Where Stupid Damage Comes From

MostlyJustCats

So, let's say you're a developer trying to balance an MMO that's been running for nearly a decade. You've made the decision that power creep has become a "thing" and you want to redesign your combat system to both lower damage (to make balancing new content easier) and make doing appreciable damage more accessible for the new to average player. You pull up your spreadsheets and do 80 hours of parsing or whatever and notice - hey, no matter what build or class I use, light attacks are always a fairly big chunk of damage. Also, rotations with a lot of skills are hard. Easy peasy decision-making then... throttle light attacks and standardize DoT lengths, case closed, done deal, better game. People who weave light attacks well will see that damage disappear and new players can do a 10-skill rotation right out of the gate.

Only - that's not how damage works in this game. Taking a step back, you might have realized that every build on every class in every role virtually always builds for buffing the damage dealers in the group. And why wouldn't you? It doesn't cost you anything and the results are... well:

A Tale of Two Parses (Both on current PTS patch)

Here's a bog standard stamblade build using the same ol' gear and same ol' rotation parsing on a 3m dummy.



Here's the same build and same rotation on a 21m dummy.



Jeepers creepers who cares about 15% of your damage output when being in a group with great uptimes and coordinated buff sets makes your damage more than double? Only thing is... very few people have access to those kinds of groups. It's probably safe to say that the Venn diagram of people doing 100k+ in actual content (the people you were aiming to throttle with all the nerfs) and the people who have the kind of expert level groups to keep the damage buffs up that enable that damage are pretty close to just one big circle.

By slapping everybody's damage down on an individual level, you've just made those kinds of groups much more important. That's not a real big win for accessibility and - as the lazy parse on the 21m shows - it's not really gonna hurt that top end that's breaking your game. Get some theorycrafting and testing going (and in my case, a little more practice, lol) and you're right back in 100k+ territory.

You've done all kinds of math and worked really hard on pretty noble goals, but it was in the wrong direction. The only thing the changes do is make the game a lot harder for bad players, new players, learning players, average players, casual players, and semi-casual players. Maybe some people won't notice, but only because overland and normal content is tuned to be so easy that the attentiveness of your group is irrelevant. Start getting into vet content and trials, though, and get ready for the pain (and the return of frustrating gatekeeping).

Sweaties and parse monkeys (the ones doing too much damage) are gonna be annoyed, but they'll be fine. You've dealt them a setback, but because the damage engine hasn't changed they'll be right back where they were within a couple of weeks.

And it's because you've misidentified the root cause of power creep and the damage gap. It's not weaving, it's not rotations, it's not gear. It's the free damage amplifiers on anything and everything and everyone. The answer to "how should I build" should not be "MOAR DAMAGE" every time no matter what. The game needs a reason not to build for 100% damage 100% of the time. You want to limit your players by giving them meaningful choices with actual consequences, not limit them by just periodically making their characters worse.

TL;DR - if your players are all building glass cannons and wrecking your encounters it's because you're not making them choose to be glass. They're just cannons. Take the cannon away and they're just... boring.

Quethrosar

LA is always number 1 damage on my parses. the sorcerer skills just don't hit high enough to go above it.
I am talking real world fights, not dummy junk.

MostlyJustCats

Quethrosar wrote: »

LA is always number 1 damage on my parses. the sorcerer skills just don't hit high enough to go above it.
I am talking real world fights, not dummy junk.

Sure but it doesn't really matter where your individual damage comes from. The power creep (and the "damage delta") comes from that damage getting boosted to obscene levels.

And the dummy junk is to illustrate the damage engine and where the balloon gets inflated, so to speak, with as few external variables as possible.

Skjaldbjorn

One thing that would actually assist in the power creep is not necessarily taking away damage scaling from group compositions, but enforcing it coming from other places. Find ways and avenues to bring buff sets back where tanks and healers can't wear them, or can't functionally use them without severe issues. I can still recall the days where sets like Sunderflame and Tong and so on and so forth were put on DPS, limiting "parse" setups. Imagine if groups had to have 6-8 DPS in buff sets like Z'en's and EC instead of trying to ram literally everything they can on healers and tanks.

