Procs Vs Stats; the Real Problem/Solution

JerBearESO

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Please read this carefully, as I believe I am providing a valuable solution for this proc issue.

It seems to me that the true problem at hand with procs is not fully understood, and the attempted solution of proc scaling is, I assure you, a terrible mistake. Please allow me to explain.

-The Problem:
I will refer to this as a "Coinflip Conundrum". No matter how many times you flip the coin, it will only ever land on one side or the other. Either stats will be "better", or procs will. No, the coin will never land on its side, so to speak; there will never be true balance. And now we have a strange attempted solution from the devs, proc scaling, which is itself another Coinflip Conundrum! Either we will see super high wep damage proc builds becoming a far worse version of what we wanted addressed in the first place, or we will see reasonable proc builds die off completely due to not being able to viably reach the wep/spell damage threshold. In this Coinflip, however, the coin almost always lands on its side. But not to imply any semblance of balance, but rather it is to say that BOTH very serious downsides will be in effect simultaneously.

This is EXTREMELY bad. Procs will become more toxic, build creativity will be mostly murdered, and the devs will need to waste a lot of time and resource attempting to make it work only to eventually find no amount of tweaking frees us from the Conundrum.

-The Solution:
Think of stats and procs as two people fighting over land. They both need land, so they fight. And fight and fight.... Why not give them both their own land? That is to say, we need to give stats and procs each their OWN systems.

Stats, whether flat stats or proc'd stats, will inherit the current "Set Effect" system. Procs, on the other hand, will be given a new "Badge" system. Defeat the enemy who has the ability associated with the proc to receive their badge. Slot it to use the badge's proc. A player can slot two badges. Badges do not give stats of any kind, only damage/healing procs. For example, defeat Grothdarr, earn Grothdarr badge, equip it, you know have Grothdarr proc.

Why is this such a good solution? Let's consider some reasons:

1- With procs on their own ISOLATED system, they never again need to be balanced against stats. EVER! That means once the system is in effect, devs will never again need to waste time and resource on revisiting this issue. Procs will only need to be balanced against other procs.

2- Procs on an isolated system can freely be nerfed as needed overall without it having any negative impact. Since all players will be taking two procs as a standard, there will be no issue with proc nerfing causing procs to have no place in the game.

3- The cherry on top! Let's go ahead and change the armor trait "Nirnhoned" so that instead of it giving armor, which reinforced already does, it will give proc resist! This will be a viable option similar to crit resist since procs will be consistent as a standard.

Now, I want to address upfront an issue I foresee some player may have with this. Some players may dislike that with this system everyone will take two procs as a standard. I believe there is an emotional attachment to pure stat builds for some, and reasonably so, as procs have often created anti counterplay situations in the past and come to be seen as a no skill option, which certain players want nothing to do with. I get that! But with these changes procs will survive to provide what they are ultimately supposed to for players who want that, which is build theme diversity, for creativity, and will still become non toxic in the process. Since they will be more freely scaled down without consequence AND you will be able to build proc resist and likely get some as a base value, procs would at this point be appropriately nerfed in pvp, retain and even gain meaning in pve, and there would be no downside....

In recap:
Both player types will be reasonably satisfied!
The devs will never have to revisit the issue again!

ThoughtRaven

I think this is a fun and creative idea for a system I think I would enjoy experimenting with. So in that regard I commend you.

But it is too radical a change to the game to realistically be implemented, so I have to grade it: Never Happen.

JerBearESO

Another key factor I forgot to mention!

With the above changes, special weapons would need their own little sub-system. Since these special arena weapon abilities are tied to the respective weapon types, they would need to be addressed, as they may not make as much sense as a badge. It would likely be best to allow armor and jewelry to make up 10 pieces for stat sets, resulting in two sets, and then weapons would be reserved for these arena weapon effects.

It would be a good idea to make each and every one of these effects either stats, procs, or a hybrid of both as a standard, instead of some offering stats, and others procs, which is a small sample version of the initial problem.

