Multiplicative Stacking Needs to Stop

[Volt_Cruelerz]

.. If the choice is obvious, how is it a choice? It's more of an obligation..

[UkyoSonoda]

Balancing the way mods work is really the first step in fixing the game balance overall. The next step should probably be creation of new envirionments and enemies that cause a drastic change in combat situations the player runs into as currently most maps are extremely ideal for a few guns in the game giving the perception those guns are OP as well.

Another thought that had crossed my mind is just having mods not stack at all and reduce the rate enemies health scales at higher levels. However that idea hits a sore spot in regards to frames having 8 mod slots and most people don't find an overwhelming variety of frame mods.

[lamiadomina]

The degredation of melee as a valid strategy beyond the opening game has come up in another topic and really is a problem. Are devs by any chance planning to rebalance this too? I'd like that a lot, providing it didn't come at the expense of nerfing guns' damage without a corresponding improvement to their ammo pools. It was awesome when melee provided a really high-reward gambit to end fights quickly while guns were a valid but slower option. It would suck if melee was a necessity just to preserve your ammo - this is an action game, not some kind of survival horror, and it's much more fun when you're given a number of valid options and compelled to make the best choice between them, not pressured into only one valid one.

HP scaling on higher level mobs seriously needs to be nerfed by a lot. Pluto at present throws such massive meatwalls at the player that only a handfull of weapons have the output to stand up to it at all and I think that's a lot of what's driving melee into obsolescence. Like other posters have brought up or at least implied, all it has going right now is burst damage and when it falls below the point it can quickly kill an enemy if you can ambush them it falls pretty much entirely out of use.

[KGeddon]

.. If the choice is obvious, how is it a choice? It's more of an obligation..

You are correct. The reason health and shields were changed was because you had 8 slots to apply +100% multiplicative. This quickly got out of hand. Armor is the same(97% mitigation is a bit too much). Multishot is also an unreasonably large modifier. They were/are flat out higher than anything else. This has nothing to do with additive/multiplicative.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

You are correct. The reason health and shields were changed was because you had 8 slots to apply +100% multiplicative. This quickly got out of hand. Armor is the same(97% mitigation is a bit too much). Multishot is also an unreasonably large modifier. They were/are flat out higher than anything else. This has nothing to do with additive/multiplicative.

Multiplicative is bad because it makes balance and variety mutually exclusive. You can balance around people who stack one stat (like multishot, crit, armor, etc) which forces people to pick something to invest totally in and have no wiggle room without drastic losses in effectiveness or you can allow variety but then you have terrible balance problems from people like the video who stack crit or me who stacks multishot. I'm not saying that multishot can't be nerfed into balance. It would be quite easy in fact. The problem is, that as long as the system is multiplicative, balance will come at the cost of variety and choice and vice versa.

Additive does not have this exclusion problem. You can have both balance and variety as a result.

[UkyoSonoda]

Additive will still promote stacking. Just the rewards for doing so won't be as blown out of porportion.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Not unless there is synergy involved (for instance, mixing a 100% damage and a 100% multishot would result in you doing 4x your current damage as opposed to just 3x if you had just invested in one) and even then, at least you have two types of mod instead of one and because the falloff would be less for not super-stacking, people would be less penalized for branching out. Each 100% damage mod you add multiplicatively doubles your damage relative to what it was before that mod was added. Additively though, it is relative to before any mods were added. A single mod taking you from 400% damage to 800% damage is very different from a mod taking you from 400% to 500%.

Edited January 23, 2013 by Volt_Cruelerz

[KGeddon]

Multiplicative is bad because it makes balance and variety mutually exclusive. You can balance around people who stack one stat (like multishot, crit, armor, etc) which forces people to pick something to invest totally in and have no wiggle room without drastic losses in effectiveness or you can allow variety but then you have terrible balance problems from people like the video who stack crit or me who stacks multishot. I'm not saying that multishot can't be nerfed into balance. It would be quite easy in fact. The problem is, that as long as the system is multiplicative, balance will come at the cost of variety and choice and vice versa.

