Can someone explain to me why skill damage should scale with max magicka/stamina?

spoqster

I am not complaining here, I am asking this question from a developer's perspective.

• Why would a developer make the decision to scale skill damage with spell/weapon damage AND magicka/stamina?
• What does it serve?
• Why not scale damage with the damage attributes and leave the max stats for the cast pool?

I just don't see the benefits, I only see negative effects.

• It widens the gap between low damage players and high damage players, allowing for too powerful players in comparison to casuals, which hurts the community.
• It helps to prevent the usefulness of hybrid magicka/stamina builds. This I don't understand in particular, since the developers and the games' marketing have repeatedly advertised hybrid builds as something they had envisioned for this game.

LokeTFG

Agree oh so much. I love the idea of the diversity the mag/sta builds allow, and those builds were announced and advertised by ZOS. Unfortunately, those builds are not viable now.

Lynx7386

Because if it didn't, everyone would just stack health and recovery instead.

Darkeus

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Because if it didn't, everyone would just stack health and recovery instead.

yeah right and cast 2 skills and doge 2 times and bye bye

Darkeus

for the best of this game , skill dmg should be scaled only by wep/lvl, i already said it...

MCMancub

Darkeus wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Because if it didn't, everyone would just stack health and recovery instead.

yeah right and cast 2 skills and doge 2 times and bye bye

He didn't mean health regen, and he was right. If all resources did was increase your pool, there would be no need for them. Put all attribute points into health and gear for stamina/magicka regeneration. That's it.

BuggeX

Becaus this Comes good for hybrid builds

spoqster

MCMancub wrote: »

Darkeus wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Because if it didn't, everyone would just stack health and recovery instead.

yeah right and cast 2 skills and doge 2 times and bye bye

He didn't mean health regen, and he was right. If all resources did was increase your pool, there would be no need for them. Put all attribute points into health and gear for stamina/magicka regeneration. That's it.

I disagree. The size of your resource pool determines how much burst damage you can do - even if it does not scale up your skill damage. So there will always be an advantage to having a larger pool.

MCMancub

spoqster wrote: »

MCMancub wrote: »

Darkeus wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Because if it didn't, everyone would just stack health and recovery instead.

yeah right and cast 2 skills and doge 2 times and bye bye

He didn't mean health regen, and he was right. If all resources did was increase your pool, there would be no need for them. Put all attribute points into health and gear for stamina/magicka regeneration. That's it.

I disagree. The size of your resource pool determines how much burst damage you can do - even if it does not scale up your skill damage. So there will always be an advantage to having a larger pool.

Not if you can stack more regen than you need. If I can only use X magicka/stamina per 2 seconds and my regen is at least X, I have no need for any more magicka/stamina than X.

spoqster

MCMancub wrote: »

spoqster wrote: »

MCMancub wrote: »

Darkeus wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Because if it didn't, everyone would just stack health and recovery instead.

yeah right and cast 2 skills and doge 2 times and bye bye

He didn't mean health regen, and he was right. If all resources did was increase your pool, there would be no need for them. Put all attribute points into health and gear for stamina/magicka regeneration. That's it.

I disagree. The size of your resource pool determines how much burst damage you can do - even if it does not scale up your skill damage. So there will always be an advantage to having a larger pool.

Not if you can stack more regen than you need. If I can only use X magicka/stamina per 2 seconds and my regen is at least X, I have no need for any more magicka/stamina than X.

Yes, but that depends on how you balance skill cost, pool increase and regen.

As stated above, I am not asking this from a pure ESO perspective, as in "what would happen if we decoupled damage and max pool size with the current balancing?" I am asking this from a more abstract game developer's perspective.

What is the motivation for a game designer to make this decision when creating an MMO such as this?

Maybe @ZOS_EricWrobel

MCMancub

spoqster wrote: »

MCMancub wrote: »

spoqster wrote: »

MCMancub wrote: »

Darkeus wrote: »

Lynx7386 wrote: »

Because if it didn't, everyone would just stack health and recovery instead.

yeah right and cast 2 skills and doge 2 times and bye bye

He didn't mean health regen, and he was right. If all resources did was increase your pool, there would be no need for them. Put all attribute points into health and gear for stamina/magicka regeneration. That's it.

