The Enemies' Increasing Resistance

[Tyrian3k]

The resistance against all damage types, usually excluding their weakness, increases for many enemies, which means that at some point, all damage types apart from one will completely cease dealing damage.

 

Problems with the mechanic:

 

1. This kind of mechanic gives bolt weapons a significant advantage against high-level enemies, as their normal damage isn't affected.

 

 

Example: Grineer Lancer

 

Mods: Level 9 Serration + all elements and AP level 5

 

Against base resistance (level 0 Lancer):

 

Braton:

Normal damage: 50 * 0.33 = 17

AP damage: 50 * 0.6 * 1.5 = 45

Fire damage: 50 * 0.9 * 0.41 = 19

Electric damage: 50 * 0.9 * 0.41 = 19

Freeze damage: 50 * 0.9 * 0.33 = 15

 

DPS: 1300

 

Boltor:

Normal damage: 45 * 1 = 45

AP damage: 45 * 0.6 * 1.5 = 41

Fire damage: 45 * 0.9 * 0.41 = 17

Electric damage: 45 * 0.9 * 0.41 = 17

Freeze damage: 45 * 0.9 * 0.33 = 13

 

DPS: 1170

 

Against low level Grineer, the Braton still has the advantage, but as soon as the Grineer reaches about level 70 nothing apart from AP and AI damage can hurt him:

 

Level 70 Lancer:

 

Braton:

Normal damage: 0

AP damage: 50 * 0.6 * 1.5 = 45

Fire damage: 0

Electric damage: 0

Freeze damage: 0

 

DPS: 509

 

Boltor:

Normal damage: 45 * 1 = 45

AP damage: 45 * 0.6 * 1.5 = 41

Fire damage: 0

Electric damage: 0

Freeze damage: 0

 

DPS: 757

 

As you can see, the Boltor deals about 50% more DPS than a Braton against high level enemies.

All elements completely ceased dealing any damage at all, which means that you might just as well switch them out for other mods.

The Boltor should be superior to the Braton against highly armored enemies, not be superior to the Braton against higher leveled enemies.

 

 

2. It doesn't apply to all enemies, which means that some enemies get more difficult at a far quicker rate than others do.

Light Grineer will always be extremely easy to kill, whereas medium and heavy Grineers will be far tougher on higher levels.

 

 

3. Some enemies gain resistance against their weakness. Infested Chargers gain resistance against fire damage and Corpus Crewmen gain resistance against electric damage.

 

4. Armor piercing damage is never affected by this mechanic.

 

 

Suggestions:

 

a) Remove the increase of damage resistance completely and increase their toughness just by increasing health.

 

b) Give enemies an increase in damage reduction that works equally against all damage types, capped at a certain percentage.

 

c) Remove the increase of resistance on the enemies' weak spots, as it is already the case with Ancients and Crewmen. (this would put weapons with low accuracy at a disadvantage against high level enemies, though)

[Tsukinoki]

The problem with suggestion A:

If you increase their health to make up for not increasing their damage resistance what's going to happen is people are going to see bigger numbers (yay!) and then find out that enemies take just as long to kill as they do now, because they are dealing the same amount of damage relative to the enemies health pool, or actually take longer to kill, in the case of the bolt weapons.

That increases TTK(Time To Kill), which decreases player survivablity, and pod survivability in ED.

Sure you can deal larger numbers of damage, but if the enemies are taking 1.5 to 2 times longer to kill that allows them to deal out a lot more damage to the players and the defense targets.

This would really provide no benefits. Sure you can now use all weapons for more numbers, but nothing will really change.

All that will change with this is people will see bigger damage numbers float over targets. It wont make them go down any faster, and because of the increase of health it is actually going to take longer to take them out even with the armor ignore/AP weapons.

Oh, and they would have to increase health quite a bit to make up for lack of DR, otherwise this game will become even easier. And more people will complain about it.

The problem with suggestion B:

Is that if they do that coupled with the current health scaling it would lead to enemies becoming bullet sponges far too quickly. In order to implement this they would also need to tone down enemy health scaling.

This is still a much better solution than suggestion A and could be far better implemented in this system. In fact some heavies do make use of this system with a flat DR that scales and then stops, it wouldn't be too hard to tinker with the numbers and apply it to all mobs and cap it at a reasonable percentage for the different types.

