Hey DE, care to explain this? (Undesirable effects of a flawed DPS cap.)

[Traumtulpe]

12 minutes ago, Alpheus said:

NGL this is explains why it feels like no matter what frame I bring I always end up having to use CO heavies to kill them in a reasonable time.

Precisely. It doesn't make sense to say "Oh, you are right, we need to buff guns so they compare better to melee.", when gun's are only bad in the first place because you artificially, and secretly, limit the maximum DPS they are allowed to do to far below that of melee weapons.

Buffs won't change anything then, you could give Hornet Strike 1000% damage, or 10000000% damage, the enemies won't die any faster. If DE buffed fire-rate mods as well, guns would only become weaker, ironically.

[ReddyDisco]

35 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Precisely. It doesn't make sense to say "Oh, you are right, we need to buff guns so they compare better to melee.", when gun's are only bad in the first place because you artificially, and secretly, limit the maximum DPS they are allowed to do to far below that of melee weapons.

Buffs won't change anything then, you could give Hornet Strike 1000% damage, or 10000000% damage, the enemies won't die any faster. If DE buffed fire-rate mods as well, guns would only become weaker, ironically.

Do they know they've done goofed or am i being too naive 

[xcrimsonlegendx]

That is odd, not even sure how to process this info.

[herflik]

DE don't know how to balance stuff and they don't know how to play into "diminishing returns" game.

Diminishing should mean that the more stat you have the less it is worth.

Example of mechanic - for each 20% fire rate you get 10% less of the value:

- 20% fire rate = 20% fire rate

- 40% fire rate = 20% + 20%*0,9 = 38% fire rate

- 60% fire rate = 20% + 20%*0,9 +20%*0,9*0,9 = 54% fire rate

This way increasing something is always increasing it, but less than stated. The current mechanic for some bosses (thumper or acolytes) simply convert your dmg to always do same DPS, but it doesn't take into account much of stuff : reload times, ammunition waste, accuracy and so on.

[Traumtulpe]

25 minutes ago, herflik said:

DE don't know how to balance stuff and they don't know how to play into "diminishing returns" game. [...] This way increasing something is always increasing it, but less than stated. The current mechanic for some bosses (thumper or acolytes) simply convert your dmg to always do same DPS

In my naivity, that is exactly what I assumed would be the case. I completely agree.

[Berzerkules]

That's some dirty math DE. Shame on you.

[Aldain]

And people wonder why I say "DE is historically bad at math".

[Tesseract7777]

7 minutes ago, Aldain said:

And people wonder why I say "DE is historically bad at math".

Chroma is a good case study of that. 

[Redfeather75]

I am in shock and not sure how I feel about this.

[(PSN)thowed]

10 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

I don't have one, obviously, nor am I going to level one for you, obviously. Have some pictures instead:

Got the Acolyte who disables abilities, so it was a bit bothersome getting everything right, but you can clearly see I do the same damage in both pictures - once with 759% Vex Armor, and once without.

Anyone who knows wanna address this part of the topic?  Is Vex armor really useless?  Does it just flat out not work on certain enemies?  I don't know much about the behind the scenes numbers and haven't played Chroma in a while.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

1 hour ago, (PSN)thowed said:

Anyone who knows wanna address this part of the topic?  Is Vex armor really useless?  Does it just flat out not work on certain enemies?  I don't know much about the behind the scenes numbers and haven't played Chroma in a while.

No it's not useless. If anything this enemy type simply has a damage reduction mechanism that either greatly reduces damage or has a max dmg per hit mechanic. 

[DrivaMain]

1 hour ago, (PSN)thowed said:

Anyone who knows wanna address this part of the topic?  Is Vex armor really useless?  Does it just flat out not work on certain enemies?  I don't know much about the behind the scenes numbers and haven't played Chroma in a while.

It's not Vex Armor. It's the player DPS based enemy DR math. I explained this on the previous reply where critical hits are taken account after the modded damage is taken to account. The con of this it makes status weapons even more uselesss.

[Traumtulpe]

3 hours ago, (PSN)thowed said:

Anyone who knows wanna address this part of the topic?  Is Vex armor really useless?  Does it just flat out not work on certain enemies?  I don't know much about the behind the scenes numbers and haven't played Chroma in a while.

This enemy (anything that isn't fodder, really), has a maximum DPS he is allowed to receive. If your weapon already achives this DPS on it's own, Vex Armor will indeed do nothing, as you can see. This mechanic can however be bypassed to some extent with melee weapons.

Vex armor is affected since it provides base damage, which is part of the calculation of the allowed damage. I believe Rhino's Roar isn't, so it should still work. But I can't say for sure.

[(NSW)Greybones]

29 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

This enemy (anything that isn't fodder, really), has a maximum DPS he is allowed to receive. If your weapon already achives this DPS on it's own, Vex Armor will indeed do nothing, as you can see. This mechanic can however be bypassed to some extent with melee weapons.

Vex armor is affected since it provides base damage, which is part of the calculation of the allowed damage. I believe Rhino's Roar isn't, so it should still work. But I can't say for sure.