I disagree. The size of your resource pool determines how much burst damage you can do - even if it does not scale up your skill damage. So there will always be an advantage to having a larger pool.

Not if you can stack more regen than you need. If I can only use X magicka/stamina per 2 seconds and my regen is at least X, I have no need for any more magicka/stamina than X.

Yes, but that depends on how you balance skill cost, pool increase and regen.

As stated above, I am not asking this from a pure ESO perspective, as in "what would happen if we decoupled damage and max pool size with the current balancing?" I am asking this from a more abstract game developer's perspective.

What is the motivation for a game designer to make this decision when creating an MMO such as this?

Maybe @ZOS_EricWrobel

I gotcha. That's a good question, and I'm not even sure the situation I presented is possible, it's just what would theoretically happen.

Joy_Division

spoqster wrote: »

I am not complaining here, I am asking this question from a developer's perspective.

• Why would a developer make the decision to scale skill damage with spell/weapon damage AND magicka/stamina?
• What does it serve?
• Why not scale damage with the damage attributes and leave the max stats for the cast pool?

I just don't see the benefits, I only see negative effects.

• It widens the gap between low damage players and high damage players, allowing for too powerful players in comparison to casuals, which hurts the community.
• It helps to prevent the usefulness of hybrid magicka/stamina builds. This I don't understand in particular, since the developers and the games' marketing have repeatedly advertised hybrid builds as something they had envisioned for this game.

Yes. In fact it is quite easy and would be more puzzling if they did not.

• Precedent. In most RPGs, characters got bonus damage for having a high attribute score.
• Logic. It is intuitive the a character who has a more physical strength would do more damage with a melee weapon.
• Theorycrafting. If damage is scaled off one things only, then players do not have to think very much about their characters to be very good, they just invest all their resources into that one thing.
• Build diversity. In general, it is preferable for RPGs to have a wide diversity of builds and playmates to be effective. Having only say spellpower be the sole determinant for damage means we'd all be carbon copies of each other with no viable alternatives.
• Rewards. A player who has thought hard about her build and invested the time and resources to achieve a high weapon damage AND stamina pool deserves to be more effective than a person who has done neither and has a high weapon damage and medicore stamina pool.

As far as the negative effects you list, the first one is positive. Why bother theorycrafting a build or taking the time to run a dungeon and get an exciting set of gear if I am going to the same level of effectiveness as someone who puts zero thought into their character progression?

As for the hybrid builds, what is limiting their effectiveness is the elimination of softcaps and the fact that the majority of spell/weapon damage is gained through gear. I can have 4k weapon damage or 1.5K spell / 2k weapon damage, guess which build is still going to do more damage? Also, there is a danger in allow hybrid or jack-of-all-trade builds to become too effective. Classes and builds are designed so they are strong at X while weak at Y. If I can make a build that is strong at X and Y with no weaknesses, then balance goes down the toilet. Ask anyone who has played Baldur's Gate and played a "fighter/mage" how quickly that run was compared to just 'fighter" or "mage."

Personofsecrets

yea, id prefer if the resource pools didn't.

I play a tank and will never be able to dps with the character because dpsing is super dependent on magic/stam resource pool, but tanking requires hp attributes/enchants, and switching attributes every times I want to do something new would be a nightmare.

spoqster

Joy_Division wrote: »

spoqster wrote: »

I am not complaining here, I am asking this question from a developer's perspective.

• Why would a developer make the decision to scale skill damage with spell/weapon damage AND magicka/stamina?
• What does it serve?
• Why not scale damage with the damage attributes and leave the max stats for the cast pool?

I just don't see the benefits, I only see negative effects.

• It widens the gap between low damage players and high damage players, allowing for too powerful players in comparison to casuals, which hurts the community.
• It helps to prevent the usefulness of hybrid magicka/stamina builds. This I don't understand in particular, since the developers and the games' marketing have repeatedly advertised hybrid builds as something they had envisioned for this game.