JerBearESO

ThoughtRaven wrote: »

I think this is a fun and creative idea for a system I think I would enjoy experimenting with. So in that regard I commend you.

But it is too radical a change to the game to realistically be implemented, so I have to grade it: Never Happen.

I just threw together a build on pts for example:
36k-44k resists (using pariah backbar)
38k health, 19.5k mag, 25.5k stam
7k wep dmg buffed, 7.7k with backbar wep enchant proc'd
using onslaught and corrosive armor for pen when needed
getting about 20k tooltip on maelstrom 2hand, 42k on venomous smite
2 procs, about 50% stronger and those mountains of stats....wow....

meanwhile my creative and balanced wind mage and fire/poison mage builds, for example, which only ever break even in BGs and cannot even 1v1 basic 2hand stat builds on live, are on pts losing about 20% damage overall with any attempt to move stats into wep/spell damage resulting in full loss of playability....

I see the changes on pts as being extremely "radical", meanwhile my suggested system would easily solve all issues and, to be fair, is not actually difficult to implement. I have tinkered with game design enough to know that the underlying components to the suggested system are already in the game, and so the system would not be too difficult to build/implement.

Splitting stats and procs into their own isolated selection systems IS the answer

Amottica

I do not see why things need to be made complex when such a simple solution is available. Zenimax may need to tweak their new system but it is better, much better to keep things simple. Especially when players are complaining about server performance it makes less sense to make things more complicated.

JerBearESO

i guess this must seem complicated, perhaps it is a lot to take in initially.... but it is not actually complex, the proc scaling is. with isolated selection, the devs build it, its not hard, thats what they do, and then the players only make one simple adjustment. build 2 stat sets and take 2 badges, special weps and i suppose mythics will also be their own thing, but all around, just make your selections. your build is done! now play!

with proc scaling, on the other hand, the devs will NEVER solve the onslaught of imbalance issues brought about by the radical variety of interacting non-standardized multiplicative values.... it's like spaghetti code for stats. solve one problem, create another, with infinite implications. the imbalances will choke out build variety/creativity, and pile mountains of rebalance work onto the devs, which will entirely fail anyways....

the proc scaling idea takes the problem and adds a mountain of complexity to it, while isolated selection removes complexity from the issue once and for all

SHOW

I do like ur idea of adding an armor trait which counters procs.

but I hope procs never get so oppressive that I'd need it lol

Urzigurumash

This is a very interesting idea.

So what happens to your actual Grothdarr helmet then? You have to wear it to have the badge active, or?

JerBearESO

Urzigurumash wrote: »

This is a very interesting idea.

So what happens to your actual Grothdarr helmet then? You have to wear it to have the badge active, or?

With this system, your Grothdarr helmet would be removed and replaced with a Grothdarr badge. Implementation details would be up to the devs, but I would suggest they replace any removed items with the associated badge AND materials/glyphs that may have gone into the item. So if your Grothdarr helm is, for example, gold with prismatic defense, you would receive the replacement prismatic glyph and 8 gold tier tempers/dreughWax.

true, the market would have a huge influx of these materials, but they could perhaps be receieved as account bound. even if not, the influx would quickly stabilize as players would be reusing the materials on stat set options

I realize its a big change, but it WOULD solve the stats vs procs problem once and for all. The problem has been around for what, the life of the game pretty much? So a viable solution, FINALLY, would be worth it

JerBearESO

SHOW wrote: »

I do like ur idea of adding an armor trait which counters procs.

but I hope procs never get so oppressive that I'd need it lol

with the pts proc scaling, procs DO become either that oppressive OR useless altogether (as good as removed from the game), and there is no balance between the two options. That's why I had to speak up. With my isolated selection system, procs can FREELY be adjusted without any consequence of interacting with other elements in the game in unforeseen ways, so that proc based oppression will be very easily avoidable. procs should add build creativity flavor, after all, not cheese.

proc resistance would not be a NEEDED trait, just a gift to players who truly hate procs

Joy_Division

Must have missed something in the explanation.

