Easy improvements this game needs yesterday

Gnortranermara

Just a few quick Quality of Life improvement suggestions for ZOS.

User friendly character stats

• Express critical hit chance in percentage instead of arbitrary numbers that we have to convert to percentage to understand (on gear set bonuses and skills, like the character sheet).
• Express PvP crit resistance as a percentage instead of arbitrary numbers that we have to convert to percentage to understand (on gear and on character sheet).
• Express armor values as the corresponding percentage of mitigation instead of arbitrary numbers that we have to convert to understand (on gear and on character sheet).
• Add weapon and spell penetration to the character sheet (from flat pen sources: CP, gear, sharpened, and concentration passive).
• Express flat penetration (excluding variable percentage-based sources of penetration) as the number that is subtracted from the target's armor percentage, instead of arbitrary numbers that we have to convert to understand (on gear and on character sheet).
• Add CHDM (critical hit damage modifier, the extra bonus damage a critical hit does) to the character sheet.
• At the very least, if you don't want to use percentages because they aren't granular enough, then be sensible and multiply by 10s or show decimals instead of using arbitrary numbers.

Inventory Maintenance

• Give items like racial motif books and treasure maps a sell value so we can more easily get rid of them for a tiny bit of gold without destroying them.
• Move tabards out of inventory to collections. Let us hide the tabard while still displaying our guild name.
• Remove unsellable items from the sell-to-merchant window.

Guild Management

• Give us a few more characters for rank names. (If we use color coded names, that consumes 8 characters so we have to shorten the names.)
• Give us a text code for line breaks in the MOTD!
• Let the guildmaster specify a member as the guild house owner.
• Let members travel directly to the guild house from the Social -> Guild menu rather than hunting for the member's name in the roster.

Housing

• WAYSHRINES!

Pretty please?

(Note: I hear some of the stats I've asked for may be displayed on PC. Add them to console!)

starkerealm

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

Express critical hit chance in percentage instead of arbitrary numbers that we have to convert to percentage to understand (on gear and on character sheet).

In fact, this used to be the case. Back in the day, your crit modifier was displayed as a percentage. It still is on your character sheet, though.

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

Express PvP crit resistance as a percentage instead of arbitrary numbers that we have to convert to percentage to understand (on gear and on character sheet).

The problem with this is that crit resistance is not percentage based at all. It's subtracted from the target's crit chance directly.

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

Express armor values as a percentage instead of arbitrary numbers that we have to convert to percentage to understand (on gear and on character sheet).

Displaying real mitigation percentages would be useful... except...

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

Express penetration as a percentage instead of arbitrary numbers that we have to convert to percentage to understand (on gear and on character sheet).

This isn't how penetration works. Damage penetration subtracts from enemy resistances. So, 3k Pen against an enemy with a resist of 12k is 25% penetration, but in a trial, that 3k pen is only going to strip about 20% of the enemy's resistances.

However, even knowing that, penetration reduces the enemy's mitigation down. So an enemy will have their resistances reduced by 20% will see their actual mitigation reduced by a smaller amount than that.

Also, take that 3k pen into Cryodiil, and go toe to toe with a player rocking 35k resistances and... yes, you effectively be dealing damage against a character with 32k resistances... except, you won't actually penetrate anything, because you're stripping off their resistances above 50% mitigation.

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

Add CHDM (critical hit damage modifier, the extra bonus damage a critical hit does) to the character sheet.

I'd have to check, but I'm pretty sure this is displayed as part of the tooltip for the crit chance. Crit severity isn't a commonly manipulated stat, so it just says +50%, but that's what a crit does in ESO. To be fair, displaying the actual modifier in your stat would be useful.

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

Add weapon and spell penetration to the character sheet.
At the very least, if you don't want to use percentages because they aren't granular enough, then be sensible and multiply by 10 instead of using arbitrary numbers.

Yeah, I've got an addon that does this. It's nice to have.

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

Inventory Maintenance

• Give items like racial motif books and treasure maps a sell value so we can more easily get rid of them for a tiny bit of gold without destroying them.
• Move tabards out of inventory to collections. Let us hide the tabard while still displaying our guild name.
• Remove unsellable items from the sell-to-merchant window.

You can always give them away. If you're going to destroy them anyway. There's always a bunch of newbies running around. Also, and I realize this may sound weird, but there is a market for treasure maps.

barbarian340

make bow builds competitive...

Gnortranermara

starkerealm wrote: »

The problem with this is that crit resistance is not percentage based at all. It's subtracted from the target's crit chance directly.

