Dear ZOS: a simple solution to the damage leap

Wereswan · April 19

Two words: damage cap.

We already have caps on critical damage, critical damage chance, resistance, block mitigation, move speed, and probably more I'm forgetting about. It would simply be one more. Set it to whatever the current best parses are plus whatever amount of power creep you feel comfortable allowing, and boom, done. You won't have to keep playing whack-a-mole with every broken combination people dream up, players will still have more damage than they had before patch 46, and it'll give you space to come up with a more elegant solution to the problem.

Treeshka · April 19

Artificial caps for damage is never a good idea. I still do not like that %125 critical damage cap which feels like a band aid solution.

Ph1p · April 19

I don't think this is a good idea. Specific caps can make sense. For example, mitigation should have a limit, because you don't want literally invulnerable players. A limit on speed buffs can prevent exploits and improve performance. And a critical damage cap can steer players towards alternative stats instead of just stacking a single one.

But a general cap on DPS as a whole has tons of issues: First, it goes against the most basic tenet in gaming that skill and progression should yield a reward. Second, there is no single, overall damage number per character. It's composed of many individual damage ticks calculated at whatever the server tick rate of ESO is, so how would ZOS even cap overall damage output? Third, it's another layer of calculation on top of everything else, which can't be good for performance or bug fixing.

Wereswan · April 19

Ph1p wrote: »

I don't think this is a good idea. Specific caps can make sense. For example, mitigation should have a limit, because you don't want literally invulnerable players. A limit on speed buffs can prevent exploits and improve performance. And a critical damage cap can steer players towards alternative stats instead of just stacking a single one.

But a general cap on DPS as a whole has tons of issues: First, it goes against the most basic tenet in gaming that skill and progression should yield a reward. Second, there is no single, overall damage number per character. It's composed of many individual damage ticks calculated at whatever the server tick rate of ESO is, so how would ZOS even cap overall damage output? Third, it's another layer of calculation on top of everything else, which can't be good for performance or bug fixing.

The problem, as I see it, is that there are three basic means of dealing with the problem that have come up so far:

Nerfs. Everyone hates nerfs. More importantly, the problem with the broken subclass builds isn't any specific skill; it's the ways in which it's possible to combine class skill line passives to yield absolutely broken results. If ZOS nerfs those skill lines to tame the 170K beasts, lower-performing builds that make use of them will inevitably suffer more.
Rebalance content. The problem here is, which do you aim at? The new builds that "only" represent a 20% or so increase in damage, or the 40% monsters? Choose the former and you're still going to have a problem, while the latter is effectively going to be perceived by everyone else as a massive nerf. It also doesn't really address the part where those 170K builds are still massively better than everything else.
Some form of penalty to subclassed skills or bonus for retaining original class skill lines. Various forms of this idea have been proposed. I personally like the idea of making some sort of bonus akin to a set bonus for having 2-3 skills from the same original class line. People who want to subclass obviously hate the idea of incurring some penalty for doing so—and again, while it might take some of the sting out of the current power leap, it doesn't really address those silly numbers at the top end.

Some form of a damage cap is the only thing I've been able to think of that would specifically address those silly numbers being posted at the top end. How precisely they would go about that, I don't know; I don't claim to be an expert. As for "rewards," that's the point of setting the target at X plus whatever ZOS feels is a reasonable level of power creep; players would still be getting more damage than they had before, it just wouldn't be the game-breaking levels currently showing up on PTS.

AdmiralDigby · April 19

I don't think this is a good idea (though I do want to avoid the insane power creep that could happen).

Even if I did think it was a good idea. How do you cap dmg? Dmg is an output of multiple variables (wpn dmg, max resources, crit chance, penetration, crit dmg, flat % modifiers from cp and skill lines and sets, other Misc things perhaps(.

How would you cap each of those variables so it's equal? Something classes rely more on crit chance for dmg than wpn dmg. Other rely on % modifiers more. How would you create caps for all of them while balancing all classes. Let alone the multiclassong. Its an impossible feat.

valenwood_vegan · April 19

A damage cap? Yikes. They might as well just do vengeance mode for the whole game.

Ignoring the "how exactly would that work with all the variables involved" issue for the moment, if the cap was easy to reach then everyone would just be playing at max damage and people would get bored. I can see a trial chat now: "Hey man, what's your build's dps? 100k, how about you? 100k, how bout you? 100k." Lol.

If the cap is difficult to reach, then good players would reach it and casual / inexperienced / less skilled players would still be left behind. Groups would favor people who can hit the cap. There would be specific builds that reach the cap and those would be used for group content. If everyone is hitting the cap and it's intended to be difficult to do so, there would be nerfs to whatever the easy mode build or set or skill is. It's not solving anything.