So there are no actual proc armor sets like Grothdarr. I'd only get a Grothdarr "badge" allowing me to slot a proc's function if I kill this dungeon boss.

So I can wear all my stats sets and pick any 2 "badges"? So now I have the best of both worlds: super high stats and any 2 proc functions I want (not even restricted by competing gear slots) to go with that?

Goregrinder

JerBearESO wrote: »

@ZOS_BrianWheeler Please read this carefully, as I believe I am providing a valuable solution for this proc issue.

It seems to me that the true problem at hand with procs is not fully understood, and the attempted solution of proc scaling is, I assure you, a terrible mistake. Please allow me to explain.

-The Problem:
I will refer to this as a "Coinflip Conundrum". No matter how many times you flip the coin, it will only ever land on one side or the other. Either stats will be "better", or procs will. No, the coin will never land on its side, so to speak; there will never be true balance. And now we have a strange attempted solution from the devs, proc scaling, which is itself another Coinflip Conundrum! Either we will see super high wep damage proc builds becoming a far worse version of what we wanted addressed in the first place, or we will see reasonable proc builds die off completely due to not being able to viably reach the wep/spell damage threshold. In this Coinflip, however, the coin almost always lands on its side. But not to imply any semblance of balance, but rather it is to say that BOTH very serious downsides will be in effect simultaneously.

This is EXTREMELY bad. Procs will become more toxic, build creativity will be mostly murdered, and the devs will need to waste a lot of time and resource attempting to make it work only to eventually find no amount of tweaking frees us from the Conundrum.

-The Solution:
Think of stats and procs as two people fighting over land. They both need land, so they fight. And fight and fight.... Why not give them both their own land? That is to say, we need to give stats and procs each their OWN systems.

Stats, whether flat stats or proc'd stats, will inherit the current "Set Effect" system. Procs, on the other hand, will be given a new "Badge" system. Defeat the enemy who has the ability associated with the proc to receive their badge. Slot it to use the badge's proc. A player can slot two badges. Badges do not give stats of any kind, only damage/healing procs. For example, defeat Grothdarr, earn Grothdarr badge, equip it, you know have Grothdarr proc.

Why is this such a good solution? Let's consider some reasons:

1- With procs on their own ISOLATED system, they never again need to be balanced against stats. EVER! That means once the system is in effect, devs will never again need to waste time and resource on revisiting this issue. Procs will only need to be balanced against other procs.

2- Procs on an isolated system can freely be nerfed as needed overall without it having any negative impact. Since all players will be taking two procs as a standard, there will be no issue with proc nerfing causing procs to have no place in the game.

3- The cherry on top! Let's go ahead and change the armor trait "Nirnhoned" so that instead of it giving armor, which reinforced already does, it will give proc resist! This will be a viable option similar to crit resist since procs will be consistent as a standard.

Now, I want to address upfront an issue I foresee some player may have with this. Some players may dislike that with this system everyone will take two procs as a standard. I believe there is an emotional attachment to pure stat builds for some, and reasonably so, as procs have often created anti counterplay situations in the past and come to be seen as a no skill option, which certain players want nothing to do with. I get that! But with these changes procs will survive to provide what they are ultimately supposed to for players who want that, which is build theme diversity, for creativity, and will still become non toxic in the process. Since they will be more freely scaled down without consequence AND you will be able to build proc resist and likely get some as a base value, procs would at this point be appropriately nerfed in pvp, retain and even gain meaning in pve, and there would be no downside....

In recap:
Both player types will be reasonably satisfied!
The devs will never have to revisit the issue again!

I've been suggesting for ages that we just need a hard counter to procs, none of this soft counter stuff we've been told to use. I'm glad someone else finally understands. If we can stack impen, or resists, or crit, etc we should be given the option to stack a hard counter against procs. I'd be fine with revamping a useless armor trait to accomplish this. Some of us would actually start running this trait in our builds.

