Damage 3.0 proposal

[lightdragon64]

to keep things simple i have an idea on how to fix up the game's damage system by making it more about simple math without massive numbers in order to avoid things like power creep.

Be warned! walls of text beyond the spoilers, will try to make it as simple as possible.

NEW DAMAGE SYSTEM PROPOSAL IN A NUTSHELL

The current damage system is based on getting a number as high as possible in order to have an impact on enemies with a large amount of health and resistances, at the moment it only seems to allow for players to mod their weapons for pure damage. The only variation you may see in a build would be the occasional critical build, but a critical build with no other damage added to it is still not a viable build.

My proposal is to change the current system away from “whoever has the highest damage number wins” to a percentage based system.

 

Let me give an example. The dera currently does:

4.5 impact damage

16.7 puncture damage

And 1.1 slash damage

 

Adding all this up it equals a total of about 22 physical damage unmodded

In the current system without mods this gun would be completely useless in all but really low level missions because most enemies may have a large health pool with armor and shields that they have to cut through before even being able to get to it, resulting in more often than not an empty gun due to the amount of ammo used on a single enemy.

 

My proposal is this, instead of having the gun deal 22 damage against a health pool of potentially 10k+ it would instead deal damage to 22% of that 10k health pool.

Here is how i see the system working:

1. Get rid of pure damage, and multishot mods (mods that add increase puncture damage, or elemental damage are fine, i’ll explain why in a second)

2. Each faction has their own unique Health, armor, and shield type.

3. There are now 3 different health bars that will be encountered
   -Shields ( a quickly regenerating kinetic force meant to deflect incoming blows)
   -Armor (a non-regenerating health bar that is meant to reduce incoming damage)
   -Health (a slowly regenerating health bar)
   -Similar in a sense to how mass effect 2 and 3 has enemies with multiple health bars.

4. Each health bar (health type) has their own basic resistances (i.e. shields reducing impact damage) and weakness (health being weak to slash)

5. Each faction has a slightly different but overall similar take on their different health bars (i.e normally health is neutral to toxin, but infested take reduced damage to their health)

6. Modding for each mission becomes important

7. Modding for damage does not increase the overall damage the weapon does, but what TYPE of damage it does (explained in more detail further down)

8. This not only allows for most (if not all) weapons to be usable in most missions

 

 

How the modding system would work:

Spoiler

Using the dera again we know it deals: 4.5 I, 16.7P, and 1.1S unmodded.
If i wanted the gun to deal more slash damage i would add the Sawtooth Clip mod to the gun making it deal 30% more slash. But instead of just adding 30% more damage to the 1.1 existing slash damage it would do this.
It would reduce impact and puncture damage by 30% making impact deal 3.15 damage, and puncture deal 11.39 damage taking away a total of 6.36 damage away from puncture and impact and then adding that damage to slash making it 7.46 slash damage instead of 1.1 damage.

• This makes it to where the gun still deals the same amount of damage, but makes it more effective on health than it was before adding sawtooth clip only at the cost of reducing it’s impact on shields and armor.

 

If i wanted to make the gun deal more fire damage it would do the same thing as adding more slash damage but instead it would take away from all 3 damage types in exchange for elemental damage.

 

I.e. Cryo rounds adds 90% more cold damage: so it would take away 90% of damage from slash, impact, and puncture and use whatever damage was taken away and convert it into cold damage, increasing its impact on armor severely but reducing it’s effectiveness on everything else.

Some rules for modding (for the sake of balance)

• All damages must be greater than or equal to 0

• The total damage number must be less than or equal to 100 (yes this means that all guns will have to be rebalanced in order to fit this but that’s just a matter of changing numbers around)

• Adding fire rate to a weapon can potentially be overpowered because then it becomes more about who can shoot the fastest in order to output as much damage as possible in as little time as possible, so the greater the fire rate on a gun the less accuracy/more recoil it has.

• Only a single physical damage mod can be added at a single time

• Only up to two elemental damage mods can be added at a single time
  +if cryo rounds and stormbringer are on at the same time it only applies the 90% reduced damage to impact health and slash once in order to keep it from reducing their damages 180% and adding non-existent damage to magnetic

Summing up what damages do in a nutshell

Spoiler

• Raw physical damages have a health type that they deal more damage to, deal the same damage to, and deal less damage to

• Elemental damages can deal the same damage, bonus damage, reduced damage, or be negated entirely by a certain health type.