I would prefer this to suggestion A.

By far the best suggestion is suggestion C.

Sure it rewards high accuracy weapons over low accuracy weapons, but that can be taken care of through other means without upsetting the balance too much. Further this one makes sense and also rewards player skills, not just what mods they can put on their weapon.

Edited July 2, 2013 by Tsukinoki

[Tyrian3k]

The problem with suggestion A:

If you increase their health to make up for not increasing their damage resistance what's going to happen is people are going to see bigger numbers (yay!) and then find out that enemies take just as long to kill as they do now, because they are dealing the same amount of damage relative to the enemies health pool, or actually take longer to kill, in the case of the bolt weapons.

That increases TTK(Time To Kill), which decreases player survivablity, and pod survivability in ED.

Sure you can deal larger numbers of damage, but if the enemies are taking 1.5 to 2 times longer to kill that allows them to deal out a lot more damage to the players and the defense targets.

This would really provide no benefits. Sure you can now use all weapons for more numbers, but nothing will really change.

All that will change with this is people will see bigger damage numbers float over targets. It wont make them go down any faster, and because of the increase of health it is actually going to take longer to take them out even with the armor ignore/AP weapons.

Oh, and they would have to increase health quite a bit to make up for lack of DR, otherwise this game will become even easier. And more people will complain about it.

 

I'm not trying to make enemies easier or tougher to kill (that part is entirely up to DE), I want all damage types to conserve their effectivity and all enemies and weapons scale in the same way.

If that makes AI/AP weapons too weak you need to buff them.

 

The TTK in suggestion A and B would increase on enemies that don't increase their resistances on higher levels and possibly even decrease on enemies that do increase their resistances in the current system.

 

 

The problem with suggestion B:

Is that if they do that coupled with the current health scaling it would lead to enemies becoming bullet sponges far too quickly. In order to implement this they would also need to tone down enemy health scaling.

This is still a much better solution than suggestion A and could be far better implemented in this system. In fact some heavies do make use of this system with a flat DR that scales and then stops, it wouldn't be too hard to tinker with the numbers and apply it to all mobs and cap it at a reasonable percentage for the different types.

I would prefer this to suggestion A.

 

How quickly enemies become bullet sponges is determined by the numbers DE will use for the mechanic, not by the mechanic itself.

 

By far the best suggestion is suggestion C.

Sure it rewards high accuracy weapons over low accuracy weapons, but that can be taken care of through other means without upsetting the balance too much. Further this one makes sense and also rewards player skills, not just what mods they can put on their weapon.

 

What kind of means are you talking about?

What would you change e.g. about a Bronco to make it a viable choice for high level enemies if they can barely be hurt without a headshot?

 

I don't like this suggestion much because it still affects weapon balance depending on the level of the enemies.

[Tsukinoki]

I'm not trying to make enemies easier or tougher to kill (that part is entirely up to DE), I want all damage types to conserve their effectivity and all enemies and weapons scale in the same way.

If that makes AI/AP weapons too weak you need to buff them.

 

The TTK in suggestion A and B would increase on enemies that don't increase their resistances on higher levels and possibly even decrease on enemies that do increase their resistances in the current system.

The reason it would increase TTK almost across the board:

An enemy with 75% Armor and 1000 health is the same as an enemy with 0% armor and 4000 health.

A non AP/AI shot will have 75% of its damage blocked in the first case, and none of its damage blocked in the second.

For example (warning bs numbers):

Your shots deal 100 damage each. Against the first case you will only be dealing 25 damage on body shots. It will take 40 shots to kill the enemy. In the second case you are dealing 100 damager per shot. It will still take 40 shots to kill the enemy.

The only difference is that now you see bigger numbers.

Now, lets look into a weapon dealing pure AI:

If you deal 100 damage per shot it will take you 10 shots to kill the enemy in the first case. In the second case it now takes you 40.

Elemental effects will still have the biggest effect on TTK as they currently do, but with the higher health pools the enemies would either need much higher weaknesses to the elements or the TTK will still go up by quite a bit.