JerBearESO

Joy_Division wrote: »

Must have missed something in the explanation.

So there are no actual proc armor sets like Grothdarr. I'd only get a Grothdarr "badge" allowing me to slot a proc's function if I kill this dungeon boss.

So I can wear all my stats sets and pick any 2 "badges"? So now I have the best of both worlds: super high stats and any 2 proc functions I want (not even restricted by competing gear slots) to go with that?

to be clear, you would have 2 proc badges, 2 special weps (these would need to be standardized as only procs, only stats, or a hybrid of both), and 10 armor/jewelry slots total to make up 2 stat 5 piece sets, or 1 set and 4 pieces plus a mythic to replace the other 5 piece set, since mythics are generally leaning towards being alike a stat based set effect anyway, and could easily be balanced as such.

but alas! it is only human to think of this as being oh SO MUCH POWER! the point of it all falling out of mind. remember, the whole point is that once everything is separated this way, each selection type is balanced within its own typing system, instead of complexly mixing with the other types. therefor, balancing becomes a walk in the park. THEREFOR, the standards for 5 piece set stats, procs, special weapon stats/procs, and mythics can all be brought down a tad to safely and easily achieve a reasonable overall power budget.

Urzigurumash

JerBearESO wrote: »

Joy_Division wrote: »

Must have missed something in the explanation.

So there are no actual proc armor sets like Grothdarr. I'd only get a Grothdarr "badge" allowing me to slot a proc's function if I kill this dungeon boss.

So I can wear all my stats sets and pick any 2 "badges"? So now I have the best of both worlds: super high stats and any 2 proc functions I want (not even restricted by competing gear slots) to go with that?

to be clear, you would have 2 proc badges, 2 special weps (these would need to be standardized as only procs, only stats, or a hybrid of both), and 10 armor/jewelry slots total to make up 2 stat 5 piece sets, or 1 set and 4 pieces plus a mythic to replace the other 5 piece set, since mythics are generally leaning towards being alike a stat based set effect anyway, and could easily be balanced as such.

but alas! it is only human to think of this as being oh SO MUCH POWER! the point of it all falling out of mind. remember, the whole point is that once everything is separated this way, each selection type is balanced within its own typing system, instead of complexly mixing with the other types. therefor, balancing becomes a walk in the park. THEREFOR, the standards for 5 piece set stats, procs, special weapon stats/procs, and mythics can all be brought down a tad to safely and easily achieve a reasonable overall power budget.

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right about that subject, the balance of the two types of sets, equalizing the influence of procs across the player base. You are the JerBer right? I wish you had chimed in months ago, I didn't see any of the famous Crowns on our server saying much about the subject here. Tons of players were complaining not just about the relationships of different sets - but that they intensely disliked the influence proc sets had on PvP altogether. In fact people were saying some really outrageous things, but there was a lot of level-headed discussion about some of the philosophy, or theory, or metaphysics, or whatever, of procs and their role in PvP. You know, among the most experienced PvP players I know in-game, none of them sweat proc sets whatsoever, and if you say "I keep dying to Harbinger tanks" - that's a kick.

This idea of giving procs scaling seemed to be almost unanimously agreed upon as a way to allow procs to be relevant in PvP, but not inherently overpowered. The idea has been implemented, everybody should stop complaining about their personal persuasions on whether or not procs should exist and promulgating new laws of nature and instead focus on exactly where the line should be fixed - and what its curve should be like - to provide the sort of balanced experience you expected. That's my opinion anyhow, could be a bad one.

I think the Badge system is a cool idea though. This idea could also be implemented through the Champion system, that after beating a boss you get access to its proc badge via a new slottable, or something.

MerguezMan

I do like the general idea, HOWEVER, it would not balance the game.

The current "budget" on sets is IMO biased for their values, as converted to DPS, 124 stamina regen is absolutely NOT equal to 124 weapon damage (nor 124 health regen equals 1400 resistance, btw). So even if you would restrict sets to have only "stat" perks, that wouldn't lead to a system where you can mix and match any set. Maths behind the current system would still dictate to stack as many damage stats as you can to have "Meta" damage.