• Combined damages cannot be negated by a certain health type but at the cost of reduced damage

 

Sorry but i can’t exactly depict what this system does math wise… will try to come up with a better concept for it later.

Things to consider:

Spoiler

Faction:grineer, corpus, infested, sentient, tenno, corrupted?, (machinery)

Raw physical damage: Impact, Puncture, Slash

Raw Elemental damage: Cold, electricity, heat, toxin

Combined Elemental damage: Blast(heat+cold), Corrosive(electricity+toxin), Gas(heat+toxin), Magnetic(cold+electricity), radiation (heat+electricity), Viral(cold+toxin)

Health types: Shields, armor, and health (including variations among factions)

Status effects: e.g. Slash causes bleeding, Cold causes freezing, ect.

Void damage: Used by the tenno operator

Damage types (raw)

Spoiler

1. Impact
    -Large blunt hit

-Causes stagger
2. Puncture
    -Small precise hit
    -reduces damage output
3. Slash

    -long wide cut

    - Causes bleeding

 

Elemental damage types

Spoiler

1. Heat
    -Fire damage

    - Causes burning (high damage over time)
    -causes panic (needed?)

2. Cold
    -Ice damage
    - Causes slowness

3. Electricity
    - Chaining Lightning damage
    - Causes stun
4. Toxin
    -toxic damage
    -Damages health directly
    - causes weak damage over time

 

Void Damage

Spoiler

• Only used by the tenno operator.

• Cannot be resisted

• Cannot be negated

• Cannot have increased damage on anything other than sentient

• Sentient are weak to it

• Sentient take +100% (possibly less) damage to it

• Somewhat balanced as tenno operator cannot take much damage before being killed/warped back into warframe.

 

Health types (raw damage considerations)

Spoiler

1. Shields: Kinetically deflects blows
   -Resistant to: Impact (-50% damage taken)
       + Kinetically can deflect harsh impact blows i.e. a baseball player can deflect a ball (impact) but cannot deflect an arrow (puncture)
   -Neutral to: Slash
       +shield cannot fully protect a sharp cut compared to a hammer
   -Weak to: Puncture (+50% damage taken)
       +Puncture damage is focused in a single area which is harder to deflect unlike impact which is focused in a larger area.

2. Armor: used to defend the health beneath it
   -Resistant to: Slash (-50% damage taken)
       + if you hit an armored knight with a sword you would be wasting your time
   -Neutral to: Puncture

+having armor punctured only leaves a small hole that would be hard to hit again in the same spot.
-Weak to: Impact (+50% damage taken)
    +a hammer will do a better job crushing armor than a sword

3. Health: Flesh
   -Resistant to: Puncture (-50% damage taken)
       + getting stabbed with a needle may hurt but it is no big deal.
   -Neutral to: impact
       + Impacts can lead to cracks/breaks in bones in a large area that can heal and are often not life threatening in comparison to a bad cut.
   -Weak to:Slash (+50% damage taken)
       +getting a large gash from a knife or sword will cause large blood loss

Health types (elemental damage considerations)

Spoiler

Rules:

• One element has neutral damage (no damage increase or decrease)

• One element has stronger damage (+50% damage)

• One element has weaker damage (-50% damage)

• One element is negated (-100% damage)

1. Shields
+Neutral to:Heat

- Electronics can run in the heat but too much heat can cause damage.
+Weak to: Electric
    -Electric can short circuit electronics
+Resistant to: Cold
    - Electronics run better in the cold, but if it is too cold it could potentially damage them.
+Negates: Toxin
    -electronics are not biological
2. Armor
+Neutral to:electricity

-Can cause weld damage to metal parts
+Weak to: Cold

-Expanding ice can cause damage to metals and stone
+Resistant to: Toxin

- Armor will take a lesser impact from toxin because of corroding
+Negates:heat  

-  Metal does not catch fire, only extremely hot flames can cause damage to certain metals
3. Health
+Neutral to: Toxin

- Toxin once in the system can’t be stopped but it can’t be sped up, it works at its own pace
+Weak to: Heat

-once charred, skin does not heal easily
+Resistant to: Electricity

-electricity can pass through the body without causing too much damage if the person is grounded.
+Negates: Cold

-unlike heat you can walk out of a really cold area unscathe

 

Health types (combined elemental damage consideration)

Spoiler

Rules for combined damage types

• Jack of all trades master of none

• combined damage types do less damage than a pure elemental damage type but can affect all three health types without being negated completely

• Combined damages deal 20% less damage than a single element to two of three health types

• Combined damages deal 40% less damage than a single element to a single health type.