Additive does not have this exclusion problem. You can have both balance and variety as a result.

You are incorrect. There are always problems, regardless of additive/multiplicative. It's simply a question of one bonus having a much larger effective value, or mixing additive with a small group of multiplicative bonuses(the small amount of multiplicative win). Turning everything you can additive leaves crit, attack speed(rate), armor, and multishot broken.

This is not balance.

Edited January 23, 2013 by KGeddon

[Zh40]

I would like to quickly add that armor % stacking isn't as obvious as you are all stating.. Firstly you have to FIND several 70% armor mods, which is a feat in itself. I personally tested and stacked a bunch of 60-50% armor mods just now and there actually wasn't that much of a damage reduction as compared to 2 60% mods (which is what I usually run). Just saying.

[Sev7n]

The degredation of melee as a valid strategy beyond the opening game has come up in another topic and really is a problem. Are devs by any chance planning to rebalance this too? I'd like that a lot, providing it didn't come at the expense of nerfing guns' damage without a corresponding improvement to their ammo pools. It was awesome when melee provided a really high-reward gambit to end fights quickly while guns were a valid but slower option. It would suck if melee was a necessity just to preserve your ammo - this is an action game, not some kind of survival horror, and it's much more fun when you're given a number of valid options and compelled to make the best choice between them, not pressured into only one valid one.

HP scaling on higher level mobs seriously needs to be nerfed by a lot. Pluto at present throws such massive meatwalls at the player that only a handfull of weapons have the output to stand up to it at all and I think that's a lot of what's driving melee into obsolescence. Like other posters have brought up or at least implied, all it has going right now is burst damage and when it falls below the point it can quickly kill an enemy if you can ambush them it falls pretty much entirely out of use.

I really dont see why people think there is a problem with melee :x i was just recently at pluto with lvl 2 jaw sword killing lvl 40-50 mobs in 2-5 charge attacks (5 on the lvl 50 mobs). Thats pretty good considering the lvls are higher than our lvl cap and my sword as well xD The swords charge skill WILL kill faster than a gun if you use the charge attack but if u go in using regular slash attack you will get no where cause ya that does very little damage.

As for hp scaling on higher lvl mobs it seems fine as well i mean pluto is all higher lvl mobs so ofc they are going to have higher hp and def than the normal mobs we fight making our weapons seem less powerfull, but that planet is basically our endgame for now so it needs to be this difficult (and its not entirely that bad imo_

[Sev7n]

as for the stacking issue maybe a way to stop it is to restrict weapons and frames from being able to equip more than 2 same type mods? that way at most u could only equip for example 2 crit damage % increase mods then your item will restrict you from equipping any more crit damage % increase mods. This would keep from mods having to be nerfed and still be able to create combinations among them all without creating a super OP item.

[KGeddon]

I would like to quickly add that armor % stacking isn't as obvious as you are all stating.. Firstly you have to FIND several 70% armor mods, which is a feat in itself. I personally tested and stacked a bunch of 60-50% armor mods just now and there actually wasn't that much of a damage reduction as compared to 2 60% mods (which is what I usually run). Just saying.

It's a multiplicative multiplicative bonus(multiplies health, and the amount you gain is itself multiplicative). You'll get better results if you stack more. However, if they do what I think they are going to do and turn it into a flat amor amount, you will simply stack the biggest health mods, the biggest armor mods, and rejuv artifact. Shields are only going to be a viable counter if you can stack quite a bit of regen rate and delay decreases.

Choice isn't excatly what people think it means. Additive doesn't solve anything. The "best" still exists, and it's only worsened when you only have a handful of multiplicative bonuses.

Edited January 23, 2013 by KGeddon

[lamiadomina]

I really dont see why people think there is a problem with melee :x i was just recently at pluto with lvl 2 jaw sword killing lvl 40-50 mobs in 2-5 charge attacks (5 on the lvl 50 mobs). Thats pretty good considering the lvls are higher than our lvl cap and my sword as well xD The swords charge skill WILL kill faster than a gun if you use the charge attack but if u go in using regular slash attack you will get no where cause ya that does very little damage.