Yes. In fact it is quite easy and would be more puzzling if they did not.

• Precedent. In most RPGs, characters got bonus damage for having a high attribute score.
• Logic. It is intuitive the a character who has a more physical strength would do more damage with a melee weapon.
• Theorycrafting. If damage is scaled off one things only, then players do not have to think very much about their characters to be very good, they just invest all their resources into that one thing.
• Build diversity. In general, it is preferable for RPGs to have a wide diversity of builds and playmates to be effective. Having only say spellpower be the sole determinant for damage means we'd all be carbon copies of each other with no viable alternatives.
• Rewards. A player who has thought hard about her build and invested the time and resources to achieve a high weapon damage AND stamina pool deserves to be more effective than a person who has done neither and has a high weapon damage and medicore stamina pool.

As far as the negative effects you list, the first one is positive. Why bother theorycrafting a build or taking the time to run a dungeon and get an exciting set of gear if I am going to the same level of effectiveness as someone who puts zero thought into their character progression?

As for the hybrid builds, what is limiting their effectiveness is the elimination of softcaps and the fact that the majority of spell/weapon damage is gained through gear. I can have 4k weapon damage or 1.5K spell / 2k weapon damage, guess which build is still going to do more damage? Also, there is a danger in allow hybrid or jack-of-all-trade builds to become too effective. Classes and builds are designed so they are strong at X while weak at Y. If I can make a build that is strong at X and Y with no weaknesses, then balance goes down the toilet. Ask anyone who has played Baldur's Gate and played a "fighter/mage" how quickly that run was compared to just 'fighter" or "mage."

Hmmh. It looks like we disagree on a few accounts.

• Precedent -- You're probably right, but I don't think this is a good reason. You're right for mentioning it though.
• Logic -- I disagree. Physical strength is already abstracted into weapon damage. You already get the weapon's damage on top of it. Max stamina represents your endurance, that is how often you can hit without having to catch your breath. It's equivalent for the magicka attributes.
• Theorycrafting -- A good and balanced character progression system allows for plenty of ways for rewarding theorycrafting. Picking the right armor sets, the best skills with the right synergies, the right mix of resource pool, regen and cost reduction, all that leaves plenty of room for theorycrafting. But knowing that both the resource pool and the damage attribute increase skill damage, players just end up maximizing both (especially since there is a de-facto upper limit to weapon/spell damage). Maximizing two attributes is hardly less trivial than maximizing one.
• Build diversity -- See point above. If anything, decoupling resource pool and damage should lead to more build diversity. But to cut this part of the discussion short, good build diversity should come from an extensive horizontal progression system - many and well balanced gear sets and many and well balanced skills.
• Rewards -- I agree with you that it should be rewarding to optimize your build. But let's look at the current status of the game. If you run a v14 with a build that is not optimized in any way, or a tank, you might do up to 5k damage. Optimizing your gear sets (Martial Knowledge/Ravager/etc), will get you up to 7-8k, then you can hone your skill execution, maximize your DoT uptimes, upgrade everything to gold, etc. you will get up to 10k and 12k (which is fine for trials), then you can improve it further to over 15k and more. If you are playing the optimal class/race/skills synergies (imp/stam/temp or dun/dk/vamp) you can get up to 20k or even 25k. Now add in the CP grind and you get to the point where @xMovingTarget posts a video of his group killing the Valkyn before he even destroys the first platform. So disregarding the CP issue, you're still left with a damage disparity of 5k min and 20k max. That's a factor 4! For God's sake, that's just ridiculous. Now I am not going to start a debate here on how much it should be precisely, but it is my opinion that a factor 4 (or even more) is too much at any rate. I would feel good about a maximum dps of 8k. That's already 1.5 to 2 times as much as your un-optimized regular joe build. And don't forget that if two players both do 8k in PvE, one might still wipe the floor with the other in PvP because of his player skill. Think about it, this huge damage gap creates so many problems: It discourages casual players, it gives more serious players a false sense of achievement, it trivialises PvE content and most importantly it unbalances PvP to a point of frustration.

