An Elegant Damage Solution [Imgs]

[notionphil]

DE is putting a lot of effort into fixing and re-fixing Damage 2.0. It's a bumpy road, but they are getting there.

 

Damage 2.0 has always been about choice. Finally with 11.5, the D2.0 system has moved away from a 'best' build for each faction; however, intuitiveness and simplicity were the messy casualties of that war.

 

There are currently 12 resistance 'surfaces', and the categories themselves range from rather logical (flesh, mechanical) to horribly obscure (sinew? proto-shield?). All in all, the system is too complex for any real-time decision making. The over-abundance of choice without intuitiveness results in a system that can only be tamed by chart-consultation or wrote memorization.

 

The best solution to any problem is always the most simple. In trying to come up with a parsimonious solution, I took a step back and re-wrote the problem statement.

 

Damage should vary both per faction and per enemy

 

When that is done, player choice/builds can matter. That was the goal, and is what 11.5 has accomplished. However, DE is solving a 3 Dimensional problem on a 2D grid, which is why we've ended up with 12 resistances. I scrapped the idea of the 2D grid and a very literal solution jumped at me; make some damage types vary per faction and others per enemy "type". This is the result:

 

 

 

 

 

An intuitive damage system where you decide what you want your weapon to be 'good at' and build accordingly. Do you want a gun which is a generalist and can damage everything pretty evenly? Or do you want a specialist gun which can take out a heavy mobs, but is weak against elites (or vice versa)?

 

Physical Damage Types give moderate faction-based bonuses, drawing from the core U11 model. They are weapon defining charateristics.

 

Primary Elements give small faction-based bonuses. This is to ensure they are all viable against any faction, allowing you to build for your taste, or min-max. They can also be used to offset an ill-suited physical damage type.

 

Secondary Elements give bonuses/penalties against Elite or Heavy enemies. They do not give factional bonuses or penalties at all.

 

More about mob types:

All enemies in the game are divided into light/medium, Heavy or Elite.

 

Light/Medium mobs generally have low HP, thus there are no builds dedicated to taking them out. There is no reason to spec for a mob you are going to kill in a milisecond of focus fire.

 

Elite mobs are focused on damage output and need to be dealt with quickly before they overcome you. Their name would be marked with a sword icon.

-Fusion Moa, Grineer Heavy, Grineer Scorch, Ancient Disruptor

 

Heavy mobs are defensively focused, they can withstand a tremendous amount of punishment. Their name would be marked with a shield icon.

-Corpus Tech, Grineer Bombard, Grineer Napalm. Toxic Ancient, Ancient Healer.

 

 

When selecting secondary elements, you can build a balanced gun (radiation or viral) or go all the way to a specialized gun (blast or corrosive). The more damage potential you have in your secondary element, the higher the tradeoff.

 

You can equip a pair (EG: gas+magnetic) of secondary elements to cancel out the penalties, or use a primary element for a moderate faction bonus.

 

With this system, there is no memorization and there is no best build. Every build will be viable against every faction. Some will be more tailored to specific mob types, and some will be more general.

Edited December 20, 2013 by notionphil

[Toddwjp]

its finw as is. just toxin mods need to be easier to get

[Morgax]

With this system, there is no memorization and there is no best build. Every build will be viable against every faction. Some will be more tailored to specific mob types, and some will be more general.

Thank you, someone finally get it.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

I'm partial to the updated suggestion in my thread, but I definitely see the advantages of this and would be fine i this got implemented instead of what I put forward.  The two ideas go in different directions.  Mine is in the direction of player growth (what I'd prefer to see) and Notion has provided a system with a great deal of choice.  Different goals (both perfectly valid ones IMHO), different reasonable solutions.

 

One concern though:  Why not just build raw Viral vs Infested/Grineer or raw Magnetic against Corpus and just let the proc's do all the work for you?

Edited December 20, 2013 by Volt_Cruelerz

[Unibot]

This is bs.

Remove your -%% and beaf +%%

Your chart makes it clear that elemental and ammo type damage won't have any purpose except loitering mod slots.

+15 / -15 This is a joke.

Edited December 20, 2013 by Unibot

[notionphil]

I'm partial to the updated suggestion in my thread, but I definitely see the advantages of this and would be fine i this got implemented instead of what I put forward.  The two ideas go in different directions.  Mine is in the direction of player growth (what I'd prefer to see) and Notion has provided a system with a great deal of choice.  Different goals (both perfectly valid ones IMHO), different reasonable solutions.