As for hp scaling on higher lvl mobs it seems fine as well i mean pluto is all higher lvl mobs so ofc they are going to have higher hp and def than the normal mobs we fight making our weapons seem less powerfull, but that planet is basically our endgame for now so it needs to be this difficult (and its not entirely that bad imo_

I have no idea what guns you've been using. Chaining five charge hits is absolutely not faster than using guns, and absolutely too long to be exposing yourself to fire from other mobs.

I've never argued against Pluto being harder. I'm arguing that just giving enemies huge HP is a pretty boring way to make the game harder compared to giving them more challenging patterns, more varied heavy units or other alternatives. The present approach of just escalating their HP to huge numbers tends to limit the number of tactics for players to choose between as compared to earlier missions, which effectively makes the game simpler, not more complex, and that's a pretty backward approach to an endgame.

If enemies had HP comparable to Earth or Neptune but were more dangerous offensively and had more varied heavy support the game would still be harder, but players would have more solutions to the problem their formations presented than frantically pumping bullets into the middle of their formations. An approach like this would make the game deeper. An approach like you're defending makes it shallower.

[Ronyn]

I really dont see why people think there is a problem with melee :x i was just recently at pluto with lvl 2 jaw sword killing lvl 40-50 mobs in 2-5 charge attacks (5 on the lvl 50 mobs). Thats pretty good considering the lvls are higher than our lvl cap and my sword as well xD The swords charge skill WILL kill faster than a gun if you use the charge attack but if u go in using regular slash attack you will get no where cause ya that does very little damage.

As for hp scaling on higher lvl mobs it seems fine as well i mean pluto is all higher lvl mobs so ofc they are going to have higher hp and def than the normal mobs we fight making our weapons seem less powerfull, but that planet is basically our endgame for now so it needs to be this difficult (and its not entirely that bad imo_

Lets compare "close range" weapons for a second.

Base damage of the heck is 130, strun is 120,

Base charge attack damage of the chronus is 75, furax is 150, scindo is 200.

Now how exactly are you busting out more charge attacks with the melee weapons then these shotguns are blasting out even with there low rate of fire?

[Zh40]

It's a multiplicative multiplicative bonus(multiplies health, and the amount you gain is itself multiplicative). You'll get better results if you stack more. However, if they do what I think they are going to do and turn it into a flat amor amount, you will simply stack the biggest health mods, the biggest armor mods, and rejuv artifact. Shields are only going to be a viable counter if you can stack quite a bit of regen rate and delay decreases.

I stacked 8 of them, with little end result. Sorry for not clarifying.

And yeah, I like to stack regen rates, but i've yet to find any delay decreases..

[KGeddon]

I stacked 8 of them, with little end result. Sorry for not clarifying.

And yeah, I like to stack regen rates, but i've yet to find any delay decreases..

If you stacked 8 +60% armor mods, it should have been mitigating 96% of damage to your health. O_o

edit:Note, that is 4494 effective HP on a level 30 warframe.

Edited January 23, 2013 by KGeddon

[[DE]Steve]

I fixed the math for the next update. The intent with Mods is actually to avoid "best" builds. To that end, the slot limits, a growing diversity of mods planned (competing for limited slots) and an overall sharper incline on their power should help make "best" builds hotly contested, which is the goal.

There are other cool changes to Mods coming that I will talk about when I'm confident they don't suck... all intended to increase specialization extremes and reduce how generic the Mods feel.

(Great thread btw!)

[Zh40]

If you stacked 8 +60% armor mods, it should have been mitigating 96% of damage to your health. O_o

edit:Note, that is 4494 effective HP on a level 30 warframe.