We're in an already intricate damage system that mixes Stamina, weapon damage, physical penetration, critical chance and damage and various buffs, balanced with health, health regen, healing, resistances and various buffs. Some of these values have a hard cap in PVE, but not in PVP. And there comes balance issues, as nobody would see issues if you can one-shot PVE enemies, but getting one-shot while facing an invincible PVP target is deeply frustrating.

Proc effects are not equal to each other. I'd say the biggest problem comes from effects that deal damage AND heal at the same time (which is also true on skills balancing), as you don't have too choose between damage and survivability if you can have both in the same package. Having 3 proc sets equipped wouldn't be an issue IF each of those procs could ONLY damage, or ONLY make you tankier. You could be nearly unkillable, but at the cost of dealing almost no damage, or you could have huge damage, at the cost of being super squishy.

ZoS introduced Heavy sets with damage stats, and damage-healing procs that ruin this balance, moving procs to a separate system if you still allow damage and heal from the same effect doesn't lead to balance, it leads to a meta where everyone would slot the proc(s) that both damage-heal the most. Calling "Crimson set" a "badge" would not balance its proc against other effects.

Rather than uncapped scaling, maybe the procs could have a PVP cap, like Oblivion damage, let's say if 1 proc hit can only take out a maximum of 15% of player-target health ? And even if some procs heal and deal damage, cap the healing at some percent of your own max health, with a decent cooldown ? Or restrict procs to target ONLY PVE OR PVP enemies (like Marksmans Crest set).

Sheuib

This is really a lot more work then is being suggested. Sure the actual programming might be easy but now you have to fix all the sets. Change all the proc sets into stat sets. Create all new proc badges. Test all that stuff. Etc. This is not easy.

Additionally, How many pure stat sets can they truly create? As seen in the current version of cyrodiil what they consider proc sets is pretty significant. Are you going to separate what the community considers proc sets and what the devs consider proc sets? This might give some addition stat sets if you do but still limited compared to the number of sets in the game. I mean how many combinations of stats before you are basically just repeating sets.

Honestly, I think they are even starting to hit the limit on proc sets minus just making them stronger. Why farm a new proc set if it is the same damage as the current set I have golded out. The new system might play a role in that factor now. The ideal proc set will now be one that has the 2, 3, and 4 piece traits be the trait that boosts the proc.

JerBearESO

Sheuib wrote: »

This is really a lot more work then is being suggested. Sure the actual programming might be easy but now you have to fix all the sets. Change all the proc sets into stat sets. Create all new proc badges. Test all that stuff. Etc. This is not easy.

Additionally, How many pure stat sets can they truly create? As seen in the current version of cyrodiil what they consider proc sets is pretty significant. Are you going to separate what the community considers proc sets and what the devs consider proc sets? This might give some addition stat sets if you do but still limited compared to the number of sets in the game. I mean how many combinations of stats before you are basically just repeating sets.

Honestly, I think they are even starting to hit the limit on proc sets minus just making them stronger. Why farm a new proc set if it is the same damage as the current set I have golded out. The new system might play a role in that factor now. The ideal proc set will now be one that has the 2, 3, and 4 piece traits be the trait that boosts the proc.

It is a bit of work, but not quite as much as all that. The devs wouldn't be turning proc sets into stat sets and making new proc sets, just turning proc sets into badges. And that would mean procs as are defined in the pts scaling test. The procs as defined in the cyrodiil test are a different story. That involved ALL procs, including stat procs, and was a performance test, whereas this involves procs that offer "free" damage/healing, and are what players are loosely referring to when using the term "proc" in most cases.

As for power creep, that's what we call it when new content is simply a stronger version of old content, that is a whole issue of its own spanning most MMOs over the life of MMOs as a whole.... These devs have actually done pretty well to avoid it compared to other games, but alas it is a part of the genre as a whole.