EXAMPLE: Magnetic would be effective on shields and armor because magnets can destroy electronics and bend metals if it is a strong enough pull, but as a result would have a heavily reduced impact on health.

• Status effect is most important with combined damages
   

1. Blast (Cold+Heat)

• Causes knockdown

• Effective against armor and health

• Reduced effectiveness against shields

2. Corrosive (electricity + toxin)

• Causes reduced armor

• Effective against shields and armor

• reduced effectiveness against health

3. Gas (heat+toxin)

• Causes a toxin AOE

• Effective against large groups of enemies

• reduced impact on shields and armor

4. Magnetic (Cold+electricity)

• Causes reduced shields

• effective against armor and shields

• reduced impact on health

5. Radiation (heat+electricity)

• Causes confusion (friendly fire)

• effective against shields and health

• reduced impact against armor

6. Viral (cold+toxin)

• Causes reduced health

• effective against health and armor

• reduced damage against shields

• reduced tick damage in comparison to pure toxin

Enemy Health types and bonuses (based on faction)

Spoiler

1. Grineer:

• Shield: Prototype shields (only found on specialized units) no bonus

• Armor: Durasteel armor (tough metal alloy armor) 5% additional resistance to slash

• Health: Cloned Flesh (weak easily destroyable flesh) No bonus

2. Corpus

• Shield: Kenetic Shields: 5% additional resistance to impact

• Armor: Mechanical Armor (mainly seen on robotics, rarely on humanoid units) No bonus

• Health: Flesh (normal human flesh) No bonus

3. Infested

• Shield: Weakend shield (only found on infected corpus) -5% puncture damage resistance

• Armor: Weakend armor (only found on infected grineer) -5% Impact damage resistance

• Health: Infected flesh (found on all units) 50% resistance to toxin damage

4. Corrupted

• Shield: Enhanced Shield ( found on corrupted corpus) +5% puncture resistance

• Armor: Enhanced armor (found on corrupted grineer) +5% impact resistance

• Health: Enhanced Flesh (on all units)+ 5% slash resistance

5. Sentient

• Shield: Adaptive shield (no bonus) gates add damage resistance against the damage most taken

• Armor:Adaptive armor (no bonus) gates add damage resistance against the damage most taken

• Health:Adaptive synthetic health (no bonus) Gates add damage resistance against the damage most taken

• NOTE: Once a health type is exausted (e.g. runs out of shields) the resistances do not apply to the next health type meaning that you don't have to worry about losing effectiveness on health because you used slash mostly on shields.

• All health types weak against void damage -100% resistance to void damage (% subject to change)

6. Tenno (warframes)

• Shield:[PH]/ No name: No bonus (shield gates that prevent additional damage from being taken temporarily after the gate has been passed)

• Armor:[PH]/ No name: No bonus (does not regnenerate unless using specific warframes such as inaros or rhino)

• Health:[PH]/ No name: No bonus

 

This took me a few days to put together, i'm aware it's not perfect, and there are still more bits of detail that could be added. however i think that it is ready to be shown off.

Let me know what you think!

EDIT:

Things to talk about in the future:

-Enemy level in comparison to player level
-Max level cap to enemies
-Damage difference over levels
-How level difference works between warframe levels and weapons levels
-How the math of the proposed system would/should work (easy to talk about hard to put into math... working on it)

Edited June 1, 2017 by lightdragon64

[Urlan]

Might it be better in such a situation to have enemies not scale as they do now? Perhaps if enemies scaled in stats similarly to players, the current system would work better.

[Darkvramp]

while i love this idea, this will not be implemented, the devs have shown a lack of listening recently from the community besides when we all hate something equally.