Not true. The attacker's CHDM (critical hit damage modifier, not critical hit chance) is a percentage and crit resistance is converted to a percentage and subtracted from the CHDM (roughly -1% per 68 crit resist). So if you normally do 60% extra damage on crit, when you crit a target with 5% (340) crit resistance your crit will do 60 - 5= 55% bonus damage instead.

starkerealm wrote: »

This isn't how penetration works.

I know precisely how it works and there are no barriers to expressing these values in percentages. If you have 12% penetration (7920) against an enemy player with 40% armor-based mitigation (26,400) then that enemy is only mitigating 28% of your damage. This can easily be expressed as a percentage. It makes no difference that players with excess mitigation won't suffer the effects until you strip off their excess. That in no way affects the usefulness of displaying percentages instead of arbitrary values.

starkerealm wrote: »

Crit severity isn't a commonly manipulated stat

Not true. It is manipulated by CP (elfborn/precise strikes), by class passives, and by the Major/Minor Force buff.

starkerealm wrote: »

Yeah, I've got an addon that does this. It's nice to have.

No add-ons for console

starkerealm wrote: »

You can always give them away. If you're going to destroy them anyway. There's always a bunch of newbies running around. Also, and I realize this may sound weird, but there is a market for treasure maps.

True, but as a matter of convenience I'd rather sell them to my homegirl with that sexy nose ring Nuzhimeh and let her handle it.

xeNNNNN

barbarian340 wrote: »

make bow builds competitive...

No.

NewBlacksmurf

It’s a bit complicated to me. Just my opinion tho doesn’t make your ideas bad.

Gnortranermara

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

It’s a bit complicated to me. Just my opinion tho doesn’t make your ideas bad.

I don't understand. What's complicated? Change the weird arbitrary numbers that require a special conversion step to understand into simple percentages that are intuitively easy to understand. It's uncomplicating something that is currently unnecessarily complicated.

starkerealm

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

This isn't how penetration works.

I know precisely how it works and there are no barriers to expressing these values in percentages. If you have 12% penetration (7920) against an enemy player with 40% armor-based mitigation (26,400) then that enemy is only mitigating 28% of your damage. This can easily be expressed as a percentage. It makes no difference that players with excess mitigation won't suffer the effects until you strip off their excess. That in no way affects the usefulness of displaying percentages instead of arbitrary values.

Then what should it display?

Really. What?

Should it autocalculate for a hypothetical enemy in PvP with 26k, and show you that percentage modifier? For overland content? For Dungeon and Trial content?

The problem is that penetration does not exist in a vacuum. If you tell the player, "yeah, this much penetration will apply 12%" that's not what's going to happen, and you know it. So we will have replaced a statistic that actually has meaningful value (even if most of that has to be inferred by the player) with one that has no meaning whatsoever.

To swap this over to a percentage would require ejecting a lot of the resistance and penetration structure of the game as it exists now.

GreenHere

I'm onboard with putting more info on the character sheet, and having more of it be straightforward values us non-math-wizards can understand at a glance.

I've spent more time studying how things work in this game than the heavy machinery I use at work. And some of those machines can end lives or claim limbs. Maybe I should revaluate my priorities, come to think of it...



Nah

Gnortranermara

starkerealm wrote: »

Then what should it display?

Really. What?

This is really very simple. It would just display the amount of weapon/spell penetration the player has. That's it. 12%, in the example given. Whether that 12% is useful of not on a particular enemy is not relevant for the purposes of showing basic stats on a character sheet. It only comes into play when attacking each particular enemy. How is this confusing you?
12% pen is 12% pen, period. Maybe only 6% works on that guy over there. So what? The character sheet is about what the player has, not how the player's stats translate into results on every possible target.

jerj6925

Working servers before anything else please!!

GreenHere

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Then what should it display?

Really. What?

This is really very simple. It would just display the amount of weapon/spell penetration the player has. That's it. 12%, in the example given. Whether that 12% is useful of not on a particular enemy is not relevant for the purposes of showing basic stats on a character sheet. It only comes into play when attacking each particular enemy. How is this confusing you?
12% pen is 12% pen, period. Maybe only 6% works on that guy over there. So what? The character sheet is about what the player has, not how the player's stats translate into result on every possible target.

Here's an example:

You have 8,534 Euros in your bank account.

What % is that? Put it on your wallet sheet.



Penetration doesn't work like you think it does, it seems.

Gnortranermara

GreenHere wrote: »

I'm onboard with putting more info on the character sheet, and having more of it be straightforward values us non-math-wizards can understand at a glance.