Which isn't really what happened. 1 shot from a corpus took a chunk of 4 points. I stood in a room with about 5 corpus and my shields were gone in a few moments. I had to take cover because my health was half gone in the next few moments. D:

[Zh40]

I fixed the math for the next update. The intent with Mods is actually to avoid "best" builds. To that end, the slot limits, a growing diversity of mods planned (competing for limited slots) and an overall sharper incline on their power should help make "best" builds hotly contested, which is the goal.

There are other cool changes to Mods coming that I will talk about when I'm confident they don't suck... all intended to increase specialization extremes and reduce how generic the Mods feel.

(Great thread btw!)

This is why I love you Steve.

(Seriously, can we have you as a skin for like excalibur? haha)

[KGeddon]

Which isn't really what happened. 1 shot from a corpus took a chunk of 4 points. I stood in a room with about 5 corpus and my shields were gone in a few moments. I had to take cover because my health was half gone in the next few moments. D:

Armor doesn't affect shields. Standing still is hazardous to your health. I noted in another thread that you seem to have a head hitbox that takes double damage.

[KGeddon]

I fixed the math for the next update. The intent with Mods is actually to avoid "best" builds. To that end, the slot limits, a growing diversity of mods planned (competing for limited slots) and an overall sharper incline on their power should help make "best" builds hotly contested, which is the goal.

There are other cool changes to Mods coming that I will talk about when I'm confident they don't suck... all intended to increase specialization extremes and reduce how generic the Mods feel.

(Great thread btw!)

Could it possibly be downsides to mods in exchange for higher amounts(In current terms, +30% damage, -1% accuracy?) This might somewhat lead to a &*$$genization of weapons though. I know some games had the concept of tradeoffs(such as Brink, trading magazine capacity for reload speed or vice versa).

Edited January 23, 2013 by KGeddon

[Sealgaire]

Could it possibly be downsides to mods in exchange for higher amounts(In current terms, +30% damage, -1% accuracy?) This might somewhat lead to a &*$$genization of weapons though. I know some games had the concept of tradeoffs(such as Brink, trading magazine capacity for reload speed or vice versa).

When your obscenity filter freaks out over the word "h0mogenization", it might be wise to relax it.

Downsides might be interesting, especially if applied to the most powerful effects.

[KGeddon]

When your obscenity filter freaks out over the word "h0mogenization", it might be wise to relax it.

Downsides might be interesting, especially if applied to the most powerful effects.

Relaxtion might lead to...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=tmqidDxldHU#t=26s

[UkyoSonoda]

When your obscenity filter freaks out over the word "h0mogenization", it might be wise to relax it.

Downsides might be interesting, especially if applied to the most powerful effects.

Yeah people wouldnt stack multishot nearly as much if it increased your ammo consumption ;)

[DigitalDamage]

Yeah people wouldnt stack multishot nearly as much if it increased your ammo consumption ;)

Multishot is a wierd example. If multishot increased ammo consumption then it would arguably be too similar to a +fire rate mod... which is redundant. Honestly, because of the way the game works at the moment I think multishot should be left as it stands now. The position it's is an "in or out" sort of place... meaning that if you nerf it in the way you suggested then it's too similar to an existing mod, which means that the only route to take is to remove it from the game altogether. However, this solution would leave many people's weapon builds empty--what would be the compensation for that? On the other hand, if you leave it where it stands you'll have people farming exclusively for multishot.

That's exactly why a thread like this is so important, if the mods were stacked Additively instead of Multiplicatively then it would still keep multishot relevant while still providing diversity in builds. This is the perfect solution to the people who are merely stacking multishot. There would be absolutely no need to nerf multishot at all if this Additive system was implemented.

I haven't had the time to sift through the comments of this thread so I don't know if this has already been mentioned but if this Additive system was implemented it would also mean that the recent Critical Damage nerf would have to be reverted (or at least capped at 100%) because if it is not then a Critical Damage mod would be a trash tier mod that no-one would want... ever.

EDIT: Gramerz

Edited January 23, 2013 by DigitalDamage