If you invest time and thought in the game and as a reward the game allows you take on 2 or 3 players by yourself, that's one thing. But if the game allows a player who is not even the emperor to take on 20 others and survive, then the game has a balancing problem.

So no, a wide damage gap is NOT a positive thing.

As to hybrid builds: Of course nobody wants to create a game in which warrior-mages are more powerful than mages per se. The hybrid builds I am thinking of are

• a templar tank who takes more damage but can heal himself and the group. This is directly hindered by the pool/damage coupling. A tank could afford to trade some physical resistance for spell damage, but he can never get his magicka high enough to make this build viable, while maximizing stam and health.
• a dps who sacrifices some damage for group utility (a stamina templar for example).
• a warrior/mage dps who maximizes both wpn and spell damage, but sacrifices pool size and regen, so that he will have lower burst and sustain in either resource, but can switch from one resource to the other as it runs out. This is interesting if you want to mix your stamina dps with magicka skills so you have something to fall back to when you run/roll dodge too much, or if you want to mix a greatsword with a resto staff or a destro staff, so that you are not locked in with your bow as the only viable range option. Decoupling pools and damage may have been the better fix for stamina builds than the introduction of the stamina morphs. And yes, I am a fan of soft caps.

I listed at least 3 builds that are simply not viable at the moment. So this is a good indicator that the decoupling will lead to more build diversity, not less. One thing I miss in particular in this game, is the option to run a 4 player group without healer and tank, simply with 4 self-sustained fighters. The need for this becomes obvious on console, where there are far fewer healers and tanks than necessary because console players are not used to the classical MMO concept and thus don't see the need for it.

So, to sum up: Your answer did not convince me in the least.

Vaelen

I think they scaled it that way to make it more diverse and customizable and to ditch the cookie cutter metas which alot of games are infamous for such as GW2. If they made it so only spell damage/weapon damage scaled with skills, then everyone would ditch having more Magicka or Stamina in gear and just shoot for the most Spell Damage/Weapon Damage, thus making it more cookie cutter in terms of viable builds.

PBpsy

Because anything as complicated as SDICWC has been considers much to complicated for the average rpg player since late 90s.

spoqster

Vaelen wrote: »

I think they scaled it that way to make it more diverse and customizable and to ditch the cookie cutter metas which alot of games are infamous for such as GW2. If they made it so only spell damage/weapon damage scaled with skills, then everyone would ditch having more Magicka or Stamina in gear and just shoot for the most Spell Damage/Weapon Damage, thus making it more cookie cutter in terms of viable builds.

But weapon and spell damage are pseudo capped. People already max it out and then they put everything else into mag/stam. It seems like decoupling the two would actually lead to more choice, rather than fewer.

spoqster

PBpsy wrote: »

Because anything as complicated as SDICWC has been considers much to complicated for the average rpg player since late 90s.

What is SDICWC?

PBpsy

spoqster wrote: »

PBpsy wrote: »

Because anything as complicated as SDICWC has been considers much to complicated for the average rpg player since late 90s.

What is SDICWC?

Strength
Dexterity
Constitution
Intelligence
Wisdom
Charisma
...and such...

spoqster

PBpsy wrote: »

spoqster wrote: »

PBpsy wrote: »

Because anything as complicated as SDICWC has been considers much to complicated for the average rpg player since late 90s.

What is SDICWC?

Strength
Dexterity
Constitution
Intelligence
Wisdom
Charisma
...and such...

I always loved those character mechanics. :-)

Joy_Division

spoqster wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

spoqster wrote: »

I am not complaining here, I am asking this question from a developer's perspective.

• Why would a developer make the decision to scale skill damage with spell/weapon damage AND magicka/stamina?
• What does it serve?
• Why not scale damage with the damage attributes and leave the max stats for the cast pool?

I just don't see the benefits, I only see negative effects.

• It widens the gap between low damage players and high damage players, allowing for too powerful players in comparison to casuals, which hurts the community.
• It helps to prevent the usefulness of hybrid magicka/stamina builds. This I don't understand in particular, since the developers and the games' marketing have repeatedly advertised hybrid builds as something they had envisioned for this game.

Yes. In fact it is quite easy and would be more puzzling if they did not.

