A Different Approach to Reining in Damage

MostlyJustCats

I am one of those people that is somewhat of the opinion that the upcoming changes are something of a solution in search of a problem. I think the soft power creep has actually made the game more accessible to more people and provided healthy aspirational goals. However I can understand the competing perspective that the rate of damage increase presents content design challenges, and that the reward for mastering mechanics outpaces and almost replaces the ability to just "play the game." The problem with the current approach, though, in my opinion, is that doing crazy amounts of damage and finding ways to make your character obscenely powerful is... fun. And by just simply taking the damage output away, you're just taking away the fun, and not really looking at the problems with the mechanisms that create that output in the first place.

In my opinion, the problem with damage creep is not LA damage or the difficulty vs. reward of managing a complex rotation of short DoTs. The problem to me seems to be how easy and free it is to amplify damage. There's a reason that pretty much every dps build:

- uses one enchant on a Maelstrom 2h on the backbar,
- uses only one type of potion,
- will always consider Kinra's,
- slots as many fighter's guild skills as possible, and
- uses basically the same set of blue CP slottables.

It's because these are all easy ways to boost your damage for nothing. Free percent damage boosts just mean that the better your mechanics get, your damage automatically starts to balloon with no extra effort or consideration on the player's behalf.

So my 3AM, slightly intoxicated idea with no chance of ever becoming reality is this:

Go Thrassians on it. Make weapon/spell damage and/or crit damage self-buffs (skills, gear, and CP) dynamically and inversely proportional to health and/or armor. Want to go berserk and do 150k damage? Well, if you want to hit harder, it means a loss of defenses, so be prepared to get hit harder in return. Let the player decide the risk vs. reward of damage instead of just telling the player how much damage they can do. Plus, it means there's one simple ratio to tune instead of hundreds of considerations with micromanaging flat damage values. Make support sets provide damage buffs that don't trigger the health/armor reduction for DPS, but do cost something for the support beyond just "not having a selfish effect." Yoln inspires the group on a heavy attack but lowers block mitigation. Maybe rework Oakensoul back to providing all the major buffs, but only to others and only based off of resto staff skills. Make increasing damage a choice rather than a default go-to.

One of my favorite items to use in the game is Thrassian's Stranglers. The item isn't meta, and it's really hard to generate stacks and extraordinarily easy to lose them, but it's incredibly fun once it starts stacking up. Making the decision to sacrifice survivability for extreme damage adds another layer of mechanics (damage avoidance) to the equation that really promotes a risk vs reward mentality.

This way, maybe you split your rotation up. Here's the safe 5 skills, and here's the berserk 5 that I use when an opening presents itself. Maybe I wear Dreugh King Slayer or Rattlecage unironically even at a high level. Maybe I don't use every possible damage multiplier CP or otherwise build to balance damage and survivability. Maybe a trial has a glass cannon corps of 2 or 3 nuts and then looks for the lower parsers to provide the consistent damage. And yeah, maybe some trial group blasts through a trifecta doing unbelievable damage that relies on a raid comp of a bunch of 3k health dps never making a single mistake - but that's *fun.*

Embrace damage, but make it cost something. Let players have potentially game breaking fun, but make it a choice that comes with significant risk. All the best RPGs do this (including the D&D granddaddy), there's no reason ESO couldn't.

xylena_lazarow

MostlyJustCats wrote: »

The problem to me seems to be how easy and free it is to amplify damage.

This is a pretty good point, and a lot of that damage amplification comes from group comp optimization, not actions taken in combat, which has created an unmanageable power gap between comp groups and pugs, both PvE and PvP. By nerfing the combat actions of individuals rather than going after the ways that group effect stacking exponentially increases power, they ensure this massive power chasm remains, making it impossible for casual players to progress to harder PvE content or even do anything at all against competitive PvP groups.

MostlyJustCats

Right, and by just taking away the easier forms of damage output instead of addressing the root causes, nothing really changes except shifting the goalposts on what are, essentially, meaningless numbers. It doesn't matter if 130k or 100k is the top end, from the player's standpoint, if the gap between is still impossible or incredibly difficult to cross.

