Talk:Nearby

Just... WHAT? 08:13, 7 Aug 2005 (EST)
 * It's describing the actual range of skills that effect "nearby." The skills listed resurrect "nearby" allies, etc.  --Fyren 16:25, 7 Aug 2005 (EST)
 * Yes, perhaps "WHAT" isn't explicit enough. If the term "nearby" varies for every skill then perhaps the skills should not be linked. Surely it is worthwhile just saying in the notes "The actual range of this skill is..."? 21:32, 7 Aug 2005 (EST)
 * Heh, sorry. It isn't the first time I've had to decypher an Ollj page for someone else.  You're right.  --Fyren 02:54, 8 Aug 2005 (EST)

There is actually no "nearby" spell I used that covers half aggro range or full aggro range. All nearby spells are basically a full circle of red dots around the current red dot you are targetting. Much smaller than aggro range. --Karlos 03:13, 8 Aug 2005 (EST)

The online manual list the ranges:
 * Adjacent: An area of effect that equals 156 inches from the target point. This is the smallest area of effect.
 * Nearby: An area of effect that is equal to 240 inches.
 * In the location: An area of effect that is equal to 312 inches. This is the largest possible area of effect.

I've also added some more ranges to Area of Effect. --Tetris L 05:03, 6 Sep 2005 (EST)


 * Bleh. There's been testing done by the people at the gwonline.net forums.  The ranges vary between skills even with the same term.  So, two spells that say "nearby" DON'T have the same range, though in general (they found an exception), that range is larger than "adjacent."  --Fyren 06:25, 6 Sep 2005 (EST)


 * Bleh. I wonder how they did the testing. It'd be damn hard to make precise measurements and to tell the difference between 13, 20 and 26 feet, considering all of these distances are small compared to the aggo circle of 88 feet. Anyway ... these are the official numbers and I've got no reason to believe that the GW code doesn't measure distances correctly. --Tetris L 15:10, 6 Sep 2005 (EST)


 * Double-Bleh, we have to recognize by now that ArenaNet's standards of documentation are not that high to begin with. Quite frankly, listing those areas of effect in inches is in and of itself proof that the guy who wrote that part is either a lousy developer or a pizza delivery guy.
 * I'll give you an easy example: Meteor Shower and Chain Lightning have the exact same "area of effect," the magic word here being "Near." That said, they recently (during PvPX) announced that they "tightened" Chain Lightning a bit, and as an avid user of both, I can tell you that it is true, Chain Lightning has become narrower in effect. Yet, both still use the same loose fitting word "near."
 * I am not saying ignore the manual or official word altogether, but when official word conflicts with reality in the game, I think we have enough reasons now to ignore what the documents say. --Karlos 15:41, 6 Sep 2005 (EST)
 * If we have evidence that the official numbers are not always correct, then maybe we should list them, but with a NOTE. --Tetris L 16:21, 6 Sep 2005 (EST)

The guys that did the test lined people up in a row, touching, and decided their base unit of measure was the width of a player. Then they'd cast at a person at the beginning of a line and see how far down the line it had an effect. Between various "adjacent" and "nearby" skills, it turned out the range varied between something like three people to nine people, with all values represented. Of course, there's some margin of error. I don't know if they made assumptions about players' bounding boxes or if they tested anything. But, I don't think measurement error can account for this: First test results (scroll down to AoE range test), second test results. There's a link at the top of those to view the whole thread if you want. --Fyren 21:16, 6 Sep 2005 (EST)
 * "Fear me!": "adjacent," 9 person radius
 * Spiteful Spirit: "adjacent," 3 person radius
 * Enfeebling Blood: "nearby," 3 person radius
 * Unholy Feast: "nearby," 7 person radius
 * Dang it, Fyren! You're going to get me to start rambling about software prodcedures once again!! :) It is blatantly obvious to me that somewhere along the making of Guild Wars, Developers started to tweak skills without telling documentation people. (Happens all the time, first they call them "undocumented features" then "easter eggs" then "bugs" then they become part of the "expected behavior" of the software.) There should be no way on earth that a skill with adjacent would reach 9 people and a skill with "nearby" would reach only 3. I agree, we should place a note indicating that while nearby is "generally" the range mentioned by Arena Net, it has been known to fluctuate. --Karlos 21:34, 6 Sep 2005 (EST)
 * With the way the results are looking, I wouldn't even say any of the terms generally mean anything. --Fyren 21:36, 6 Sep 2005 (EST)
 * If these results had more credibility we could incorporate them as our "measuring unit" for skill AoEs. Perhaps we could even make our own measurements. To make a judgement call on all skills (i.e. on Nearby being meaningless), we'd need to see results for all skills. --Karlos 21:41, 6 Sep 2005 (EST)
 * I'd be up for testing. The fact that there's so many skills is pretty daunting.  Worse is that the testing will involve people just standing around, which might not turn out well, heh.  --Fyren 21:47, 6 Sep 2005 (EST)