Such as if the enemy suffers double damage from AP what you see happen is:

With 200% AP weakness you deal 200 damage per shot meaning it will take you 5 shots to kill the enemy in the first case. In the second case you will see it now takes 20.

4 times the ammo as well as the extra time just massively increased TTK.

Once you get to the higher health pools what you will see happen is that enemies are taking longer to kill, even if you are using AI/AP weapons. That decreases overall player survivability and, in ED, pod survivability. And while we already see this happening, in the system you are suggesting this would happen a lot faster and be a lot harder of a wall to overcome.

What you are suggesting wont do anything except make non AP/AI weapons deal bigger damage numbers, but relative to the enemies health pool its the same damage that they are dealing now. In effect nothing would change, except things would take longer to kill.

Please tell me how dealing 100 damage to a target with 4K health is better than dealing 25 damage to a target with 1K health. Ego boost in higher numbers?

 

How quickly enemies become bullet sponges is determined by the numbers DE will use for the mechanic, not by the mechanic itself.

And like I said it will also relate to how DE handles the scaling of a secondary mechanic, namely enemy health scaling. In this situation with flat DR and health scaling you need to pay a lot more attention between how the two interact in order to balance it out properly. Edited July 2, 2013 by Tsukinoki

[Tyrian3k]

Now, lets look into a weapon dealing pure AI:

If you deal 100 damage per shot it will take you 10 shots to kill the enemy in the first case. In the second case it now takes you 40.

False.

You completely disregard that elements will deal more damage than before.

Redo the calculation with all elements and AP modded.

Edited July 2, 2013 by Tyrian3k

[Shadowcrusnik]

So what the guy above said, is it would make the game more difficult.

 

Id like that, more difficult then me as frost with strun literally walking and hip-firing every other enemy i see...

[Tsukinoki]

False.

You completely disregard that elements will deal more damage than before.

Redo the calculation with all elements and AP modded.

Please re-read my example instead of cherry picking one thing and claiming I am wrong on all of it.

[Tyrian3k]

Please re-read my example instead of cherry picking one thing and claiming I am wrong on all of it.

 

I did read all of it and it still is false, because you disregard this:

 

How quickly enemies become bullet sponges is determined by the numbers DE will use for the mechanic, not by the mechanic itself.

 

Those 75% are just what you suppose it would be, not what reality will look like.

 

I do realize that the weapon balance will be changed and weapons like the Boltor may need a buff afterwards, but you argue about something that was never part of my suggestions: Explicit numbers.

 

As said in my first post a Boltor deals 1170 DPS against the base resistance of a Grineer and 757 DPS against one with maximum resistances.

That's ~35% less DPS against the high level Grineer.

If the damage reduction caps at 35% absolutely nothing changes about your DPS against that enemy.

The Braton however loses 61% of its DPS against high level Grineers, so the TTK would be lower, if it was only 35%.

 

In short:

You don't know what the cap would be and you dont know when that cap would be reached either, but you're still saying that it's less damage than before.

[Tsukinoki]

In short:

You don't know what the cap would be and you dont know when that cap would be reached either, but you're still saying that it's less damage than before.

The problem isn't the cap.

The problem is that to maintain the same level of survivability for an enemy, if you drop their overall DR to the various elements you would need to increase their health by a similar amount to make up for it.

If you do that all you would see are the damage numbers wouldn't change from hitting a level 0 grineer to hitting a level 900 grineer.

All that would change is their HP would have to scale a lot faster, which means it would take the same number of hits from a non AI/AP gun to drop them as it does now. And the increase to health would increase the number of shots it would take for an AI gun to drop them. And even an AP gun.

That is just number bloat.

That is why for AI guns you would now be dealing less relative damage than you were before you dropped the resistences. And you cant just say "Drop the resistance and do nothing else!" that would make the game far too much of a cake walk, and its already quite easy as it is.

So they keep the resistances at their base level for the entire game.

The braton now deals 1300 damage to all grineer lancers.

The boltor now deals 1170 damage to all grineer lancers.

In order to adjust for that they increase the enemy HP by the same amount, or close to it.

It will take the same number of shots it does now for the braton to drop things.

It will now take MORE shots for the boltor to drop things, mainly at the higher levels.

Looks like you just made the bolt weapons WORSE against pretty much everything.