• Precedent. In most RPGs, characters got bonus damage for having a high attribute score.
• Logic. It is intuitive the a character who has a more physical strength would do more damage with a melee weapon.
• Theorycrafting. If damage is scaled off one things only, then players do not have to think very much about their characters to be very good, they just invest all their resources into that one thing.
• Build diversity. In general, it is preferable for RPGs to have a wide diversity of builds and playmates to be effective. Having only say spellpower be the sole determinant for damage means we'd all be carbon copies of each other with no viable alternatives.
• Rewards. A player who has thought hard about her build and invested the time and resources to achieve a high weapon damage AND stamina pool deserves to be more effective than a person who has done neither and has a high weapon damage and medicore stamina pool.

As far as the negative effects you list, the first one is positive. Why bother theorycrafting a build or taking the time to run a dungeon and get an exciting set of gear if I am going to the same level of effectiveness as someone who puts zero thought into their character progression?

As for the hybrid builds, what is limiting their effectiveness is the elimination of softcaps and the fact that the majority of spell/weapon damage is gained through gear. I can have 4k weapon damage or 1.5K spell / 2k weapon damage, guess which build is still going to do more damage? Also, there is a danger in allow hybrid or jack-of-all-trade builds to become too effective. Classes and builds are designed so they are strong at X while weak at Y. If I can make a build that is strong at X and Y with no weaknesses, then balance goes down the toilet. Ask anyone who has played Baldur's Gate and played a "fighter/mage" how quickly that run was compared to just 'fighter" or "mage."

Hmmh. It looks like we disagree on a few accounts.

• Precedent -- You're probably right, but I don't think this is a good reason. You're right for mentioning it though.
• Logic -- I disagree. Physical strength is already abstracted into weapon damage. You already get the weapon's damage on top of it. Max stamina represents your endurance, that is how often you can hit without having to catch your breath. It's equivalent for the magicka attributes.
• Theorycrafting -- A good and balanced character progression system allows for plenty of ways for rewarding theorycrafting. Picking the right armor sets, the best skills with the right synergies, the right mix of resource pool, regen and cost reduction, all that leaves plenty of room for theorycrafting. But knowing that both the resource pool and the damage attribute increase skill damage, players just end up maximizing both (especially since there is a de-facto upper limit to weapon/spell damage). Maximizing two attributes is hardly less trivial than maximizing one.
• Build diversity -- See point above. If anything, decoupling resource pool and damage should lead to more build diversity. But to cut this part of the discussion short, good build diversity should come from an extensive horizontal progression system - many and well balanced gear sets and many and well balanced skills.
• Rewards -- I agree with you that it should be rewarding to optimize your build. But let's look at the current status of the game. If you run a v14 with a build that is not optimized in any way, or a tank, you might do up to 5k damage. Optimizing your gear sets (Martial Knowledge/Ravager/etc), will get you up to 7-8k, then you can hone your skill execution, maximize your DoT uptimes, upgrade everything to gold, etc. you will get up to 10k and 12k (which is fine for trials), then you can improve it further to over 15k and more. If you are playing the optimal class/race/skills synergies (imp/stam/temp or dun/dk/vamp) you can get up to 20k or even 25k. Now add in the CP grind and you get to the point where @xMovingTarget posts a video of his group killing the Valkyn before he even destroys the first platform. So disregarding the CP issue, you're still left with a damage disparity of 5k min and 20k max. That's a factor 4! For God's sake, that's just ridiculous. Now I am not going to start a debate here on how much it should be precisely, but it is my opinion that a factor 4 (or even more) is too much at any rate. I would feel good about a maximum dps of 8k. That's already 1.5 to 2 times as much as your un-optimized regular joe build. And don't forget that if two players both do 8k in PvE, one might still wipe the floor with the other in PvP because of his player skill. Think about it, this huge damage gap creates so many problems: It discourages casual players, it gives more serious players a false sense of achievement, it trivialises PvE content and most importantly it unbalances PvP to a point of frustration.

