Welcome to Project: Gorgon!


Project: Gorgon is a 3D fantasy MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game) that features an immersive experience that allows the player to forge their own path through exploration and discovery. We won't be guiding you through a world on rails, and as a result there are many hidden secrets awaiting discovery. Project: Gorgon also features an ambitious skill based leveling system that bucks the current trend of pre-determined classes, thus allowing the player to combine skills in order to create a truly unique playing experience.

The Project: Gorgon development team is led by industry veteran Eric Heimburg. Eric has over a decade of experience working as a Senior and Lead Engineer, Developer, Designer and Producer on successful games such as Asheron’s Call 1 and 2, Star Trek Online and other successful Massively Multiplayer Online Games.



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  1. #1
    Senior Member Yaffy's Avatar
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    Question AoE Changes & Discussion

    Since there's a lot of discussion about the AoE change in the latest patch, I thought it'd be relevant to make a thread specifically about the discussion of this change.
    There's a lot of opinions, both positive and negative, but I hope we can have a constructive discussion to help us (and the devs!) understand how the changes have affected game play. Experiences with the changes are greatly appreciated here, although remember that everyone will have a very different experience so some people may feel heavily impacted by the changes while others not so much.

    For those that aren't sure of how the changes work, AoE damage now does less damage to all targets hit as more enemies are hit by the AoE. The first target(s) are also affected by this damage decrease, so none of the enemies are exempt from the damage penalty.

    The damage scaling is as such (After personal testing):

    3 targets or less: 100% damage
    4 targets: 75% damage
    5 Targets: 50% damage
    6 Targets: 40% damage
    7 Targets: 30% damage
    8 or more: 25% damage

    So with this, I'd like to point out that after 4 mobs, AoEs will be doing less damage in total. You will do 300% of the AoE's damage if you hit 3 or 4 mobs, but when you hit 5 mobs you will start doing less damage in total (50% * 5 = 250%) all the way down to 8 (25% * 8 = 200%). Once you start hitting 12 mobs you'll be back up to 300% and further mobs will increase total damage.

    From my personal experience, I thought that the nerf would be extremely limiting, but it doesn't seem that bad after some testing. However, I do feel like there are some strange quirks with how you start to lose damage as you add mobs, which seems counter intuitive. Although it's fair to weaken a single player who is trying to solo many mobs at once, I feel like the nerf causes some strange interactions in ordinary group play.
    For example, in Gazluk Keep there are many rooms where there are a large number of non-elite "Trash" mobs clumped together and it's not uncommon for parties pull 5-10 mobs at once in this situation (whether on purpose or by accident). However, due to AoE's doing less damage with more mobs, AoE's end up doing so little damage that it's more effective to simply switch to single target instead as the AoE damage is unnoticeably small. This causes a strange situation where AoEs become valuable when fighting a few mobs at once, but become very weak if there's too many. While I can understand a sharp penalty to damage to hinder a single player trying to farm many mobs at once, I believe that a group of 6 players should be able to fight a group of 5-10 non-elites without such a large penalty.

    I do appreciate that the AoE change has made these trash mobs more dangerous, as it makes the dungeon more interesting! (Before they would just fall over instantly and were completely ignored for the most part). However I think AoE's losing damage as mobs are added is counter intuitive and causes AoEs to only be useful in certain situations, as currently AoEs should actually be avoided when there are too many monsters due to their low damage (Unless if they have a good secondary effect).

    My personal suggestion for the developers is to allow the primary target of the AoE (Whichever monster you have targeted) to always take full damage from the AoE and for two additional enemies to always take full damage or at least 50% damage minimum. This would mean that AoE would still be helpful even against large mobs as you'll be still be doing some noticeable damage to a few enemies and then the other enemies would take minor splash damage. This would allow groups to continue using AoE if they pull a large pack in a dungeon, but still make it very difficult for a single player to farm huge packs as mobs past the first three would still avoid most of the damage.

    Please post what you think about the changes, your experience with it, and any changes you might like to see. Any suggestions are appreciated! Just make sure to explain your reasoning as best as you can. Not just for the others posting on the forums, but also so the developers can understand you!

  2. #2
    Junior Member Mechant's Avatar
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    Honestly I was not expecting an AOE nerf, we were expecting a balance in general for combat skills, especially the stacking mods being too overpowered, Bard

    AOE being nerfed no more easy farm I guess ?

  3. #3
    Member ErDrick's Avatar
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    What merchant said. I was expecting balance changes specifically for group combat with the release of priest, I was also expecting some bard specific balance changes and/or blanket changes to reduce outgoing and incoming damage.

  4. #4
    Junior Member FuzzyKittens's Avatar
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    I absolutely agree with the OP's full post. Yaffy's suggestion of 3 creeps taking full damage and each additional creep taking less is actually how I thought the change was going to be implemented. I'm sincerely hoping that the way it currently functions is a bug. I'd also like to offer an alternate suggestion: get rid of diminishing returns and just cap the max number of enemies effected by an AoE and adjust overall damage as needed. As a side note, skills and mods that increase AoE range are a lot less attractive/desirable with the current changes in place.

  5. #5
    Member FURY's Avatar
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    My two cents.