 

One concern though:  Why not just build raw Viral vs Infested/Grineer or raw Magnetic against Corpus and just let the proc's do all the work for you?

 

Thanks Volt.

 

If you are asking why wouldn't a player go pure viral, or pure magnetic, they certainly could. I'd love to see people using elements bc of other reasons besides the bonus %.

 

They'd be trading away the raw power of Corrosive or Blast, and the factionwide small bonus of a primary element. This system is about meaningful choice.

[notionphil]

This is bs.

Remove your -%% and beaf +%%

Your chart makes it clear that elemental and ammo type damage won't have any purpose except loitering mod slots.

+15 / -15 This is a joke.

 

Giving absurdly high bonuses only makes an element 'required' against that faction. We may as well not even use elements in that case.

 

Just use the Smite Grinner/Corpus if that's what you want.

 

Boring.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Thanks Volt.

 

If you are asking why wouldn't a player go pure viral, or pure magnetic, they certainly could. I'd love to see people using elements bc of other reasons besides the bonus %.

 

They'd be trading away the raw power of Corrosive or Blast, and the factionwide small bonus of a primary element. This system is about meaningful choice.

But if they can halve enemy health several times with a given shot (Brakk), why ever use anything else?  I'm just saying that I'm afraid that this would mean that because damage modifiers have less potency, procs would shine more and people would naturally gravitate towards the best ones.  Everyone would just end up using Viral/Magnetic always because their downsides are minimal when compared to their capabilities.

[notionphil]

Viral/mag damage only halves it once, no stacking.

 

So you'd be trading off 35% less damage against a specialized type for a chance at reducing max hp/shields by 50%. It's a decision you'd have to make.

 

If you have a low DPS weapon, viral might be better. Or if you had a high status chance. Some people always prefer bigger #'s as well, so many would still opt for Corrosive/Blast.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Viral/mag damage only halves it once, no stacking.

 

So you'd be trading off 35% less damage against a specialized type for a chance at reducing max hp/shields by 50%. It's a decision you'd have to make.

 

If you have a low DPS weapon, viral might be better. Or if you had a high status chance. Some people always prefer bigger #'s as well, so many would still opt for Corrosive/Blast.

I've heard from multiple sources that this is false, at least one of which was a dataminer: Viral can stack and will continue to halve enemy health 50->25->12.5... as long as you get procs within 6 seconds of each other which isn't exactly hard, especially on shotties.

[notionphil]

I've heard from multiple sources that this is false, at least one of which was a dataminer: Viral can stack and will continue to halve enemy health 50->25->12.5... as long as you get procs within 6 seconds of each other which isn't exactly hard, especially on shotties.

 

If that happens it should be fixed. There's no reason for recursive health halving unless its part of an intricately balanced system...which it is not. Lets assume that would be removed/fixed in this system.

[Dan137W1750n]

I think the system you are presenting is too simple and too far departed from logic. It opens a system where everyone carries a Cold Corrosive Soma and a secondary Blast weapon with faction mods.

 

I liked the original Damage 2.0, but went from not too bad to ridiculous to overly complicated and lacking any sort of realism. I do like some of the damage types, like the differentiation between Corpus humans and robots. But this latest incarnation is game mechanics that don't mimic real life, but game mechanics for their own sake. Toxin damage does extra damage to advanced "proto shields"? Gosh, apparently proto shields are living biological creatures, since that's what poison will affect... And that "fossilized" Infested takes less damage from Toxins than a bloody robot. Biological viruses do more damage to Corpus Robots and their @(*()$ shields than to a living Infested. Blast is the same as impact, force applied over a large area, yet entirely different bonuses.

 

If you'll accept that "logic", you can put bonuses and penalties anywhere you want.

 

At this point, they should just get rid of the damage type names... Primary damage types can be A, B, and C. Otherwise it's too easy to point of logical fallacies like how puncture gets a damage bonus to Sinew, even though Fossilized is more like armor and butchers don't cut sinews with a nail.

[notionphil]

I think the system you are presenting is too simple and too far departed from logic. It opens a system where everyone carries a Cold Corrosive Soma and a secondary Blast weapon with faction mods.

 

Or do they carry toxin on their soma bc they prefer to avoid shields? Or viral/magnetic for the health halving.

