Multiplicative Stats/Abilities is whats causing unbalanced pvp!

cozmon3c_ESO

So many things in the game are multiplicitve from champion points, to skills, to whatever is an increase in anything by a percentage base.

what this does is it makes it so the more you stack something into one thing, say damage, the more beneficial that multiplicitive bonus is. if you have 1000 damage and you increase it by 10% you get 1100 damage, thats only a 100 damage increase. But if you have 3000 damage and increase it by 10% you get 3300, not increasing damage by just 100 but 300! this is why you dont see hybrid builds anymore, its because there is no way for them to even compete with this type of stat gains.

What ZoS must do to balance a game with out soft caps, is to make all buffs addative. this way everyone who has say 1000 damage gets a 100 damage buff and someone with 3000 damage still only gets a 100 damage buff.

so basically the reason why we see so many extreme unbalanced things in pvp right now is because of multiplicative stats and skills, and if we ever want to see some balance come back to this game zos needs to change how things are calculated to addative. Its easier to balance and we can stop one hit wonder builds and never ending regen builds and the tankiest of god build and etc....

shane.roberts25b14_ESO

Balance can also be achieved by removing damage scaling. Resources should not determine how hard you hit, only how many times you can hit

Emma_Overload

shane.roberts25b14_ESO wrote: »

Balance can also be achieved by removing damage scaling. Resources should not determine how hard you hit, only how many times you can hit

I like your plan a lot better. We already have stats called 'Weapon Damage" and "Spell Damage"... I think it's crazy that the devs decided to modify damage values according to the size of the resource pools, too. Removing this damage scaling by resource size would be a big help to hybrid builds without screwing over regen builds.

Xeven

The problem is not that certain abilities are modified by certain attributes, the problem is that there are no defensive attributes.

Magicka, Stamina and HP are resource stats and should be only that.
Spell/Weapon Power are offensive stats for magicka and stamina respectively.
Spell/Weapon Penetration and Resistance are passive offensive/defensive stats for magicka and stamina respectively.

Whats missing is a magic defense stat that buffs magic defensive abilities and a stamina defense stat that buffs stamina defensive abilities. Now you have meaningful choices. Now you have to sacrifice tank for spank and vice versa.

These tried and true fundamentals to the genre were established literally decades ago. Why they're not already a thing in ESO I have no earthly idea.

SRIBES

I doubt ZOS will ever do this, I hope they do though would fix a lot.

Derra

shane.roberts25b14_ESO wrote: »

Balance can also be achieved by removing damage scaling. Resources should not determine how hard you hit, only how many times you can hit

The problem if you make the stat pool a non determining factor for dmg is with esos current regeneration values i´d just dump everything i can into stamina and and health as a magica class to live longer - i can cast infinetely anyway...

Ezareth

I don't think your example was a clear demonstration of the problem. The issue with multiplicative values is they multiply with each other, not your base stats. Making them additive makes "stacking" these abilities with each other far less powerful.

For example the Champion point regen abilities are multiplicative with your other stat bonus percentages so if for example you are a Bosmer nightblade with 25% into stamina regen and the follow abilities you could receive:

30% Nightblade
20% Tri-pot
21% Bosmer
15% Werewolf
28% Full Medium Armor
25% Champion point = 230% Regen bonus to base instead of 209%

You could make every buff a flat modifer and exactly the same for everyone but I think that would be boring and take the enjoyment of build design out of the game.

Erock25

Ezareth wrote: »

I don't think your example was a clear demonstration of the problem. The issue with multiplicative values is they multiply with each other, not your base stats. Making them additive makes "stacking" these abilities with each other far less powerful.

For example the Champion point regen abilities are multiplicative with your other stat bonus percentages so if for example you are a Bosmer nightblade with 25% into stamina regen and the follow abilities you could receive:

30% Nightblade
20% Tri-pot
21% Bosmer
15% Werewolf
28% Full Medium Armor
25% Champion point = 230% Regen bonus to base instead of 209%

You could make every buff a flat modifer and exactly the same for everyone but I think that would be boring and take the enjoyment of build design out of the game.