If you invest time and thought in the game and as a reward the game allows you take on 2 or 3 players by yourself, that's one thing. But if the game allows a player who is not even the emperor to take on 20 others and survive, then the game has a balancing problem.

So no, a wide damage gap is NOT a positive thing.

As to hybrid builds: Of course nobody wants to create a game in which warrior-mages are more powerful than mages per se. The hybrid builds I am thinking of are

• a templar tank who takes more damage but can heal himself and the group. This is directly hindered by the pool/damage coupling. A tank could afford to trade some physical resistance for spell damage, but he can never get his magicka high enough to make this build viable, while maximizing stam and health.
• a dps who sacrifices some damage for group utility (a stamina templar for example).
• a warrior/mage dps who maximizes both wpn and spell damage, but sacrifices pool size and regen, so that he will have lower burst and sustain in either resource, but can switch from one resource to the other as it runs out. This is interesting if you want to mix your stamina dps with magicka skills so you have something to fall back to when you run/roll dodge too much, or if you want to mix a greatsword with a resto staff or a destro staff, so that you are not locked in with your bow as the only viable range option. Decoupling pools and damage may have been the better fix for stamina builds than the introduction of the stamina morphs. And yes, I am a fan of soft caps.

I listed at least 3 builds that are simply not viable at the moment. So this is a good indicator that the decoupling will lead to more build diversity, not less. One thing I miss in particular in this game, is the option to run a 4 player group without healer and tank, simply with 4 self-sustained fighters. The need for this becomes obvious on console, where there are far fewer healers and tanks than necessary because console players are not used to the classical MMO concept and thus don't see the need for it.

So, to sum up: Your answer did not convince me in the least.

Because you already have your mind made up.

You claim that maximizing two things (spellcrafting and magicka for ex.) is hardly less trivial than maxing one. That is just wrong. A soc who runs Necropotance and pets will have little spellpower but lots of magic. It's a viable build. Can't max out both. Or a sorc runs spellpower gear will never attain the pool of magic as the necro sorc. Two different builds. Under your system, the necro sorc would never work as a viable build.

Also physical strength / mental ability is *only* abstracted into weapon damage because of the current system in place. Under your system, it would always the same and only improves with level and quality of the item. It would then be completely independent and we would run into illogical situations where weaklings do as much damage as the physically gifted. You may prefer this to close the damage gap, but it is not logical.

A templar tank can already do what you describe. In fact it is the most efficient way to do veteran dragonstar arena. In fact, it is because heals scale off magic, something your system would not allow, that aids this build.

The DPS utility build already exists. I use it whenever I run a raid with inexperienced players.

Warrior / Mage cant max out spell and weapon damage because maxing two things is not as trivial as maxing one. This build will still be inefficient under your system.

spoqster

No, I don't have my mind made up @Joy_Division. I am really trying to understand it.

I agree with the necro sorc. That set wouldn't work well if magicka and dmg weren't coupled. But that set was created with the current system in mind. So if both were decoupled, the 5pc might have read "Gain xxx spell power".

I have a bit of trouble with your other points though. Maybe I was not clear what I meant when I mentioned weapon damage. What I meant is, that physical strength is abstracted into weapon power (the character attribute) and then there is the weapon's damage (weapon attribute) goes on top of that. So there are already two attributes to maximize, even without stamina. So no, the total weapon damage is not independent of the character.

I also don't understand your point about the templar tank. The fact that healing scales off magicka is the reason this build is not viable. You have to put your attributes into stam and health if you want to create a halfway decent tank. I tried it. With 12k magicka your healing spells do about half as much healing as if cast by a healer, and they even cost more magicka of which you have little. Any effort to improve it just gimps your tanking stats without any real chance of getting anywhere. It's much more efficient to have a magicka dps off-heal.

So I am curious about your DPS utility build and how you make it work.

I agree with you, that in principle it is less trivial to max out tow different attributes. But in this game weapon power and spell power are pseudo capped, because you can't find enough set items to get either beyond a certain point. Maybe these two can't be well combined, I haven't checked. But again, I am not only asking from the ESO perspective, I am asking from a more general, game developer's perspective.