I've spent more time studying how things work in this game than the heavy machinery I use at work. And some of those machines can end lives or claim limbs. Maybe I should revaluate my priorities, come to think of it...



Nah

LMAO, exactly. I'm a scientist and work with complex datasets and statistics regularly, and I have been programming in various languages since I was 7 years old (from BASIC to ruby and beyond). I can crunch the numbers when I have to, but this whole thing could be easily simplified for the end-user. There's no reason for the unnecessary complication.

Gnortranermara

GreenHere wrote: »

Penetration doesn't work like you think it does, it seems.

Don't embarrass yourself. I know precisely what the formulas are and how they work. I am arguing to make the interface more user-friendly in how it communicates that information to the user. Flat penetration negates opponent armor through simple subtraction. Its usefulness varies depending on the values involved (overpen results in 0 armor and no further benefit, and armor values above the cap must be reduced to the cap before penetration "counts"), but there are specific values involved which can be displayed and carry information for users who actually understand the numbers. If you don't, then this conversation isn't meant for you.

GreenHere

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

GreenHere wrote: »

Penetration doesn't work like you think it does, it seems.

Don't embarrass yourself. I know precisely what the formulas are and how they work. I am arguing to make the interface more user-friendly in how it communicates that information to the user. Flat penetration negates opponent armor through simple subtraction. Its usefulness varies depending on the values involved (overpen results in 0 armor and no further benefit, and armor values above the cap must be reduced to the cap before penetration "counts"), but there are specific values involved which can be displayed and carry information for users who actually understand the numbers. If you don't, then this conversation isn't meant for you.

Embarrassing myself is one of the primary ways I learn things!

Not trying to be hostile here, and maybe I am just missing something really basic, but...

How do you display something as a percent when everyone's armor values are different?

If I have 12,623 penetration, and my targets have 12k, 18k, 23k, and 48k resists... what's my percent that should be displayed, then?

Gnortranermara

GreenHere wrote: »

Embarrassing myself is one of the primary ways I learn things!

Not trying to be hostile here, and maybe I am just missing something really basic, but...

How do you display something as a percent when everyone's armor values are different?

If I have 12,623 penetration, and my targets have 12k, 18k, 23k, and 48k resists... what's my percent that should be displayed, then?

Sorry, man, it's just rubbing me the wrong way for some reason.

12,623 / 660 = 19% penetration. That's what would ALWAYS be displayed on the character sheet. How much of that is actually useful on a particular target varies.

• On the target with 12,000:, 12,000 / 660 = 18% mitigation (which would be on his character sheet). You have 19% pen, so you would slightly overpenetrate the target, so he would have 0% damage mitigation remaining.
• On the target with 18,000: 18,000 / 660 = 27% mitigation (which would be on his character sheet). You have 19% pen, so he would have 5,377 (8%) mitigation remaining.
• On the target with 48,000: 48,000 / 660 = 72% mitigation (which would be on his character sheet). You have 19% pen, so he would have 35,377 (53%) remaining, which is above the cap so he'd get the cap: 50% damage reduction from armor.

My argument is that we end-users should see the x% based numbers rather than the raw numbers. They're more intuitive and more meaningful to us. We all know what 17% means, but 11,220 is just some random meaningless jumble if you don't know how to interpret it.

Berenhir

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

GreenHere wrote: »

Penetration doesn't work like you think it does, it seems.

Don't embarrass yourself. I know precisely what the formulas are and how they work. I am arguing to make the interface more user-friendly in how it communicates that information to the user. Flat penetration negates opponent armor through simple subtraction. Its usefulness varies depending on the values involved (overpen results in 0 armor and no further benefit, and armor values above the cap must be reduced to the cap before penetration "counts"), but there are specific values involved which can be displayed and carry information for users who actually understand the numbers. If you don't, then this conversation isn't meant for you.

A percentage value would not only depend on the target you attack (Mobs 500 Resistances = 1% / Players in CP Campaigns 660 Resistances = 1%) and its current buffs (resistance, damage decrease) but also on the skill you use, because different skills have a different level of penetration (e.g. WoE, Oblivion Damage Enchant, specific damage types in PvE and PvP). If you don't understand that, this conversation probably isn't meant for you.

Gnortranermara

Berenhir wrote: »

A percentage value would not only depend on the target you attack (Mobs 500 Resistances = 1% / Players in CP Campaigns 660 Resistances = 1%)

Yes, an easy fix that my 9 year old could code, probably while drunk.

