier example are really fun and interactive indeed.

On the completly other side of the spectrum, while it’s being a bit off topic:

I think some of the singletarget orientied skills could use some further singletarget specialization, for example hitting enemies consecutively increases damage for X seconds which stacks a few times.

Generally i really like builds for myself where i have 1 main singletarget and one main aoe skill.

Also i hope, especially with the addition of more endgame activities that there will be alot of prominent big mobs, that would Benefit big singletarget dps playstyles(or at least having one specific singletarget skill)

1 Like
20

Well, system where target gets full effect at the center of AoE and weaker effect at some distance from it - is more realistic, indeed. It’s like fading strength of a blast wave irl. And this mechanics, a need to aim even with AoE fits ACTION component of arpg perfectly :slight_smile: . Also this mechanics has another good effect: when you’re trying to escape enemy’s large AoE, you won’t get full effect on the edge. So even if you know that you have no abilities to escape the AoE, running from its center is always a win.

P.S. In my original suggestion I’ve tried to keep AoE 's advantage of hitting, when you have large AoE and one or few targets can’t escape it. Also I thought it would be fun to have some defensive mechanics that I’ve described in the final part of my post :pensive: .