Stamicka

Yup. Major Vulnerability and Major Slayer are both super strong buffs that can have very good uptimes in raids. Major Courage got a significant buff at some point along with other Major buffs. Then of course, sets like Zen, Catalyst, Martial Knowledge, and other sets can add even more group damage. I was parsing well over 50k on a 3 mil during the Summerset patch (4 years ago). Damage on a 3 mil isn't far from what it was 4 years ago, but damage in raids is much much higher than it was. This is all on ZOS. You can blame the "high end", you can blame light attacks, but at the end of the day the wideness of the skill gap is 100% ZOS' fault for introducing so many buffs that end game players will utilize best.

Marto

Stamicka wrote: »

Yup. Major Vulnerability and Major Slayer are both super strong buffs that can have very good uptimes in raids. Major Courage got a significant buff at some point along with other Major buffs. Then of course, sets like Zen, Catalyst, Martial Knowledge, and other sets can add even more group damage. I was parsing well over 50k during the Summerset patch (4 years ago). Damage on a 3 mil isn't far from what it was 4 years ago, but damage in raids is much much higher than it was. This is all on ZOS. You can blame the "high end", you can blame light attacks, but at the end of the day the wideness of the skill gap is 100% ZOS' fault for introducing so many buffs that end game players will utilize best.

The introduction of Major/Minor Slayer was a mistake. It has clearly only made balancing a lot harder, and it's only real benefit was making you feel like a badass in 2015 when you switched your Hunding's Rage for Vicious Serpent.

xaraan

Well said OP.

They could have easily brought the ceiling down without bringing the whole building down by working on all those unique buffs that tip top groups manage. Making them less powerful, more accessible, easier to manage, or less worth managing for survival, etc.

They still could have flattened out light attack damage as well. Though I think it should have been given a higher rate, so it would only appear as a nerf to the 100K+ player and not to anyone under that, a higher base LA would in fact buff the low end and reward them for learning to weave by making their LA damage even more meaningful. On top of raising the flat rate light attack damage, they'd need to nerf empower and maelstrom staff Light Attack bonuses, because only those tip top groups will have the perfect update and double the LA damage of everyone else if they stay as is.

As it stands, it just looks like they've nerfed everyone. Made all content less accessible and made rotations even more confusing for newer players with the mix of dot/hot changes. This has been handled very poorly.

Largomets

Edit because I'm going to look for a more recent example but yeah, buff sets are the biggest differentiator.

Ranger209

On the PvP side of things I have always anecdotally felt that any time gear, buffs, attribute progression systems such as CP in our case create a boost of more than 30% between the floor and ceiling that it is detrimental to the game at large. When you have those things in essence make someone twice as strong as an entry level player to PvP those new players get turned off quite quickly. I never thought about it in this way in terms of PvE as you are fighting NPC's rather than paying customers, but you have shown here the exact same thing can happen in PvE when those factors make a person, the same person, literally twice as strong. When buffs, literally only buffs assuming you didn't swap any gear out, create this big of a chasm from floor to ceiling is it any wonder that we have the so called "skill gap" that we do. Really looking at this it appears to be more of a "buff gap" than a "skill gap". Add in gear progression, and CP on top of this, and there you are 15k at one end 100k+ at the other.

The more correct approach would be to buff the minimum damage things do, and reduce the scaling factors significantly so the top end fully buffed is only 30-50% more powerful in my mind.

But then again, I think this is more about their answer for making overland content more difficult than anything else. That and trying to make it harder to skip mechanics in dungeons. 2 birds, 1 nerf.

MostlyJustCats

Ranger209 wrote: »

The more correct approach would be to buff the minimum damage things do, and reduce the scaling factors significantly so the top end fully buffed is only 30-50% more powerful in my mind.

In my eyes the correct approach is to let people do however much damage they want, but make it cost something so that there's a good reason to build for something other than just damage, all the time, for every build and for every class and every role.

