Animation Noise Attack Speed and Ruminations on a Way Forward

[Sojufueled]

I wasn't sure which forum to post this is, so I put it here. Hopefully a mod will move it if it seems inappropriate. I'm nervous to write this sort of thing because it's often kind of speaking into the void at a fair bit of personal effort. Anyhow...

I agree with DE that the animation noise is a mess and that weapons feel a little samey at outrageous attack speeds. Still, I don't think the proposed nerfs are going to do a whole lot about that and I think anything that actually would would be very unpopular with a huge segment of players. Still, though a tough nut to crack, games have done it.

One place to look is at Monster Hunter. In that game damage bonuses are normalized in proportion to the animation frames of the weapon you're using. Warframe differs from Monster Hunter in that you can get attack speed bonuses. Those are effectively a multiplicative damage and status modifier, making them one of the best stats you can get.

 What if, however, you could convert that bonus from an effective multiplier to an actual one? The easiest thing you could try is to have a mod that converted all attack speed bonuses to a flat % damage and status bonus. The play feel would be slow, but the numbers should come out the same.

The bolder solution would be to implement this idea systemically, but the math gets complicated. Every melee weapon attack (stance by stance) gets a coefficient derived from a selected baseline frame count (for instance, a stanceless skana swing) as the divisor and the attack's frame count as the numerator. That fraction is then used to determine how much of the attack's speed bonus received from mods and abilities is added as a pure damage multiplier and a pure status multiplier, and how much of it is still received as attack speed. Then the added damage and status is normalized against the new modifier attack speed before being applied to prevent double dipping. That's all very complicated, but the gist is some portion of attacks speed will still give you equal benefit without actually making you swing any faster in game.

I think I'm right about how this would work, but I'm hardly a math whiz. I'd be happy to see people riff on this and improve it.

[Artekkor]

Ironically that's literally what Spoiled Strike does.

I did some math once and basically came to conclusion that DPS with Spoiled Strike as 8th slot VS +90% elemental in same slot is basically the same with microscopis difference of some 1-3% DPS.

Of course, that's not accounting for combo gains, extra status procs, yadi yada. So spoiled strike is still objectively worse and there is no situation where its useful. Classic corrupted mod, being objectively bad because that's what corrupted mods are for, kek.

So uh... Yeah. Screw attack speed. Attack speed bad. Buff spoiled strike to 200%.

[Sojufueled]

1 minute ago, Artekkor said:

Ironically that's literally what Spoiled Strike does.

I did some math once and basically came to conclusion that DPS with Spoiled Strike as 8th slot VS +90% elemental in same slot is basically the same with microscopis difference of some 1-3% DPS.

Of course, that's not accounting for combo gains, extra status procs, yadi yada. So spoiled strike is still objectively worse and there is no situation where its useful. Classic corrupted mod, being objectively bad because that's what corrupted mods are for, kek.

So uh... Yeah. Screw attack speed. Attack speed bad. Buff spoiled strike to 200%.

The problem with spoiled strike is it's additive with other damage bonuses. So the attack speed penalty isn't worth it at all. My suggestion gets nearer to the practical effect of attack speed.