It also limits player choice and decision-making, as fewer sources of easy damage means there is less headroom to experiment and make a build one's own if they are to carry water in a group setting.

So instead of trying to limit players I think it's better to provide them with more choices to make. That's what you'd get by inversely tying offensive power to defensive ability without having to set boundaries constantly. It also lets you tune and push content into particular desired styles without railroading them into predetermined paths. Want to make sure a boss can't just be obliterated? Well, you set the ratio, so just have a very hard to avoid AoE or poison that ticks for the 5k hp the glass cannons with "too much" damage have. Want to challenge the supports? Throw a meatshield that encourages massive dps but make it hit hard enough single target that buffing your team's damage at the cost of your own durability is a tough choice to make.

And then, if a group finds a way to solve your puzzle through sidestepping your guardrails with creativity and perfect coordination, celebrate it. If the strategy becomes too easy to replicate, adjust your content, not the tools you gave your players. The developers should start thinking more like DMs than statisticians.

MindOfTheSwarm

The biggest culprit for high damage has and always will be base 50% more Critical Damage. It’s why Crit Chance is so sought after. Should be pulled down to 25% base. With a slight buff to Shadow, Thief, Warrior and Apprentice to compensate.

merpins

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

The biggest culprit for high damage has and always will be base 50% more Critical Damage. It’s why Crit Chance is so sought after. Should be pulled down to 25% base. With a slight buff to Shadow, Thief, Warrior and Apprentice to compensate.

Lowering crit damage would definitely lower the overall damage, but it would also push players even harder to go after crit damage sets. Right now, you can hit max crit damage fairly easily without really going for it super hard, depending on your class. If they lowered the crit damage base, damage would overall stay the same for top end because they have access to old tools that we don't use as much anymore due to the cap on crit damage.

If they really wanted to lower the damage through crit rate, they'd need to make it dynamically scale based on exterior abilities. For example, cap crit damage at 80%, and lower the base to 25%. Then, add a slottable CP star that increases your Crit Damage cap by 10%. Add two new buffs, Major and Minor Aiming; minor increases your Crit Damage Cap by 10% and 20% respectively. They could change or even add a bonus to Warden for example; everyone hates the nerf to Advanced Species. Don't change it from its current form, but make it so for each Animal Companions skill slotted, you increase your Armor Penetration by 990 and your Crit Damage Cap by 2%.

Stuff like that. Now, not only do you have to build towards crit rate and crit damage, you actually have a third statistic, Crit Damage Cap. That's not to say that I'd like the change, I would not. But it would be a valid way to go about it without just straight nerfing damage in general.

starkerealm

MostlyJustCats wrote: »

Go Thrassians on it. Make weapon/spell damage and/or crit damage self-buffs (skills, gear, and CP) dynamically and inversely proportional to health and/or armor.

No, wait, that's actually a pretty cool idea.

MostlyJustCats

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

The biggest culprit for high damage has and always will be base 50% more Critical Damage. It’s why Crit Chance is so sought after. Should be pulled down to 25% base. With a slight buff to Shadow, Thief, Warrior and Apprentice to compensate.

Nope, but you're on the right track. Building for max crit damage and chance has to be balanced against damage, so you're always giving something up in return for either. The player makes the choice.

The problem with other modifiers and buffs is that they are free. Pretty much every decent build in this game, whether you're a DPS, Tank, or Healer, is 100% dedicated to buffing your group's DPS players at zero effective cost to anything else. It'll vary slightly from situation to situation, I know, but generally speaking, the DPS buffs themselves, the Tanks buff the DPS, and the Supports buff the DPS. This only gets more coordinated and more effective as you get higher up into content, meaning once again the low to mid-tier player suffers and high end damage balloons.

If damage buffs came with a significant cost to survivability (for DPS self buffs) or to utility (for support targeted buffs) then you'd have to really build around that. For low to mid-tier players, where content is not that difficult, they can afford to boost their damage some. In higher level, difficult content, you'd either have to sacrifice damage for survivability OR get really good at avoiding damage and being creative strategically. You'd close the low/high gap in dps production while still leaving the potential for ludicrous damage, which again, is really fun, open, but only if the player is good enough to handle the consequences.