You cant just lower enemy resistences and call it all fine and dandy. If you lower resistance you will need to increase HP to keep the same level of content and enemy survivability or the game will become far to easy, and its already laughably easy.

If you increase enemy HP to scale with the lower resistances now you'll see that the braton kills it in the same TTK as it does now.

The boltor on the other hand deals the same exact damage it did before the buff, meaning that relative to the enemy hp its damage went down and its TTK is now higher.

Now the boltor is dealing less *relative* damage to the enemies than it did before while the braton is dealing more, but enemy HP is increased.

OH! And because we increased enemy HP we just made a lot of the static damage abilities, especially ults, less useful at the higher levels because now mobs have bloated HP totals.

All you changed is that people deal slightly higher damage and to make up for it enemies now have higher HP, but in the end for non AI weapons nothing has changed in how many shots it takes to kill something while AI weapons now take longer to kill things.

You say:

As said in my first post a Boltor deals 1170 DPS against the base resistance of a Grineer and 757 DPS against one with maximum resistances.

That's ~35% less DPS against the high level Grineer.

If the damage reduction caps at 35% absolutely nothing changes about your DPS against that enemy.

The Braton however loses 61% of its DPS against high level Grineers, so the TTK would be lower, if it was only 35%.

So now the braton, and all other non AI weapons, deals 26% more damage. While AI weapons deals the same damage they do now.

When they increase enemy HP to scale with that people using non AI weapons wont notice a single difference in TTk. People using AI weapons will suddenly find enemies are surviving a good time longer than they used to.

Please tell me what has really changed or how this fixes anything?

And please dont say that they can just lower resistance without buffing enemy hp, or do you want this game to be an even easier cake walk?

Edited July 2, 2013 by Tsukinoki

[Tyrian3k]

The problem isn't the cap.

The problem is that to maintain the same level of survivability for an enemy, if you drop their overall DR to the various elements you would need to increase their health by a similar amount to make up for it.

 

Wrong, as a high level Grineer will take less damage from AP and more from elemental and normal damage. HP scaling can stay the same.

 

 

If you do that all you would see are the damage numbers wouldn't change from hitting a level 0 grineer to hitting a level 900 grineer.

All that would change is their HP would have to scale a lot faster, which means it would take the same number of hits from a non AI/AP gun to drop them as it does now. And the increase to health would increase the number of shots it would take for an AI gun to drop them. And even an AP gun.

That is just number bloat.

That is why for AI guns you would now be dealing less relative damage than you were before you dropped the resistences. And you cant just say "Drop the resistance and do nothing else!" that would make the game far too much of a cake walk, and its already quite easy as it is.

 

To quote myself:

If that makes AI/AP weapons too weak you need to buff them.

 

Also I never said anything about "Drop the resistance and do nothing else!".

 

 

So they keep the resistances at their base level for the entire game.

The braton now deals 1300 damage to all grineer lancers.

The boltor now deals 1170 damage to all grineer lancers.

In order to adjust for that they increase the enemy HP by the same amount, or close to it.

It will take the same number of shots it does now for the braton to drop things.

It will now take MORE shots for the boltor to drop things, mainly at the higher levels.

Looks like you just made the bolt weapons WORSE against pretty much everything.

 

Again:

 

If that makes AI/AP weapons too weak you need to buff them.

 

 

OH! And because we increased enemy HP we just made a lot of the static damage abilities, especially ults, less useful at the higher levels because now mobs have bloated HP totals.

 

So you say that Frosts ultimate doesn't deal freeze damage?

Or Ember's utimate? O Volt's ultimate?

All these abilities don't deal a single point of damage against a level 70 Lancer, so those would actually receive a buff.

 

 

Please tell me what has really changed or how this fixes anything?

 

 

What has changed?

 

Enemies that don't have scaling resistances in the current mechanic become an acutal challenge to kill instead of falling like flies even if they are level 200.

 

Weapons that deal AI/AP damage do not become increasingly effective the higher the level of the enemy is.

And just to make sure:

 

If that makes AI/AP weapons too weak you need to buff them.

 

 

AP mods stop being as op compared to elemental mods.

 

Enemies don't gain resistance against the damage type that is their weakness.