@Ezareth Can you explain the numbers there a bit more? Those values don't add up to 230 or 209 no matter if you are treating them as additive or multiplicative.

cozmon3c_ESO

basically the more you have the more you get

xylena

stacking % bonuses onto one stat increases it exponentially, so it becomes more OP the more you stack

% stat racial bonuses are another on the list of things really screwing the balance of competitive play

Varicite

Erock25 wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

I don't think your example was a clear demonstration of the problem. The issue with multiplicative values is they multiply with each other, not your base stats. Making them additive makes "stacking" these abilities with each other far less powerful.

For example the Champion point regen abilities are multiplicative with your other stat bonus percentages so if for example you are a Bosmer nightblade with 25% into stamina regen and the follow abilities you could receive:

30% Nightblade
20% Tri-pot
21% Bosmer
15% Werewolf
28% Full Medium Armor
25% Champion point = 230% Regen bonus to base instead of 209%

You could make every buff a flat modifer and exactly the same for everyone but I think that would be boring and take the enjoyment of build design out of the game.

@Ezareth Can you explain the numbers there a bit more? Those values don't add up to 230 or 209 no matter if you are treating them as additive or multiplicative.

Some of the bonuses are additive, while others are multiplicative. It's confusing. : /

Vis

I disagree on this one. I like how synergies work. I have played MMOs that use additive bonuses and it actually kills diversity, not adds to it. I would suggest adding more multiplicative synergies that can stack with other attributes instead of less (i.e. Champ point builds that would allow stamina builds to use and shields but suck at rolling. Or magicka builds that block very well but have awful shields and heals).

Keep the core synergies, but add new ones that have a give and take:

Example: dodge rolls cost x‰ less per abc stamina or magicka. However, your shields are y% weaker per abc stamina or magicka.

Detector

LOL. The less damage - longer survival. This is the choice of everyone.

Zsymon

I agree, stamina and magicka resources should not scale either damage or shields (eye on Sorcs), only spell damage and weapon damage should affect skill damage, and shields should just give a set amount of points, not scaling to anything, so they are useful for all types of builds, and not overpowered for magicka builds.

Maybe set the skill damage stuck as if you had 20K resources of both stamina and magicka, modified by weapon/spell damage. That way the insane pvp damage gets lowered (I've seen Sorcs with 43K magicka), and hybridization becomes more viable. Your main skills become less damaging, and skills using the other resource become more damaging, allowing for the mixing of stamina and magicka based skills.

The game would have so much more variety like this, with far more good build options. Hybridization is so important, and ZOS has killed it off completely.

TheElementalPlatypus

This, along with no such thing as resource management

Cathexis

They definitely need to do away with resource scaling. It completely destroys hybridized builds.

Ezareth

Erock25 wrote: »

Ezareth wrote: »

I don't think your example was a clear demonstration of the problem. The issue with multiplicative values is they multiply with each other, not your base stats. Making them additive makes "stacking" these abilities with each other far less powerful.

For example the Champion point regen abilities are multiplicative with your other stat bonus percentages so if for example you are a Bosmer nightblade with 25% into stamina regen and the follow abilities you could receive:

30% Nightblade
20% Tri-pot
21% Bosmer
15% Werewolf
28% Full Medium Armor
25% Champion point = 230% Regen bonus to base instead of 209%

You could make every buff a flat modifer and exactly the same for everyone but I think that would be boring and take the enjoyment of build design out of the game.

@Ezareth Can you explain the numbers there a bit more? Those values don't add up to 230 or 209 no matter if you are treating them as additive or multiplicative.

@Erock25
Sorry my calculation didn't include the Nightblade in the numbers.

30>20>21>15>28 = 114% Bonus Additive to base 100% regen = 214% Base
25 champion passive is Multiplicative so 214% Regen becomes 267.5% instea of the 239% Base regen it would be otherwise.

Ezareth

Vis wrote: »

I disagree on this one. I like how synergies work. I have played MMOs that use additive bonuses and it actually kills diversity, not adds to it. I would suggest adding more multiplicative synergies that can stack with other attributes instead of less (i.e. Champ point builds that would allow stamina builds to use and shields but suck at rolling. Or magicka builds that block very well but have awful shields and heals).

Keep the core synergies, but add new ones that have a give and take:

Example: dodge rolls cost x‰ less per abc stamina or magicka. However, your shields are y% weaker per abc stamina or magicka.

You realize right now my L41 Nightblade has almost unlimited stamina without having a single stamina set bonus?

