Damage Log

[Adianoeta]

Searched through forums and didn't see anything, so I'm posting this - maybe my Google-fu failed me, so please redirect me if I'm kicking a dead horse here.

 

Would like to see a Damage Log, one where you can scroll through to see how much damage each of your mods is doing to each specific enemy.

 

For example, it could show a list like this:

    You did Frost/Ice/Cold Damage for 100 hit points.

    You did Base Melee Damage for 30 hit points.

    You did Modified Melee Damage for 14 hit points.

    You did Piercing Melee Damage for 27 hit points.

 

Or even better:

     You struck Grineer Lancer (28) for 30 points of Base Melee Damage.

     You struck Grineer Lancer (28) for 13 points of Pressure Point (Mod - Rank 9).

     You struck Grineer Lancer (28) for 27 points of Sundering Strike (Mod - Rank 7).

     You struck Grineer Lancer (28) for 15 points of North Wind (Mod - Rank 11).

     You struck Grineer Lancer (28) for 3 points of Shocking Touch (Mod - Rank 6).

 

Another Variation:

     You struck MOA (43) for 150 points of Charged Melee Damage.

     You struck MOA (43) for 225 points of Killing Blow Damage (150% of Charged Melee Damage).

     You struck MOA (43) for 337.5 points of Sundering Strike Damage (90% of Modified/Total Charged Melee Damage).

     You struck MOA (43) for 225 points of North Wind Damage (60% of Modified/Total Charged Melee Damage).

     You shot Mine Osprey (39) for 30 points of Base Projectile Damage.

 

I'm not sure how damage modifiers exactly work, so the last example is strictly for illustrative purposes.  As you can see, though, a Damage Log would take a LOT of guess work out of determining which Mods and Weapons do how much damage to which NPC.

 

So why am I looking for a Damage Log?  Part of this desire comes from previously playing another F2P (formerly P2P) game, that being Global Agenda, which had a decent Damage Log that would help to determine what modifications to the weapons were helping/hurting.

 

Another reason I'd like to see this is because I'm observing a wide variation between the damage I do to different enemies with my Gram.  With a Charged Attack, I'm doing 500 + 450 damage to Healing Ancients, but I'm not sure what Mod is influencing which damage.  Sure, I could take off a Mod and jump into a session, seek an Ancient, isolate it from everything else and take slow wacks away at it, then do it all over again after finishing the mission and making Mod adjustments in the Arsenal screen.  Thing is, that's incredibly tedious (no, I don't care for the Abort Mission option - yes, I have an obsession with my stats)  Another problem I'm observing is that when I hit the Infested Jumpers with a maxed out Killing Blow, I see myself doing 1500 damage to them.  When North Wind is added on, I see multiple values, two of the larger ones being in the mid to high 200s.  I haven't really exerted any effort into making this empirical evidence, just been seeing the difference over a progression of time, so I could have off numbers/values.  That doesn't invalidate the point that we could use a Damage Log though; I'm doing 675 or so to Grineer Lancers on a Charge Attack, then the aforementioned 500 + 450 to Healing Ancients.

 

Finally, here's something many of you would consider an obvious justification for the Damage Log: various visual effects/FX.  A lot of visual effects can be distracting or obtrusive, a major one being the XP pop up, which often obscures the view of the Damage pop ups.  Sometimes I'm hitting multiple enemies with the Gram and the damage numbers blur together.  Sometimes I get a Critical Hit, but the colors aren't visible in the current lighting situation.  So on and so forth.

 

I realize the Wiki exists, but it's not the same as getting direct feedback from the game, which is always going to adjust faster than the Wiki (whether through a hotfix or whatnot - we are still in beta, after all), and will have "behind the curtain" logistics that our collective knowledge may not be aware of.

 

Maybe there is a Damage Log and it's a matter of activating it, such as a Console Command that I'm ignorant of?  In that case, apologies in advance for posting this.

Edited May 17, 2013 by Adianoeta

[KitsuAccalia]

Searched through forums and didn't see anything, so I'm posting this - maybe my Google-fu failed me, so please redirect me if I'm kicking a dead horse here.

 

Would like to see a Damage Log, one where you can scroll through to see how much damage each of your mods is doing to each specific enemy.

 

For example, it could show a list like this:

    You did Frost/Ice/Cold Damage for 100 hit points.

    You did Base Melee Damage for 30 hit points.

    You did Modified Melee Damage for 14 hit points.

    You did Piercing Melee Damage for 27 hit points.

 

Or even better:

     You struck Grineer Lancer (28) for 30 points of Base Melee Damage.