I disagree that everyone would use your suggested builds, in fact the poster above you just pointed out two other 'go to' builds that he felt everyone would use. That's the point of this system. It's not about the surfaces or resistances. Its about making your own build not a 'best' build. Different builds would also work better w different weapons. With an AoE type you might want to go for magnetic or gas instead of corrosive. With a pinpoint sniper you might go corrosive. With a handcannon or melee you might prefer a cold + viral or radiation to deal with whatever gets through the cracks. There is much more flexibility than you think.

Also the system is much closer to logic than the current system. I didn't go into detail about each secondary damage type in the OP but the logical basis is that elite units are lighter, not generally in 'environmental protective gear' and more vulnerable to AoE 'type' damage. That's why blast, gas and radiation affect them.

Heavy units are walking tanks which is why damage suited for wearing down a fortified target works on them; corrosive, magnetic and viral.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

I disagree that everyone would use your suggested builds, in fact the poster above you just pointed out two other 'go to' builds that he felt everyone would use.

True, but I did so with the knowledge that Viral can proc multiple times, making it a very terrifying thing indeed.  You then proceeded to veto that mechanic in your system, so of course no one would use it.

[notionphil]

True, but I did so with the knowledge that Viral can proc multiple times, making it a very terrifying thing indeed.  You then proceeded to veto that mechanic in your system, so of course no one would use it.

That is a fair point.

However I don't think the assumption that 'everyone' will use corrosive and blast is at all accurate.

My assumption is that some players would want to avoid the penalties of a high 'class' bonus damage build, and instead build well rounds guns. Other players would prefer to achieve a similar bonus damage purely factionally, and do so via physical and primary types. Others would want the big numbers regardless of the cost of having to switch weapons mid combat, and build the corrosive/blast guns. While others still would realize forgo the moderate boost of min-maxing, especially with primary elements and use their favorite proc.

The goal of this system is to make builds more about playstyle and preference than which specific mobs you are fighting. Otherwise we are truly just making multiple versions of 'smite grineer, smite corpus'. If you feel that it could be more effective at doing so please suggest how. Reduce gap between high/low secondary bonuses?

[PhoenixShi]

An elegant solution, would be simplification, not more complexity. We seem to be in this mess as instead of saying "no, you can't have more than one element type on your weapon" they allowed it, then decided to make up combined elemental damage, and decided physical damage on it's own wasn't enough, so split that into three. Now we have this huge pile of damage types, so they're trying to get all of them to have usefulness, and drawbacks. Having just a small collection of surface types to work with wasn't enough, so they added multiple types of armour, shields, flesh, and whatever else they come up with next. The end result is the massive chart we have now, that we need to study every other week as they change things again, and again, and again.

 

An elegant solution would to strip out all the nonsense we have now, and just have us do damage. There is only one type of physical damage, not three, want to add an element type to your weapon, ok, but you can only add one with only say three or four types to choose from. Grineer are the armoured mobs that soak up more damage, Corpus have regenerating shields we need to take down before we can damage them, Infested could be tough skinned, or have reduced properties of the Grineer/Corpus mob they are made from, plus swarm. If there were four element types each could have a proc (dot, stun, slow, weaken, etc...) with each faction being weak to one, strong against two of them, and neutral to the fourth, or just neutral to all of them so it's a matter of picking the proc you want. There, simple, easy to work with for them, and easy for us to understand.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

An elegant solution, would be simplification, not more complexity. We seem to be in this mess as instead of saying "no, you can't have more than one element type on your weapon" they allowed it, then decided to make up combined elemental damage, and decided physical damage on it's own wasn't enough, so split that into three. Now we have this huge pile of damage types, so they're trying to get all of them to have usefulness, and drawbacks. Having just a small collection of surface types to work with wasn't enough, so they added multiple types of armour, shields, flesh, and whatever else they come up with next. The end result is the massive chart we have now, that we need to study every other week as they change things again, and again, and again.

 

An elegant solution would to strip out all the nonsense we have now, and just have us do damage. There is only one type of physical damage, not three, want to add an element type to your weapon, ok, but you can only add one with only say three or four types to choose from. Grineer are the armoured mobs that soak up more damage, Corpus have regenerating shields we need to take down before we can damage them, Infested could be tough skinned, or have reduced properties of the Grineer/Corpus mob they are made from, plus swarm. If there were four element types each could have a proc (dot, stun, slow, weaken, etc...) with each faction being weak to one, strong against two of them, and neutral to the fourth, or just neutral to all of them so it's a matter of picking the proc you want. There, simple, easy to work with for them, and easy for us to understand.