I've suggested an inversely proportional dynamic scaling ratio, so that, hypothetically, every point above 3k weapon/spell damage from buffs/CP reduces your hp/armor by a certain amount. Every point above 4k reduces hp/armor by a larger amount, and so on. Buffs from tanks/healers should make tanks/healers less effective at being tanks/healers. It's kinda lame that most trials boil down to 1-2 tanks 1-2 healers and as many dps as you can manage - I'd rather see buff specialists added and fewer DPS doing more damage.

One curve to tweak from a balancing perspective, a thousand more ways to build encounters and gear, and countless more builds and strats. Damage would be more about what you can stay alive doing rather than who's in your group and what build guide you read on the internet.

Then you just get rid of crouch to sneak in PvP and slightly extend the duration of invis pots and NB hide, and you're done (yeah I know).

Iron_Blurr

Their whole reasoning for nerfing light attacks was seriously flawed to begin with.
It's so stupid. Of course light attack damage Will look high on a parse! You are casting them every second! If you cast force pulse every second that would be the highest % too!
Take the total number of light attack casts and compare that to the dps.

If people are really incapable of light attack weaving all they have to do is make a mythic that prevents you from light attacking but also buffs your abilities by a % multiplier.
Hey look at that I solved the big scary problem of people being unable to light attack weave!

MostlyJustCats

Iron_Blurr wrote: »

If people are really incapable of light attack weaving all they have to do is make a mythic that prevents you from light attacking but also buffs your abilities by a % multiplier.
Hey look at that I solved the big scary problem of people being unable to light attack weave!

They did, essentially. It's Oakensoul. Which is what is frustrating. Oakensoul addressed the exact issue of needing an attentive group to provide uptimes on the buffs that really determine your damage output with the considerable downside of halving your available skills.

It was determined that the item was overtuned - which it was - but that's because damage buffs are out of control. Then they completely forgot about that when turning their attention to the problem of high damage outside of Oakensoul.

xylena_lazarow

This is still the best post on why u35 fails. If they really wanted to only rein in power creep at the ceiling, they would be looking at the exponential power increase that comes from group effect stacking, which is the real source of all the 140k dps parses in PvE and the endless stream of "ball group" complaints over in PvP. Instead, they nerfed individual output, which brings the ceiling down but brings everyone else even further down, upholding the massive power gap between tryhard groups and random pugs, and leaving a trail of dead skills and builds in its wake.

Jeezye

This post is freaking gold, as a PvP rat I had no idea what difference multipliers do in a PvE environment!

I wonder how this translates into a pvp setting with representative class buff coverage, using same builds and a neutral skill such as crushing shock.

prof_doom

xylena_lazarow wrote: »

This is still the best post on why u35 fails. If they really wanted to only rein in power creep at the ceiling, they would be looking at the exponential power increase that comes from group effect stacking, which is the real source of all the 140k dps parses in PvE and the endless stream of "ball group" complaints over in PvP. Instead, they nerfed individual output, which brings the ceiling down but brings everyone else even further down, upholding the massive power gap between tryhard groups and random pugs, and leaving a trail of dead skills and builds in its wake.

It also makes the group buffs even more important than they are on live now, which isn't lowering the ceiling or raising the floor.

xylena_lazarow

Jeezye wrote: »

I wonder how this translates into a pvp setting with representative class buff coverage, using same builds and a neutral skill such as crushing shock.

You know those "unkillable" groups that PvPers are always complaining about? Yea... an individual cast of RR probably wasn't overpowered, but stacking 12 of them on each of 12 players will still be extremely powerful even post-nerf. It gets to the point where a skilled enough comp and strat wraps around to anti-skill gameplay like face-tanking ults and standing in red, the PvP equivalent of ignoring dungeon mechanics by brute-force healing through them. Think like using Pale Order to completely ignore the ground volcanoes on the vVH flame atro boss.

MostlyJustCats

Jeezye wrote: »

This post is freaking gold, as a PvP rat I had no idea what difference multipliers do in a PvE environment!

I wonder how this translates into a pvp setting with representative class buff coverage, using same builds and a neutral skill such as crushing shock.

There's a reason ball groups are as deadly as they are, and why people are upset about Nocturnal, and why Oakensoul is so powerful (both pre and post-nerf). It's why vampire is still a thing for DPS anywhere and why the DK 40% HA passive was so busted.