When I pull up an alt and I am level 10 to 20 pretty much all skills do similar damage, even if you are already maxing out one stat. At that stage you can really pick whatever you want, and perform well. The main difference there is how often you can cast a spell. And to me, that just feels right. As the character levels up, the character is pressed more and more into certain cookie cutter builds. I as a player enjoy the first part more, in a sense, because I have more freedom in character configuration, and I reckon many players feel the same way. Shouldn't a game like this strive for more variability, more choices, more freedom? After all, freedom of play is one of the paradigms of the Elder Scrolls franchise.

AzuraKin

Personofsecrets wrote: »

yea, id prefer if the resource pools didn't.

I play a tank and will never be able to dps with the character because dpsing is super dependent on magic/stam resource pool, but tanking requires hp attributes/enchants, and switching attributes every times I want to do something new would be a nightmare.

you say you play a tank and not able to dps. news flash - tank means that your role is to focus the damage on you so to prevent the damn dps from dying while they burn *** down. (tanks not really needed in this game outside pvp/trials)

Faulgor

Yeah, it sucks. They added it back in beta when everybody was just stacking health, and they wanted to make the other attributes more appealing. But we also still had soft capping back then, so ...

I think it's an unnecessary redundancy and they should take another look at how to get rid of it sensibly.

cschwingeb14_ESO

It's not like they couldn't change the scaling, but the only meaningful choices we have in character design are:

Attribute allocation (stam, magicka, health)
Set bonuses
Mundus
Skills slotted

If magicka and stam get decoupled from damage, everyone will go mostly health

Rune_Relic

Because magicka stamina and health are based on stat distribution.
That's stats bias you toward spell damage, weapon damage, or tanking (unique character).
If you remove the bias you could do
100% magicka damage & 100% weapon damage
rather than
100% magicka damage or 100% weapon damage
or
50% magicka damage & 50% weapon damage

Whether that actually matters is open to dispute I guess.
IMHO if you want devastating spells you invest in magicka, if you want devastating weapon damage you invest in stamina.

Personally I wouldn't have separated magicka and stamina weapons.
I would have had hybrid weapons that have a spell:weapon damage bias.
I would have had armour that has a spell:weapon resist bias.
I would have had stats that need to be tuned to that bias to get 100% effect.

After all a staff can be used to cast spells but you can still smack someone around the head with it too.
Most fantasy talismans have been physical weapons that also do magical damage.
No reason a frost shield couldn't absorb physical impact.
etc.

Rune_Relic

I guess the real question is ..is the weapon/spell power stored within the item or the user ?
Swing at someone without a weapon and you wont do much damage.
A weapon that isn't being wielded by someone does no damage.
Put the two together however..

Magdalina

spoqster wrote: »

Vaelen wrote: »

I think they scaled it that way to make it more diverse and customizable and to ditch the cookie cutter metas which alot of games are infamous for such as GW2. If they made it so only spell damage/weapon damage scaled with skills, then everyone would ditch having more Magicka or Stamina in gear and just shoot for the most Spell Damage/Weapon Damage, thus making it more cookie cutter in terms of viable builds.

But weapon and spell damage are pseudo capped. People already max it out and then they put everything else into mag/stam. It seems like decoupling the two would actually lead to more choice, rather than fewer.

Softcaps have been removed from the game(which actually leads to less diversity imo, but that's another story), not sure what you mean with that?

Also, may be too sleepy but I don't see how removing skills' scaling with resource pool would actually change much for the game as it is now - resource pool is already a much weaker dps buff than spell/wep damage and much worse for sustain than high regeneration. So basically most dps hardcore stack spell/wep damage, if they have any magicka/stamina buffs in there that's because they come with the sets, if we could we'd go spell damage for all 5 set bonuses:P Tanks and healers have a bit more versatility, tanks mainly figuring something between resource pool/regeneration(favoring regeneration I think), healers having a possible use for all three. Nothing would change for dps in your scenario, nothing would really change for tanks(I don't see a tank stacking spell/wep damage because it'd be losing on sustain which tanks imo need a lot more than dps or whatever) and healers would just slightly reconsider their builds to stack more regeneration instead of resource pool(which some already do anyway).