Berenhir wrote: »

and its current buffs (resistance, damage decrease) but also on the skill you use, because different skills have a different level of penetration (e.g. WoE, Oblivion Damage Enchant, specific damage types in PvE and PvP).

Learn how math works if you're going to try to be condescending, k? It's not cute. It's just frustrating explaining things to arrogant people who think they know more than they really do. Their buffs (and debuffs) are all on the left side of the subtraction sign. Your flat penetration is on the right. Your flat penetration is a fixed quantity in the equation which can be known in advance and communicated on the character sheet. Some limited %-based pen sources (maces, destro, Oblivion) are on the left side and are calculated separately from the flat penetration on the right, and cannot be included on the character sheet.

GreenHere

@SidewalkChalk5 , no worries, I know how Internet People sound in my head sometimes too! ;P

For the most part, I agree with you. % crit displays would be easier and more intuitive, along with most of your other examples.

And while I see what you're saying now, and acknowledge that you're right, displaying penetration as a % would be quite confusing for many, as illustrated by my and @starkerealm 's posts above. I think it's a language problem at that point, because if you were to say (in your head, or aloud), "I have 19% penetration", the immediate question for those who haven't studied ESO math would be, "19% of what?!". Know what I mean?

19% penetration of 100% mitigation might make quick sense to you, and if everything is handled in percents game-wide this might be less of an issue, but for the average English speaker...

You say 19% penetration, and suddenly I think "19% of what amount of armor, though? Everybody's got different mitigation..." and suddenly it doesn't seem much better than arbitrary numbers, since it's still confusing people like me who are more language-oriented than math-oriented.

If I were to guess, someone somewhere decided "Cuirass of Sooper Dooper Toughness grants you 12.6% damage mitigation!" sounded less interesting or whatever than "5674 armor rating", so penetration followed suit as a direct counter. (I know the math doesn't match up in my shoddy example.)

GreenHere

I think we can all agree that neither situation is perfect... percents can confuse because of the language barrier, and arcane numbers are close to worthless unless you look up what they mean. Both work fine if you're educated to how the game works, but I agree with the sentiment in the OP.

We'd all like more transparency for ALL our stats, and ideally displayed in a more digestible manner.

Why do I need addons to see my pen and convert numbers that should be percents in the first place?

Gnortranermara

Yes, I see the source of the confusion now. This is an additive vs multiplicative thing (or, rather, subtractive vs divisive). Your penetration value is subtracted from the enemy's armor value. It's not divided. So if someone has 50% mitigation and you have 50% penetration, their leftover armor is 0 rather than 25%. Maybe -50 would be a more intuitive way to express the number.

starkerealm

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

Then what should it display?

Really. What?

This is really very simple. It would just display the amount of weapon/spell penetration the player has. That's it.

That's what it does. Displaying at a percent would not provide the user with any meaningful information, because of how penetration works.

If ESO had been built off a percentage penetration system, where your pen stat bypassed their mitigation by that percentage, then yes, a percentage number back would be useful information. However, it does not. It subtracts from their mitigation, which means that percentage numbers would never be useful.

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

72% mitigation (which would be on his character sheet).

And, this is the other problem. You should never tell the player that they have more mitigation than is possible. At best, resistance stats should probably come with the percentage mitigation in parenthesis after the value, but that value should never exceed the hard cap, which you just did, in your example, by 22%. That will result in players looking at the numbers coming back and deciding that the information they're getting is invalid.

Gnortranermara

starkerealm wrote: »

This is really very simple. It would just display the amount of weapon/spell penetration the player has. That's it.

That's what it does. Displaying at a percent would not provide the user with any meaningful information, because of how penetration works.

If ESO had been built off a percentage penetration system, where your pen stat bypassed their mitigation by that percentage, then yes, a percentage number back would be useful information. However, it does not. It subtracts from their mitigation, which means that percentage numbers would never be useful.

The character sheet can show the values like this:

Physical Resistance: 42% Physical Penetration: -20

That works perfectly fine and easy to understand.

starkerealm wrote: »

You should never tell the player that they have more mitigation than is possible.

Of course you should, when that mitigation is subject to reduction through debuffs and penetration.

Both the cap and the actual value can be very easily communicated like so: Physical Resistance 72/50%

pieratsos

starkerealm wrote: »

And, this is the other problem. You should never tell the player that they have more mitigation than is possible. At best, resistance stats should probably come with the percentage mitigation in parenthesis after the value, but that value should never exceed the hard cap, which you just did, in your example, by 22%. That will result in players looking at the numbers coming back and deciding that the information they're getting is invalid.