Er. This sounds... okay? You kind of mulched him regardless of the limit on DPS.

I'm not at the point where I'm hitting some sort of DPS wall with the enemies I fight, so I'm not quite sure what the problem is aside from unexpected damage numbers. Would appreciate insight into the thinking behind the dissatisfaction (I may have missed such insight in earlier posts. Sorry if that's the case, and I may need it spelled out for me).

It's a bit odd that the TTK was faster without the arcane, but I'm not sure it made much of a difference?

🤔

It's not like DPS gets affected unless it hits that wall, is that correct? I'm guessing under normal circumstances you'd be doing the same numbers but 120% faster

[Traumtulpe]

8 minutes ago, (NSW)Greybones said:

I'm not at the point where I'm hitting some sort of DPS wall with the enemies I fight, so I'm not quite sure what the problem is aside from unexpected damage numbers. Would appreciate insight into the thinking behind the dissatisfaction (I may have missed such insight in earlier posts. Sorry if that's the case, and I may need it spelled out for me).

Well, that Chroma there? I put 3 Umbra Forma on him, among other things. Kind of a bummer that he turns out to be completely useless. That the only ability he is used for doesn't work on anything but fodder enemies you oneshot anyway.

That Arcane? I farmed Scarlet Spear for it. The event was a buggy mess. Guess what, it was a waste of time, all this time I was using an Arcane that reduces my damage instead of increasing it.

And the worst thing of all of it? It's all for the sake of some fake balance, where all your stats are irrelevant, and the enemy dies at a pace DE decided for you, irrespective of what you do. And it's all secret too, DE really just want's to pretend they actually balanced this game, it would appear. It's thoroughly disheartening.

[(NSW)Greybones]

7 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Well, that Chroma there? I put 3 Umbra Forma on him, among other things. Kind of a bummer that he turns out to be completely useless. That the only ability he is used for doesn't work on anything but fodder enemies you oneshot anyway.

That Arcane? I farmed Scarlet Spear for it. The event was a buggy mess. Guess what, it was a waste of time, all this time I was using an Arcane that reduces my damage instead of increasing it.

And the worst thing of all of it? It's all for the sake of some fake balance, where all your stats are irrelevant, and the enemy dies at a pace DE decided for you, irrespective of what you do. And it's all secret too, DE really just want's to pretend they actually balanced this game, it would appear. It's thoroughly disheartening.

Ahhh, I see.

Er. Sounds like you're pretty damn powerful.

You can pretend I'm giving you that sort of awkward "There.... uh... there" pat on the back. You're leagues above me to the point that you're hitting some sort of wall that makes you feel invalidated for the effort you put into getting... even more powerful.

If I ended up with an Arcane that increased my firerate by 120%, I'm not sure I'd have all of the other bits to combine with it to hit the DPS wall 😓

[Graavarg]

Lowering damage per hit from a higher fire-rate is simply wrong. It is a form of cheating, applying extra rules that works counter-intuitively to how the game is supposed to work.

Even so, it is easy to understand why DE has resorted to such balancing mechanics. Balancing with a simple "max damage per hit"-cap would just make us increase the fire-rate (and multishot) in order to take the enemy down faster, no surprise there. But that still doesn't make this ok, artificially reducing the actual damage a gun is modded for based on an increase in fire-rate is just plain-out wrong. I would even go so far as to say it is unacceptable.

It is also unnecessary, since it could be replaced by an Adaptation-like function, reducing the amount of damage per consecutive hit over a short period of time. A high fire-rate weapon would then (of course) be more affected and reach the max reduction level faster. Just like with the mod we Tenno can use, though it would apply to "all damage" (not being damage-type specific). No more need to cheat with the calculations. And if there is a need to also hinder single-shot insta-kills, such a damage reduction function would work quite well with a "max damage per hit"-cap.

Bosses need to be bosses, and feel like bosses when you fight them. While insta-/easy-killing a boss is a fun power trip, it also diminishes the game. At the same time players with huge differences in equipment and DPS encounter the same bosses in the game, so balancing the game for a fully META-equipped, all-knowing MR30 and a "not even fully modded" brave MR7 at the same time is a challenge. But I agree with OP, reducing the amount of damage per hit according to your fire-rate is "cheating", and "not ok".

[Traumtulpe]

3 minutes ago, Graavarg said:

But I agree with OP, reducing the amount of damage per hit according to your fire-rate is "cheating", and "not ok".

You ever so slightly misunderstood me, I think this kind of cheating is acceptable to some extend. As someone else pointed out, there is something called "diminishing returns" commonly used in games, to serve the purpose of keeping MR7 and MR30 players in the same ballpark.

However, the way DE does it is just godawful. Instead of diminishing your efforts, they wall them off. "You have reached the maximum allowed DPS, whatever you do now, it's pointless."

Even worse, their calculations are terribly half-assed, a single heavy attack oneshot's those enemies, and they don't take reload times or crit chance into account, invalidating many weapons. It's really just bad all round.