If someone is doing 130k dps but they only have 5k health and 6k armor, clearing trifecta or vet HM stuff trades DPS checks for survival checks as the difficulty measurement. It costs something, and therefore shifts the challenge. All they have to do is find a way to change the formula of "more damage is always good," otherwise we're right back in this same situation once people figure out the new overhauled combat mechanics, which will be sooner rather than later.

EnderSouth2468

Thrassians used to have more reward and more risk, vampire toggle used to have more reward and more risk. They were changed and nerfed because they only gave power to the players able to abuse them. Introducing more gameplay mechanics around risk and reward would be the opposite of what has historically been done. Not saying I agree or disagree just pointing out the precedence.

tngunner

I think the solution a lot easier than that. I think zos jus needs to set a base line for each class where they want high end dps to be with jus self buffs. I agree kinda with zos I’ve always thought light attacks being one of our highest damage sources was kinda dumb but if your gonna take like that you gotta give something. I really think they need to set a base line where they want each class dps to be at on the high end with jus self buff there’s always gonna be a power creep that’s what sells content an as power creep happens old content becomes easier. For new players and it keep the old players happy with new an hard content. I think the way to make dps easier for new players is to shorten the rotation as for abilities they have to maintain to keep a good rotation. There’s nothing fun about maintaining 9 or 10 dot but 9 or 10 dots should always do more dps but I think they should buff passive abilities so that people might want to slot a mages guild ability inner light for example over a extra dot while still have damage being competitive while also marking a shorter rotation aka easier rotation. Sorry for bad grammar

MostlyJustCats

EnderSouth2468 wrote: »

Thrassians used to have more reward and more risk, vampire toggle used to have more reward and more risk. They were changed and nerfed because they only gave power to the players able to abuse them. Introducing more gameplay mechanics around risk and reward would be the opposite of what has historically been done. Not saying I agree or disagree just pointing out the precedence.

True, and it's why I have no illusions about the idea has a likely 0% chance of becoming reality. I do want to mention though that my concept requires ALL damage buffs to trigger a risk v. reward choice, though, while these were items/skills that created risk v. reward on top of the system we have of pretty much free damage amps for dps on every build (including supports).

Also an interesting thing to point out that removing/reducing the risk v. reward on the items meant that they were basically entirely rejected as options.

MostlyJustCats

tngunner wrote: »

I think the solution a lot easier than that. I think zos jus needs to set a base line for each class where they want high end dps to be with jus self buffs.

Problem is, that's been their approach the whole time and is exactly the approach this time, it's just a reset. It's a poor way to enforce rules in RPGs, because the devs cannot compete with what is essentially tens of thousands of people crowdsourcing interactions to find ways to break those rules. The better way is to create your ruleset in a way to which that phenomenon balances the game for them through player choice, based on a simple ratio or number they can adjust if needed.

Things like minimum health before damage increases no longer apply, the ratio of damage increase to health/armor decrease, etc. are far easier to tune to arrive at gameplay that is satisfying for the majority of players than deciding what the maximum DPS should be and then balancing skills/abilities/mechanics around the .01% of people that can achieve it.

And again, yeah - people will figure out how to break it. I suppose my point is "who cares" as long as most people don't break it.

KingExecration

They’re so apt on raising the floor and nerfing the top end of players. If they need to raise bottom end so bad just increase everyone’s damage. Then more players have trials numbers and damage while sweats have new numbers to push for.

jle30303

Yet another approach to nerfing: Don't do it, it really is not worth it. LET more people have the high-end content and achievements if they want. What is the harm in it?

Whereas there is plenty of harm by gatekeeping people out of stuff, especially if it's stuff they could formerly do, and can't do now.

MostlyJustCats

jle30303 wrote: »

Yet another approach to nerfing: Don't do it, it really is not worth it. LET more people have the high-end content and achievements if they want. What is the harm in it?

Whereas there is plenty of harm by gatekeeping people out of stuff, especially if it's stuff they could formerly do, and can't do now.

I'm thinking of this as more a rules change to foster healthier balancing by letting the players do it themselves, organically, for the most part.

Generally I tend to agree with you, the soft power creep as of late feels good for the game. But, devs seem committed to their goals - this just feels like a better way to do it.