     You struck Grineer Lancer (28) for 13 points of Pressure Point (Mod - Rank 9).

     You struck Grineer Lancer (28) for 27 points of Sundering Strike (Mod - Rank 7).

     You struck Grineer Lancer (28) for 15 points of North Wind (Mod - Rank 11).

     You struck Grineer Lancer (28) for 3 points of Shocking Touch (Mod - Rank 6).

 

Snip Snip~

Okay, I don't mind the whole damage log idea but I would prefer it stay as a console only type thing, what I would rather see if it done visually in game. For example Base Melee appears as a white number, Pressure points as another white (physically smaller) number, Sundering Strike as a gray (Steel) number, North wind as a desaturated blue (Icy color) number and Shocking touch as a Purple (lighning) number.

[deathscion]

It is a good idea. It would help people figure out how to maximize dps a lot more than basing layouts off of warframe wiki info. Also it would give a lot of insight into how exactly the sentinels work as far as modding their weapons are concerned. 

[Adianoeta]

Okay, I don't mind the whole damage log idea but I would prefer it stay as a console only type thing, what I would rather see if it done visually in game. For example Base Melee appears as a white number, Pressure points as another white (physically smaller) number, Sundering Strike as a gray (Steel) number, North wind as a desaturated blue (Icy color) number and Shocking touch as a Purple (lighning) number.

 

I like the idea that it would be Console Command, but for me, it doesn't have to be that way.  In Global Agenda, there was a Chat Box that had multiple tabs available, one for Instance/Global Chat, another for Squad, another for Clan, etc.  At the far end, there was a Log tab, which also recorded what you picked up.  It would be nice to have that included in a Damage Log, since it would help to see which Frost component we just picked up, but didn't see at the bottom of the screen, maybe because of a frame skip or whatever.  There are other MMO/Multiplayer games that have a similar set up, but I'm not too familiar with them, so that's why I keep referencing Global Agenda.  Anyway, the way it was done in that game seemed to be unobtrusive for my tastes - I'm sure there are other ways of doing this and in no way am I asserting that this is the only way to do it either.

Edited May 17, 2013 by Adianoeta

[Adianoeta]

It is a good idea. It would help people figure out how to maximize dps a lot more than basing layouts off of warframe wiki info. Also it would give a lot of insight into how exactly the sentinels work as far as modding their weapons are concerned. 

 

On the Sentinel side, I would definitely like to see this.  There's a lot more I'd like to see for Sentinels too, but I'm going to leave that alone, since there's probably a thread on it already.  Besides, I don't want to derail this conversation 8^P.

[Un1ted]

Many have asked for a combat log as an option and I agree it would be wonderful to have one. I think possibly one of the reasons why DE have held off on something like that is that many of the damage values get tweaked around, sometimes even in stealth updates, and with the game still in beta there are still damage issues that need to be addressed. So they are keeping many of the damage values in an almost hidden state (you have to dig pretty deep to calculate damage and resort to combing through the wiki/spreadsheets etc) at least until development has progressed to a more final state.

 

It's just speculation, but I imagine several damage systems getting complete overhauls prior to game launch. For example Warframe's critical system is really quite poor and doesn't stand up to close scrutiny in its current implementation, and having a combat log would only amplify and illustrate the fact even further. Another thing is how many modifiers are multiplicative instead of additive, rendering many desired builds to be almost useless.

 

Or I could be totally off base and they add a combat log tomorrow because they simply didn't have the spare time in the development cycle.

 

Whatever the reason, an optional combat log with its own ingame hideable chat window would be a welcome addition.

[2krntoast]

bump

[Adianoeta]

Many have asked for a combat log as an option and I agree it would be wonderful to have one. I think possibly one of the reasons why DE have held off on something like that is that many of the damage values get tweaked around, sometimes even in stealth updates, and with the game still in beta there are still damage issues that need to be addressed. So they are keeping many of the damage values in an almost hidden state (you have to dig pretty deep to calculate damage and resort to combing through the wiki/spreadsheets etc) at least until development has progressed to a more final state.

 

It's just speculation, but I imagine several damage systems getting complete overhauls prior to game launch. For example Warframe's critical system is really quite poor and doesn't stand up to close scrutiny in its current implementation, and having a combat log would only amplify and illustrate the fact even further. Another thing is how many modifiers are multiplicative instead of additive, rendering many desired builds to be almost useless.

 

At a certain point, though, that defeats the purpose of Open Beta.  To be clear: I'm not being destructively critical of DE nor am I trolling Un1ted.