Imagine buying an Arcane for plat that reads "Increases fire rate by 120%", but when it's in your inventory the text changes to "Reduces ammo efficiency by 100%". No, it's even worse, the real, negative, effect is never revealed except through testing.

[Graavarg]

5 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

You ever so slightly misunderstood me, I think this kind of cheating is acceptable to some extend.

You are right, I could have been clearer.

I have no problem with damage reduction mechanics as such, but my point was that reducing the amount of damage per hit based on an increase in fire-rate on the weapon is simply wrong. That is where the "cheating" comes in, since this is changing the basic rules for how the "Warframe universe" is supposed to work. So DE should find another way to achieve the balancing they need.

There is a logical framework where such a reduction would be ok, for example if you have a beam weapon with a max 1 kW effect (a fixed amount of energy per second). In such a case firing more "shots" per time would decrease the amount of damage per shot, since the total amount of damage per time is fixed. But if you are firing bullets, it is completely nonsensical that your bullets would do less damage if you fire more of them (per time). From a logical standpoint that is simply ridiculous...

[MqToasty]

Okay, I crunched the numbers a bit, and the hard DPS limit theory seems about right.  It's just that, due to reloads, a slower weapon will actually kill faster because you do not waste time reloading.  Here's the math if anyone's interested:

Base Catabolyst Fire Rate: 12/sec.
Multishot w/ Barrel Diffusion and Lethal Torrent: 2.8x.

Without Arcane Velocity:
Catabolyst Fire Rate w/ Lethal Torrent: 12 x 1.6 = 19.2/sec.
with Multishot: 19.2 x 2.8 = 53.76
Damage per shot (as seen in video): 962
DPS limit: 53.76 x 962 = 51,717.12

With Arcane Velocity:
Catabolyst Fire Rate w/ Lethal Torrent and Arcane Velocity activated: 12 x 2.8 = 33.6/sec.
with Multishot: 33.6 x 2.8 = 94.08
Damage per shot (as seen in video): 550
DPS limit: 94.08 x 550 = 51,744

There's probably some rounding here and there to account for the tiny difference, but there you have it.  If I had to hazard a guess, I would say Level 140 Acolytes have around 520k HP+Shields and they don't want them to die in less than 10 seconds.  So when fighting Level 140 Acolytes, don't bother trying to cast abilities or further increase damage output if your DPS already exceeds 51,000.  Instead, lower your fire rate to conserve ammo and kill faster by skipping reloads.

[FireSegment]

@Traumtulpei would really appreciate if you consider edit the first post with information about how vex armor didn't help, and the DPS problem that seem to pretty much concluded here, to help with the unavoidable derivative/off-topic comment to come. May be also edit the title to me more precise, devs usually ignore title like that.

Not everyone would scroll to the 3rd page to read if the problem resolved and i really think this need as much visibility as it could get.

 

[Traumtulpe]

25 minutes ago, FireSegment said:

May be also edit the title to me more precise, devs usually ignore title like that.

Fair point, though don't they ignore forum posts regardless of title? Anyhow, I hope the changes are satisfactory, minimal as they are.

[DreadgeNought]

22 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

I recently had reason to explain the weird diminishing returns on DPS this game gives relevant enemies, so I recorded a comparison video to highlight it's effect. However, even I was surprised when I looked at the result:

Identical enemies, identical setup, identical (relevant) buffs, with one exception: The first clip has 120% extra fire rate from an Arcane, while the second clip had an empty Arcane slot instead.

I had my expectations, of course, what I didn't expect however, was that the clip without Arcane is 20% shorter. Yes, apparently the arcane reduces my DPS by 20%. WTF?!

Something must have gone horribly wrong with your calculations, not for the first time, I might add. I'd really like some feedback from you on this!

something do seem sus.

[MqToasty]

15 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

Fair point, though don't they ignore forum posts regardless of title? Anyhow, I hope the changes are satisfactory, minimal as they are.

I have to ask though, what kind of change are you hoping for?  The problem, as I see it is this.  DE is attempting to balance the game while maintaining (at least) these aspects of the game:

1. Provide a heavily moddable weapon system with more than a dozen types of damage, variable number of shots per trigger pull and variable fire rate.
2. Provide some semblance of a challenge where field bosses do not die too quickly (10 seconds seems to be the target for Acolytes here).
3. Multiplayer, allowing different players to tackle the same foes with different weapon setups.

What kind of system other than the current one could possibly fulfill all of these at the same time?

[Traumtulpe]

1 minute ago, MqToasty said:

1. Provide a heavily moddable weapon system with more than a dozen types of damage, variable number of shots per trigger pull and variable fire rate.
2. Provide some semblance of a challenge where field bosses do not die too quickly (10 seconds seems to be the target for Acolytes here).
3. Multiplayer, allowing different players to tackle the same foes with different weapon setups.

As already mentioned, I was expecting diminishing returns instead of a hard cap in the first place. Also, those goals are not even met. I can kill an Acolyte in one second or less, using a melee weapon.

At the very least, the case with Vex Armor doing nothing, and people complaining about the effectivity of guns, should make it obvious that the current cap is in the wrong spot.