If you're just looking to decrease the gap in between what worst and best player can do I don't think you're going in the right direction. I'd try the CP one=P
Also lack of information. There're some things which are counter intuitive and not listed anywhere, giving people who have somehow obtained that secret information a nice advantage over others. Like dual wielding increasing spelldamage more than a staff(though guess this one is pretty known by now).

dylanjaygrobbelaarb16_ESO

I personally dont like the invisible extra scaling from max stat. at the very least it should visibly change your spell/weapon power. also i really dont like how it seems to scale differently with magica and stamina

Duiwel

SORRY FOR NECRO! I only saw it now, I was searching for this and found it but didn't check the dates



I personally think it was an interesting dev choice.

Few games would dare go out of the norm for MMO's. Which is weapon = dmg and level = skill dmg.

I do not mind the choice. However it does annoy me that I cannot have a stam build on my 2nd slot and a magicka build on my 1st slot.

As for your question what does it server? I would like to hear that from the devs too.

However I think they would say something along the lines of it is to create a broader field of customization. Seeing as some people will stack pure stamina, others pure magicka and some will do the traditional even split (50-50 or -33-34-33) of magicka and health or stamina and health.

Given the Champion points and VR changes coming later this year it might be interesting to see what the future holds for this system. Who knows the devs might decide to change it all!

Perhaps in the future we will see a bit more level oriented attribute gains ( so they cap sooner ), that way you have a few points to distribute into other pools at max level. Who knows...


You make some valid points OP.

spoqster

Magdalina wrote: »

spoqster wrote: »

Vaelen wrote: »

I think they scaled it that way to make it more diverse and customizable and to ditch the cookie cutter metas which alot of games are infamous for such as GW2. If they made it so only spell damage/weapon damage scaled with skills, then everyone would ditch having more Magicka or Stamina in gear and just shoot for the most Spell Damage/Weapon Damage, thus making it more cookie cutter in terms of viable builds.

But weapon and spell damage are pseudo capped. People already max it out and then they put everything else into mag/stam. It seems like decoupling the two would actually lead to more choice, rather than fewer.

Softcaps have been removed from the game(which actually leads to less diversity imo, but that's another story), not sure what you mean with that?

Also, may be too sleepy but I don't see how removing skills' scaling with resource pool would actually change much for the game as it is now - resource pool is already a much weaker dps buff than spell/wep damage and much worse for sustain than high regeneration. So basically most dps hardcore stack spell/wep damage, if they have any magicka/stamina buffs in there that's because they come with the sets, if we could we'd go spell damage for all 5 set bonuses:P Tanks and healers have a bit more versatility, tanks mainly figuring something between resource pool/regeneration(favoring regeneration I think), healers having a possible use for all three. Nothing would change for dps in your scenario, nothing would really change for tanks(I don't see a tank stacking spell/wep damage because it'd be losing on sustain which tanks imo need a lot more than dps or whatever) and healers would just slightly reconsider their builds to stack more regeneration instead of resource pool(which some already do anyway).

If you're just looking to decrease the gap in between what worst and best player can do I don't think you're going in the right direction. I'd try the CP one=P
Also lack of information. There're some things which are counter intuitive and not listed anywhere, giving people who have somehow obtained that secret information a nice advantage over others. Like dual wielding increasing spelldamage more than a staff(though guess this one is pretty known by now).

@Magdalina, What I meant by pseudo capped is that you can only get extra spell/weapon damage through set bonuses and this is highly constricted.

Maybe you're right, and it wouldn't change too much about the game. But again, I'm also interested in this from a more abstract/academic perspective.

At any rate it feels wrong that experienced players can do 4 or 5 times as much dps as the casual gamer. In most real world examples you invest 20% of the time to get 80% of the results, while you'd have to invest 80% of time to get the remaining 20% in terms of results. Applied to ESO that would mean that 80% of the players should be able to do 10k dps, while 20% of the players should be able to do 12k dps. No one should be able to do 40k dps. I think it's unhealthy for the game that way, but maybe that's just me. Reducing the pool/damage coupling would at least be one step in that direction.