    Citan said in the Dev blog with the introduction of a pure healing class he wanted to round up and make combat uh, correct. As stats for mobs and players were all a bit off due to no focused healing on the players end, there was just no way to sustain. They also mention that not all of the changes made it in, remember he said they wanted to change how stacking mods worked and I don't believe that just those 5 bullet points was the fix he was looking at (and a very bandaid looking blanket AOE-attack nerf at that) when he was talking about changes to combat at this big of a level. If Citan truly wanted to cut back on AOEs there are several other ways to do it, from the area they effect, to the base damage, to the ability's cool downs. . . there are lots of knobs that could be turned, this feels a bit ham-fisted. Perhaps even as a result of rushing to get rushing to get the patch out with the new skill.

    I foresee that the AOE nerf will be scaled back a bit over the coming patches, but the mods that have yet to be touched will be conversely slowly pruned down.

  6. #6
    Junior Member Justarius's Avatar
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    I'll admit I was surprised in the blanket way AoE was nerfed. Simply making it so more than 3 critters get reduced damage feels very... inelegant.

  7. #7
    Senior Member INXS's Avatar
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    Been using BC extensively this what I'm getting, 3 critters 3 dead, 4 critters 3 dead one with very low hp, 5 ...3 always go down and rest got low hp. I do see the nerf as what it actually should be before it was way too easy now can't kill all in one shot, that's ok I got more abilities that I can use, been grinding priest skill using BC and not much of a change compare to before. In short even though my main skill are archery/BC this "nerf" seems right and just.

  8. #8
    Senior Member Golliathe's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by INXS View Post
    I do see the nerf as what it actually should be before it was way too easy now can't kill all in one shot, that's ok I got more abilities that I can use, been grinding priest skill using BC and not much of a change compare to before. In short even though my main skill are archery/BC this "nerf" seems right and just.
    This is way to cut and dry comparison of AoE and balance. Take a look at something like Sword/Shield and compare that to Fire/Mentalism. I started this game with a friend as Fire/mental and he went Sword/shield. Sword had some pretty strong AoE powers based on gear but paired with shield you also have no problem tanking. Sword is very strong and quite honestly is in need of a nerf for single targets to be on par with the weakened state of Aoes. What?

    Why play fire magic? Like seriously, whats the point of fire magic with the AoE nerfed? With the current end game most things resist fire so you're dead weight. Know what fire is good for? It's a nice utility skill I use to avoid cold weather problems. Considering the time/resources I spent on a lvl 50 class that's a complete waste.

    To make a long story short it really isn't fair balance if you have something like sword that is amazing for tanking a single boss AND has good AoE options based on gear. Fire can't tank a wet paper bag (even if you throw on plate armor). Fire has to do something well or no one will use it.


    Overall in my opinion the problem of AoE attacks is a design problem as much as a class balance problem. From my point of view it feels like lazy content design to just have high end play be swarms of monsters. Players naturally went for the path of least resistance vs swarms and the solution was AoE attacks.

    Question for the developer:

    If you're going to limit players to effectively damaging 3 mobs at a time for full value then can we please have a way to pull only 3 mobs at a time? (that doesn't require jumping through a flaming hoop while under the effects of a jump potion)

  9. #9
    Member snowe's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yaffy View Post
    The damage scaling is as such (After personal testing):

    3 targets or less: 100% damage
    4 targets: 75% damage
    5 Targets: 50% damage
    6 Targets: 40% damage
    7 Targets: 30% damage
    8 or more: 25% damage

    So with this, I'd like to point out that after 4 mobs, AoEs will be doing less damage in total. You will do 300% of the AoE's damage if you hit 3 or 4 mobs, but when you hit 5 mobs you will start doing less damage in total (50% * 5 = 250%) all the way down to 8 (25% * 8 = 200%). Once you start hitting 12 mobs you'll be back up to 300% and further mobs will increase total damage.
    If 3 is to be the magic number, and the magic number shall be 3, then I would have hoped they'd at least make the decay less capricious.

    Something like:

    <3 targets: 100% damage
    4 targets: 75% damage
    5 targets: 60% damage
    6 targets: 50% damage
    7 targets: 43% damage
    8 targets: 38% damage
    9 targets: 33% damage
    10 targets: 30% damage
    11 targets: 27% damage
    12 targets: 25% damage
    13 targets: 23% damage
    14 targets: 21% damage
    15 targets: 20% damage
    N targets: (300/N)% damage

    At least doing it that way wouldn't run into weird deltas where the total damage done spikes around unexpected because a rabbit hopped into range while fight a few wolves. Particularly for purposes of aggro generation (whether a taunt or otherwise) functions based off of damage done. When the time comes that AoE heals need to be nerfed the math could be done similarly.

    Edit: This would open the door to item mods restricting AoE targets as well. A 'Fire Breath' mod that just hits targets in front of you, or a sword AoE mod that hits your current target +4 others (but never more than 4 to keep the damage from decaying). It could be situationally useful.

  10. #10
    Senior Member INXS's Avatar
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    Anyone remember the 8% damage reduction sword got last year, caused a lot to rage quit, now that's a nerf.



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