[Wrum]

23 minutes ago, Urlan said:

Might it be better in such a situation to have enemies not scale as they do now? Perhaps if enemies scaled in stats similarly to players, the current system would work better.

they do scale the same as players the problem is that they can reach infinite levels but players cap out at 30.

also the 22% damage just means you know exactly how many shots it takes to kill an enemy. this would render all weapons that dont kill in the minimum number of shots useless

[Darkvramp]

this damage system makes soooo much more sense than the onewe have now

[lightdragon64]

1 minute ago, Darkvramp said:

this damage system makes soooo much more sense than the onewe have now

yea, i was trying to go for simplicity rather than wierd calculations... i still need to address things such as leveling, status, critical, and how the math would work.

otherwise the proposal is still kinda a work in progress, i expect when i have everything else finalized i can make more sense out of this already massive wall of text...

[ParaD0Xus]

A few things to add that might be nice to clean up some the problems DE (or anyone) might have with elementals and how combining works in your model:

1) Instead using 2 elemental dmg mods to make a combined element, make mods that have the combined dmg types on them (i.e. 90% Corrosive Damage mod). This would make it so that you want corrosive to strip armor but also cold damage for cc viable instead of having to choose. A caveat though would still be you can only have a combined and a regular elemental dmg type on a weapon.

2) Make it so you can have 2 elemental damage mods on a weapon (i.e. Heat and Electric) but be able to choose whether or not you want to combine them for Radiation or not. For example, if you have 2 90% elemental mods (Heat and Electric), if you put both on and want Radiation you'll take 90% of the dmg from the gun's original stats and throw it int Radiation dmg. But if you want heat dmg and electric dmg separate it splits the dmg between the 2 elements equally (if they're both the same percentage) This would also allow the combined element and regular element (i.e. Corrosive & Cold) to work as well the same way. And if you need balancing with the combined and regular damage you can cap the percentage on the dual elemental mod at 60% or something.

Things to consider with regards to this damage system:

There is still the problem with crit in that in this damage system it will either make crits (which multiply base damage by a number of times) either completely needed (low damage weapons would really want crit at high levels because it amplifies the low percentage of total damage it has on health pools) or completely useless (high dmg weapons won't need it cause they will hit the damage cap of 100% (i.e. 97 puncture damage means it only needs 3 more base damage to deal full damage to a shield pool) fairly quickly). I don't necessarily know how to fix this but i have an idea:

1) Makes crits reduce or eliminate all of a certain health pool (armor, shields, flesh) based on where the highest percentage of base damage is in the weapon (i.e. if it's damage is mostly impact, it halves armor with the crit then applies normal damage). The percentage of a health pool eliminated can then be affected by crit damage mods. This would alllow a weapon with a base of 25% base crit damage with most of its damage in slash have a 25% chance to deal 25% (or some base percentage) of an enemies total health as immediate damage before applying armor and shield damage resistances to the rest of the dmg dealt. For weapons that can do over 100% crit; The extra crit pecentage would then be applied to the next highest damage type on the weapon in terms of slashing health pools (so if its highest damage numbers are slash and then puncture and its crit is 125% it would have 100% chance to slash a health pool by a percentage and then a 25% chance to slash a shield pool by a percentage). I don't necessarily know how to combine this concept with how elemental dmg works other than to ignore it and go off the highest of the main three dmg types left after taking away the percentage for the elemental mod. 

This allows for a simple understanding in how certain types of weapons are used in the game. Crit weapons will be used to get rid of or severely cut into a single health pool very quickly before applying base damage (i.e. burst damage) while status will cut enemies down to size little by little but will be able to apply CC and other effects better than crit can (i.e. utility and sustained damage). Then, hybrid builds will be able to provide the best of both world while not being able to maximize the potential output of both individually. 

I have more to add but, in order to keep this post shorter on length, i will stop here. I can elaborate further on any ideas you are confused about or if you want more ideas. All in all, i really like the proposal you have as it streamlines how damage is dealt and how it affects enemies instead of how it affects whether certain weapons are usable.

[Urlan]

9 hours ago, Wrum said:

they do scale the same as players the problem is that they can reach infinite levels but players cap out at 30.

also the 22% damage just means you know exactly how many shots it takes to kill an enemy. this would render all weapons that dont kill in the minimum number of shots useless

So perhaps take it a step further, players can get up-to around 76 mod points to have our main stat increases, have enemies do the same instead of gaining base stat modifiers after 30. If enemies use mods and the same weapon stats by base, then much of our and their, perceived power creep could be solved at the same time.