So... return Warframe to the days before the Bolto?

[Cpl_Facehugger]

This system is about meaningful choice.

I get that, but I think the problem is that there feels like less meaningful choice with your system. The bonuses are generally so small as to be not worth the effort and mod points, and even in cases where they are, you run into the problem of enemies within a given faction having outright malus to them. Why would I want to run with exploding bullets if heavies, one of the more dangerous and reasonably numerous enemy types, will just laugh off my boombullets?

It wouldn't be as much of an issue if, say, napalms didn't tend to spawn with a bunch of lancers. But in your system you'd to switch guns to kill efficiently. Except you can't do that when you're getting shot at by a napalm and a team of lancers. And honestly, switching guns in the middle of combat isn't fun. I don't like being forced to switch from weapons just because my gun will suddenly stop doing reasonable damage to the enemy; I much prefer being forced to switch weapons because of more tactical considerations like distance (ie run into wide open tile on corpus outpost? Better whip out my braton prime instead of brakk. Stuck in the middle of a grineer galleon? Brakk it up) instead of my bullets arbitrarily doing less damage.

I think the solution to 'one build to rule them all' is to make multiple mutually exclusive damage types of relatively equal benefit vs a given faction. For instance, equalize gas and blast against grineer; both require heat damage, so you can't have a gun that has both blast and gas unless it's an ignis (and even then I'd chance the elemental priority to disallow this). This would leave players choosing whether they'd rather have knockdown or area effect DoT.

Edited December 22, 2013 by Cpl_Facehugger

[notionphil]

I get that, but I think the problem is that there feels like less meaningful choice with your system. The bonuses are generally so small as to be not worth the effort and mod points, and even in cases where they are, you run into the problem of enemies within a given faction having outright malus to them. Why would I want to run with exploding bullets if heavies, one of the more dangerous and reasonably numerous enemy types, will just laugh off my boombullets?

It wouldn't be as much of an issue if, say, napalms didn't tend to spawn with a bunch of lancers. But in your system you'd to switch guns to kill efficiently. Except you can't do that when you're getting shot at by a napalm and a team of lancers. And honestly, switching guns in the middle of combat isn't fun. I don't like being forced to switch from weapons just because my gun will suddenly stop doing reasonable damage to the enemy; I much prefer being forced to switch weapons because of more tactical considerations like distance (ie run into wide open tile on corpus outpost? Better whip out my braton prime instead of brakk. Stuck in the middle of a grineer galleon? Brakk it up) instead of my bullets arbitrarily doing less damage.

I think the solution to 'one build to rule them all' is to make multiple mutually exclusive damage types of relatively equal benefit vs a given faction. For instance, equalize gas and blast against grineer; both require heat damage, so you can't have a gun that has both blast and gas unless it's an ignis (and even then I'd chance the elemental priority to disallow this). This would leave players choosing whether they'd rather have knockdown or area effect DoT.

 

You asked why someone would want to run with a build that heavies laugh off? Well if you scroll up, you can see a post where another would prefer that build and thinks "no one" would want to use a balanced build. That IS choice. You are choosing a build that fits your playstyle (balance, flexibility), they are choosing one that fits theirs (max damage, min-maxing).

 

You are also forgetting that elemental mods simply add damage to your gun. If DE scrapped all of the bonuses, it would still be the most efficient way to add damage to your gun.

 

You are simply indicating that the bonus is not attractive enough for you to switch - which is the entire point! It's a sacrifice. It should be a choice that some players fall on either side of. As opposed to "if you don't use build X, you are just doing it wrong".

 

You may have not noticed that heavies are no more common than elites. Please read the list in the OP.

[PhoenixShi]

So... return Warframe to the days before the Bolto?

 

I would like to play the game, not stare at charts. I know, crazy right?

[notionphil]

I would like to play the game, not stare at charts. I know, crazy right?

 

I feel that this system would take us back a step in the right direction, where all damage types are viable against all factions, and most damage types (except 2) don't have any massive penalties, nor are any 'required' because of their massive factional bonuses.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

I feel that this system would take us back a step in the right direction, where all damage types are viable against all factions, and most damage types (except 2) don't have any massive penalties, nor are any 'required' because of their massive factional bonuses.