 

Open Beta's another way of saying "experiment", where the subjects are welcomed to provide feedback, thus our current presence here.  Sure, I understand that having a Combat Log / Damage Log could potentially open the flood gates to loads of player criticisms and complaints, some warranted, some not.  But isn't that all the more reason for having one?  I'm not saying that it's easy to develop with so many players to appease while maintaining structure and balance, but by integrating a Log of some sort, DE stands to benefit greatly.  If a player can identify with more detail as to what they perceive to be a problem, aided by a Log, doesn't that only serve as an advantage to the Devs?

 

In response to generic criticism of Ember's powers in Livestream 5, Scott, the Design Director, stated, "That type of feedback is very hard for me to act on.  If people get more specific about a single power, you know, it's very easy to have a conversation with that person...I'm always open to discuss these things...When I get into that feedback, it's much easier to act on and a lot of the times, you know, I do act on that stuff."  (See the full discussion here:

)

 

Anyway, DE seems to be pretty good about transparency (while maintaining some pleasant surprises), as demonstrated by the Dev Livestreams and the Design Council, so why not have a Damage/Combat Log that would provide crowd-powered scrutiny?  If a power or a hitbox is buggy, then it's much easier and faster to identify with a Log, thus reducing misrepresentations of the Dev team and malingering of bad feelings by the player base because they felt it wasn't fixed or recognized fast enough.  That's just my perception of it, though - what would I know, I'm just a dumb player =^D.

Edited May 17, 2013 by Adianoeta

[Adianoeta]

Many have asked for a combat log as an option...

 

Would like to see threads/topics you've seen?  This way I can review the arguments and see what I've already beat to death or what I can accentuate/hijack/elaborate on.

 

Tried search myself, but it kind of...fails.  I looked up this thread specifically, in search, but it never came up, so it goes to show that no matter how good one's Google-fu, the search is kind of spotty.

[Un1ted]

This thread is a couple months old now, and it's been even longer than that since I've seen discussions of a combat-log feature being added. I'm sure those threads are buried pretty deep. I remember one thread where the conversation started out as a feature-request to have colored combat text based on which element was doing the damage, kind of like how we now have yellow and red crits and plain white damage, except with different colors for electrical, fire, cold, poison, and ap damage sources added.

 

I'm all for a combat log being implemented, it would be so nice to be able to see a record of specific dmg numbers. As time goes on, the chance of something like more comprehensive SCT options being added increases as the game slowly edges towards official release. Hopefully we'll have it someday along with a tab in the chat window that sequentially lists all damage done/received.

[Adianoeta]

This thread is a couple months old now, and it's been even longer than that since I've seen discussions of a combat-log feature being added. I'm sure those threads are buried pretty deep. I remember one thread where the conversation started out as a feature-request to have colored combat text based on which element was doing the damage, kind of like how we now have yellow and red crits and plain white damage, except with different colors for electrical, fire, cold, poison, and ap damage sources added.

 

That was mentioned in this topic, lol.  Maybe this is proof that memory is malleable.  Then again, maybe not: it's my fault for asking for a reference this late.  Anyway, 2nd post in this topic: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/45743-damage-log/#entry461002

 

True, topic's a little old, but that doesn't demerit it any, as another request popped up here: https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/76236-combat-log/

 

Another reason why I'm revisiting this is because I'm going insane looking at the 500 + 450 damage numbers popping up on Grineer Heavy Gunners & Ancients, but those values only reflect a maxed out Killing Blow & Sundering Strike (90% of 500 = 450).  I've been working on my elemental mods, since I last posted on this topic, to see if there were any differences to be noted.  I now have North Wind maxed, Shocking Touch & Molten Impact each just 1 Mod Level away from being maxed, but none of the damage values for these are coming up.  Just the 500 + 450.  I had thought that maybe North Wind was buggy, but Shocking Touch & Molten Impact are recent additions, so the missing damage values are not exclusive to North Wind.

 

I'm all for a combat log being implemented, it would be so nice to be able to see a record of specific dmg numbers. As time goes on, the chance of something like more comprehensive SCT options being added increases as the game slowly edges towards official release. Hopefully we'll have it someday along with a tab in the chat window that sequentially lists all damage done/received.

 

I'm not going to hope - I'm going to keep reviving this topic every couple of months until somebody from DE acknowledges the need for this.  Again, for anybody at DE reading this: look at it as a useful debugging tool for the community to use.  More details for more eyeballs = better feedback.  With hard numbers, a lot of the Buff/Nerf arguments ought to be defused with objectivity, although, I will admit there's a distinct possibility that it could open up a few flame wars too.  Either way, the gains outweigh the drawbacks (we're always going to have stubborn and belligerent debaters, so no point in trying to even avoid them).