But if you get 40k resistances then the char sheet will show 40k resistances. Isnt that the exact same thing?

Gnortranermara

pieratsos wrote: »

But if you get 40k resistances then the char sheet will show 40k resistances. Isnt that the exact same thing?

Muh man. Mic drop.

That's precisely right. They're already doing it, but it's even worse because they're doing it with numbers nobody can even interpret without consulting the Googler on the interwebs.

ak_pvp

DKs, sorcs and templars. Buff em.

Gnortranermara

Some of you may recall, this is how armor values were displayed in Oblivion. It's a simple percentage, and it works perfectly. ESO could multiply by 10 or 100 (or just show a decimal place or two) if they want more granularity, but the point is that the numbers need to be easily understandable for the end user.

starkerealm

pieratsos wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

And, this is the other problem. You should never tell the player that they have more mitigation than is possible. At best, resistance stats should probably come with the percentage mitigation in parenthesis after the value, but that value should never exceed the hard cap, which you just did, in your example, by 22%. That will result in players looking at the numbers coming back and deciding that the information they're getting is invalid.

But if you get 40k resistances then the char sheet will show 40k resistances. Isnt that the exact same thing?

Not as such. Ironically for the exact reason that @SidewalkChalk5 wants to see it change.

When you see 40k Resistance on your character sheet, that isn't quite the same as reading a percentage mitigation. The reason is that, simply put, if you do the reading to find out how much mitigation 40k will give you, you'll learn the cap is 50%. Otherwise, it doesn't outright lie to you and say you're resisting more damage than you actually are, the way it would if it said you were negating 72%.

starkerealm

SidewalkChalk5 wrote: »

Some of you may recall, this is how armor values were displayed in Oblivion. It's a simple percentage, and it works perfectly. ESO could multiply by 10 or 100 (or just show a decimal place or two) if they want more granularity, but the point is that the numbers need to be easily understandable for the end user.

The difference was that Oblivion used a flat % based damage resist system. It also capped somewhere around 85%, which would be ludicrous mitigation for an MMO.

GreenHere

starkerealm wrote: »

pieratsos wrote: »

starkerealm wrote: »

And, this is the other problem. You should never tell the player that they have more mitigation than is possible. At best, resistance stats should probably come with the percentage mitigation in parenthesis after the value, but that value should never exceed the hard cap, which you just did, in your example, by 22%. That will result in players looking at the numbers coming back and deciding that the information they're getting is invalid.

But if you get 40k resistances then the char sheet will show 40k resistances. Isnt that the exact same thing?

Not as such. Ironically for the exact reason that @SidewalkChalk5 wants to see it change.

When you see 40k Resistance on your character sheet, that isn't quite the same as reading a percentage mitigation. The reason is that, simply put, if you do the reading to find out how much mitigation 40k will give you, you'll learn the cap is 50%. Otherwise, it doesn't outright lie to you and say you're resisting more damage than you actually are, the way it would if it said you were negating 72%.

To be fair, the 72% example was in context of me throwing around armor numbers I knew were well above armor cap, and @SidewalkChalk5 was just following suit to help me understand his point. Maybe ZOS shouldn't be showing resists above the cap to save confusion (not that there isn't plenty as is), but currently they don't DO (edit:brainfart). And furthermore, there is benefit to going OVER the armor cap, if you're trying to counter high enemy penetration, so it kiiind of needs to be displayed, but in a way that makes it clear 50% is the cap.

I think the point the OP was setting out to make is well-illustrated in this thread; the way ZOS has numbers working now gets confusing and convoluted pretty quick, and that's for people who bother looking into this stuff in the first place!

A simpler approach would be good for everybody, if one could be figured out that works for everyone. I'm sure part of the reason to deal with numbers so much is they're the only universal language. English alone gets tangled up pretty quick just among native speakers, let alone the world over.

starkerealm

GreenHere wrote: »

I think the point the OP was setting out to make is well-illustrated in this thread; the way ZOS has numbers working now gets confusing and convoluted pretty quick, and that's for people who bother looking into this stuff in the first place!

A simpler approach would be good for everybody, if one could be figured out that works for everyone. I'm sure part of the reason to deal with numbers so much is they're the only universal language. English alone gets tangled up pretty quick just among native speakers, let alone the world over.

I can agree with this, the problem is, the system they were laying out wouldn't have achieved that goal.

To be fair, I could certainly agree with an overhaul to the way resistance and penetration are displayed and calculated, but it would involve tweaking game balance, rather than simply swapping the current system to percentages.