To be honest, I'm afraid the list of changes that would need to happen to Warframe to make alternate gameplay styles viable would be so exceedingly long as to never be implemented.  It's similar to the issue of difficulty in the game.  We would significantly improve the game if we reworked every frame that has Press 4 to Win, removing %damage, %multishot, and making %element mods convert a percentage of the element to that damage type.  It's just too much change all at once for it to ever happen.

[Cpl_Facehugger]

You asked why someone would want to run with a build that heavies laugh off? Well if you scroll up, you can see a post where another would prefer that build and thinks "no one" would want to use a balanced build. That IS choice. You are choosing a build that fits your playstyle (balance, flexibility), they are choosing one that fits theirs (max damage, min-maxing).

That's the thing though, it's false choice. Like, right now you can run a horribly unoptimized magnetic lex with concussion rounds against infested. The game mechanics fully allow for it. But there's no reason to because the benefits it provides are nigh on nonxeistent. With your system you have players making the 'choice' to optimize for heavy gunners but leaving them screwed if they run into napalms. If they have a secondary that's optimized the other way, they have to switch. And heaven forbid they encounter both at once, like is common on survival missions.

And what about void missions? T3 def gets awfully hectic with craploads of heavy gunners, fusion moas, and ancient healers bum rushing the pod at once. Giving elements strong maluses against 'elites' but not heavies or vice versa sounds like the opening to a bad joke in context of void missions. Sure theorycrafting says that the ruthless optimizer would be equally valid to the equalist who eschews elemental combos, but in practice I don't think it would. You'd focus on that team of heavy gunners only to get knocked down from a tentacle to the rear.

 

You are also forgetting that elemental mods simply add damage to your gun. If DE scrapped all of the bonuses, it would still be the most efficient way to add damage to your gun.

Yes, but embracing that philosophy leads to players not caring about what element they're shoving onto their gun, and instead merely looking at how much bonus damage it provides.

 

You are simply indicating that the bonus is not attractive enough for you to switch - which is the entire point! It's a sacrifice. It should be a choice that some players fall on either side of. As opposed to "if you don't use build X, you are just doing it wrong".

That's the thing, it's already a sacrifice. You have to sacrifice precious mod slots and points to get elemental combos at all. Making it more of a sacrifice just disincentivizes players to actually use all those awesome combos with their flashy visual effects.

 

You may have not noticed that heavies are no more common than elites. Please read the list in the OP.

Oh. I kind of thought elite lancers and crewmen would actually be, you know, elite. :p

Still though, I'm not sure it's a good solution here. Maybe because I predominantly play solo survival, but I'm used to packs of heavy gunners, napalms, and bombards all showing up concurrently.

[Phatose]

Minor suggestion:  The split between elite and heavy should be altered, because the Orokin Void's dangerous enemies are overwhelmingly in your elite category.  Blast becomes basically necessary for the void.

 

I'd probably swap the elemental and physical setups as well, simply because physical damage is typically the base.  It's probably best to not have penalties on the base of the system.

[notionphil]

That's the thing though, it's false choice. Like, right now you can run a horribly unoptimized magnetic lex with concussion rounds against infested. The game mechanics fully allow for it. But there's no reason to because the benefits it provides are nigh on nonxeistent. With your system you have players making the 'choice' to optimize for heavy gunners but leaving them screwed if they run into napalms. If they have a secondary that's optimized the other way, they have to switch. And heaven forbid they encounter both at once, like is common on survival missions.

And what about void missions? T3 def gets awfully hectic with craploads of heavy gunners, fusion moas, and ancient healers bum rushing the pod at once. Giving elements strong maluses against 'elites' but not heavies or vice versa sounds like the opening to a bad joke in context of void missions. Sure theorycrafting says that the ruthless optimizer would be equally valid to the equalist who eschews elemental combos, but in practice I don't think it would. You'd focus on that team of heavy gunners only to get knocked down from a tentacle to the rear.

 

 

 

I think the point still stands. Your point is that there is no reason to run an unbalanced loadout, but the point I am making is that other people disagree and find the min-max bonuses from that loadout worth the cost. I'm not telling you my opinion...I am simply recounting the opinions of the 'ruthless optimizers' you speak of.

 

I'm on your end. I'd prefer balance over some theory-crafted +10000 against one mob. However, either way, the goal of the system is to allow theorycrafting. To allow balance versus min-max discussions to thrive. Anything besides a decidedly, conclusively "best" build versus everything.

 

Is your opinion that a best build versus each faction somehow creates more room for diversity? Not trying to put words in your mouth, would love to hear your actual take on that.