I agree that some multiplicative bonuses should be present, however I do not think there would be multiple multiplicative bonuses.

I remember back in Wow when haste was multiplicative and you could use bloostlust while stacking haste and spam pyroblast at the global cool down which would just wreck people and they couldn't do anything.

Some things need to be tweaked so that the *power* of any ability/passive can't exceed a certain threshold of power by min/maxxing.

In my above example my nightblade would receive over double the actual maximum benefit of the additive version of the champion passive which is absurdly powerful. There are many other force multipliers that just need to be adjusted to not stack with so many things or to have a lower maximum benefit. 20-25% multiplicative benefit on any ability is just too strong.

Zsymon

Good stamina recovery is all a Nightblade has, he hasn't got a single reliable heal, not a single shield. All other classes have either shields, heals or both. The only defensive ability we have, Cloak, is completely bugged and breaks 80% of the time right after casting it, even in PVE. Magicka NBs have to spam it until it finally sticks, and it is a very expensive spell to spam.

Why do you think they gave us that passive to begin with, we need it. Both stamina and magicka NB builds need Refreshing Shadows for defensive purposes.

jpalm1995

Just bring back the old health scaling. People are hitting so hard now and people are getting one-hit. Giving more value to health attribute points would solve so many issues

Domander

jpalm1995 wrote: »

Just bring back the old health scaling. People are hitting so hard now and people are getting one-hit. Giving more value to health attribute points would solve so many issues

I agree, health is a really weak attribute compared to the others

trimsic_ESO

cozmon3c_ESO wrote: »

So many things in the game are multiplicitve from champion points, to skills, to whatever is an increase in anything by a percentage base.

what this does is it makes it so the more you stack something into one thing, say damage, the more beneficial that multiplicitive bonus is. if you have 1000 damage and you increase it by 10% you get 1100 damage, thats only a 100 damage increase. But if you have 3000 damage and increase it by 10% you get 3300, not increasing damage by just 100 but 300! this is why you dont see hybrid builds anymore, its because there is no way for them to even compete with this type of stat gains.

What ZoS must do to balance a game with out soft caps, is to make all buffs addative. this way everyone who has say 1000 damage gets a 100 damage buff and someone with 3000 damage still only gets a 100 damage buff.

so basically the reason why we see so many extreme unbalanced things in pvp right now is because of multiplicative stats and skills, and if we ever want to see some balance come back to this game zos needs to change how things are calculated to addative. Its easier to balance and we can stop one hit wonder builds and never ending regen builds and the tankiest of god build and etc....

No it's not. Many games have the same approach (percentage increase) and are more balanced than ESO. The balance issues in the game are:
- Some game mechanics allow people to increase both their offensive and defensive potential at the same time, like damage shields scaling off magicka
- The burst damage of some abilities is too high
- Some abilities are both extremely powerfull and spammable to the point where some players are using only 2 or 3 abilities in a PVP combat
- Melee DPS abilities, especially weapons skill ones, are not competitive enough compared to range DPS abilities, despite the risks of being in melee range - clearly true in Cyrodiil, in PVE things are more balanced
- CC immunity and CC diminishing returns are not strong enough; unless this is fixed it will not possible to implement large scale CC to counter the zerg in Cyrodiil
- In PVP, magicka builds are still too efficient compared to stamina builds - nerf the nirn trait and magicka builds will be out of control in the current state of the game in Cyrodiil
- The behavior of most abilities is the same in PVE and in PVP, adding to the complexity of a balanced game

It's a good thing that people have to make a choice: be a tank or be a DPS, but not both at the same time. The champion system and the overall redesign of 1.6/2.0 help in that direction, even if there is still some work to be done.

Folkb

resource scaling and %'s need to go in order to balance damage in this game.

Soulac

It took me 4 hours to get the new formulas, don't change anything!

Soris

East fix = revert 1.5

Do it today. Then re-structure 1.6 from start.
Do it before it's too late

Xeven

^DK

wanderlustx5

shane.roberts25b14_ESO wrote: »

Balance can also be achieved by removing damage scaling. Resources should not determine how hard you hit, only how many times you can hit

Exactly right, no reason to add in resource pool size, why make it so complex when its simple. Have greater pool hit more, have stronger stats hit harder, why make it a function of both.