The solution is to spend more time and thought on subclassing and do it right, not restrict and diminish the whole game like this.

AlterBlika · April 19

Damage cap is actually a great idea since they fail to balance classes right. Other things (sustain, etc) need such treatment as well.

Wereswan · April 19

valenwood_vegan wrote: »

A damage cap? Yikes. They might as well just do vengeance mode for the whole game.

Ignoring the "how exactly would that work with all the variables involved" issue for the moment, if the cap was easy to reach then everyone would just be playing at max damage and people would get bored. I can see a trial chat now: "Hey man, what's your build's dps? 100k, how about you? 100k, how bout you? 100k." Lol.

If the cap is difficult to reach, then good players would reach it and casual / inexperienced / less skilled players would still be left behind. Groups would favor people who can hit the cap. There would be specific builds that reach the cap and those would be used for group content. If everyone is hitting the cap and it's intended to be difficult to do so, there would be nerfs to whatever the easy mode build or set or skill is. It's not solving anything.

The solution is to spend more time and thought on subclassing and do it right, not restrict and diminish the whole game like this.

I agree that it's a blunt instrument and really hated the idea of proposing it, but I don't see how they come up with a more nuanced solution in a little under two months.

BretonMage · April 19

They could apply the same approach they did with thr Daedric summoning line: buffs only apply to damage from the original skill line.

Wereswan · April 19

BretonMage wrote: »

They could apply the same approach they did with thr Daedric summoning line: buffs only apply to damage from the original skill line.

Not a bad idea; ZOS has already indicated they want to treat skill lines as individual, compartmentalized things, and it's the interactions between them that are responsible for most of the broken builds.

necro_the_crafter · April 19

Caps can work only if there is a "stat" that you can scale from.

For example, if we had TES4 stats.Lets say you have agility stat tied to your class, that will increase your crit chance, as well as increase damage done with daggers and bows. Then we could introduce a soft and a hard cap for agility if we want to limit amount of damage or crit chance.

Lets say 1 agility equals to 10 damage and 0.5 crit chance. Max possible agility level before buffs is 100.
So at max agility level we will have +1000 damage and 50% crit chance. Then, lets say, we add gear and buffs that can push agility further.
Lets say in an optimised group we can get up to +100 more agility from buffs. then we will sit at +2000 damage and 100% crit chanse.
To not allow this to happen we can delete those sources of agility from the game, but then classes who have low agility, but still need a crit chance from it, will be punished and will have less dps compared to high agility classes.

So we introduce soft and hard caps. First and formost we place soft cap at around 75 agility. This means that further scaling of crit chanse and damage is halved, so from 75 and above we gain 5 damage and 0.25% crit. Now our natural 100 agility is (750 + 125) 875 damage and (32.5% + 6.1%) crit 38.6% crit, and in the group(+100 agility) (750 + 625) 1375 damage and (32.5 + 31,25%) 63,75% crit.
And then you place hard cap at the point that you want to stop scaling of your agility classes, lets say I want to have them max of 75% crit and 1500 damage, so 270 agility will be hard cap for crit and 250 agility will be hard cap for damage. But in our example in optimised groups you can have 200 agility, which means players can reach those numbers only with unique suboptimal builds, as pushing some secondary stats toward soft caps might give more dps return then going full agility.

So, by implemanting softcap we made it so pushing agility towards it is more rewarding then stacking it over the top.
In our group scenario, providing agility though buffs to push non-agility based classes to softcap doesnt make agility based classes perform over the top, while still maintaing benefits to agility based classes that will have their agility pushed beyond the softcap.

TLDR: Just stoping you from gaining bonuses from stats is boring and unintuitive. To introduce caps all across the stats you have to change stat sytem to support said caps.

GloatingSwine · April 20

Wereswan wrote: »

The problem, as I see it, is that there are three basic means of dealing with the problem that have come up so far:

There's a fourth, which is probably the best.

Restrict subclassing to one skill line. That would greatly restrict the number of broken combos and make them much easier to identify why ones have become broken and, for instance, move their broken components across different parts of their classes.

Wereswan · April 20

GloatingSwine wrote: »

Wereswan wrote: »

The problem, as I see it, is that there are three basic means of dealing with the problem that have come up so far:

There's a fourth, which is probably the best.

Restrict subclassing to one skill line. That would greatly restrict the number of broken combos and make them much easier to identify why ones have become broken and, for instance, move their broken components across different parts of their classes.

At this point, I'm pretty sure nothing will be done until this actually goes live and has game-breaking consequences.