Stacking damage boosts and percentage increases at no cost to your build/role that require no additional considerations or adjustments to your playstyle (aside from the Oakensoul 1-bar limitation, that's pretty ingenious) is always going to be the best way to balloon damage to absurd levels.

Everything else is just squeezing drops from the fruit - prior to u35, almost every set combo is viable for all but the very hardest of content. The difference is what, 2% crit here, 100 weapon damage there. You won't do insane damage with Leviathan and Hundings, but it's easy enough (with practice and assuming no physical limitations) to get to 70k dps. The PTS changes just dry up the fruit. If you don't have the meta sets and/or can't source enough of the damage boosts from your group then it's basically "sorry bout it."

It's why I actually like Nocturnal's Ploy in PvP as a concept, I just wish it didn't also come with the nerf to base individual damage.

ToyMasamune

I'm not sure if what I'm going to say brings something useful to this discussion, but you know what I always disliked about tanking in eso? That I feel absolutely weak when I'm tanking.

In other MMORPGs I played, I could go in, tank everything and just not die unless something went really wrong. In ESO a single attack can kill me, It's like playing a souls like game. When I play as a tank I don't feel any tankier than when I play as DPS, sure, I can't take a hit from a boss as DPS, but as a tank it feels horrible to get hit by an attack that takes more than half of my hp while blocking. I feel super squishy.

But what should I do to feel less squishy? Instead of using sets that increase my chances of surviving, I have to use sets that buff DPS damage. I can't increase my survivablity because I have to buff other people.

Most times I see a wipe in trials is because the tank died.

Don't know if this adds to the discussion, but I wanted to share how I feel anyway.

xylena_lazarow

MostlyJustCats wrote: »

There's a reason ball groups are as deadly as they are... It's why I actually like Nocturnal's Ploy in PvP as a concept

In PvP it's more the opposite problem, where stacked defense leads to unfun, uninteractive, repetitive play patterns. Some of these groups lately are running ridiculous comps like 9 healers, 1 speed, and 2 bombers... they seemingly just run laps around unflagged objectives, unable to kill or be killed. The problem extends to smallscale and BGs, which are often similarly stalemated. A stationary AoE dispel ult, similar to Negate, would probably be quite welcome, but making it single target just screws random individuals and does nothing against mass heal/buff effect stacking.

ToyMasamune wrote: »

That I feel absolutely weak when I'm tanking... Don't know if this adds to the discussion, but I wanted to share how I feel anyway.

I don't think this is related to the OP, but I feel you, being one-shotted by an auto-attack because you dropped block for 0.000001 seconds... no thanks lol.

WrathOfInnos

I would argue that 100% of players have access to coordinated groups. You don't need to find the best 11 players, just get a group that can consistently run at the same time. There's no difficulty in running sets like SPC and Yolnahkriin, and they lead to a rewarding experience for anyone who takes the time to plan these things out.

I will agree that some buffs can be difficult to achieve high uptimes, but ESO has been making great progress in that area. Important buffs/debuffs like Major Vulnerability (colossus), Minor Berserk (combat prayer) and Empower (empowering grasp) have all had their durations increased. Sets like Powerful Assault and Roaring Opportunist have been given smart targeting to allow easier application to all group members.

There is certainly room to improve, with things like Warhorn rotations for Major Force and Stagger uptimes from Stone Giant still requiring high skill. In general I think the answer is to make buffs more manageable by anyone, not to reduce the effectiveness of group buffs. One thing that would help is to get rid of target caps below 12 on sets and skills, this creates a large gap between those that can position and juggle buffs well and those that cannot (Spaulder of Ruin and Master Architect are noteworthy offenders).

Jazraena

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

[...]just get a group that can consistently run at the same time.[...]

Hi, I work irregular times and days. Would you like to try again? Because I can tell you, even arranging for the 4 people of my IRL P&P group to meet is a pain.

Faulgor

Skjaldbjorn wrote: »

One thing that would actually assist in the power creep is not necessarily taking away damage scaling from group compositions, but enforcing it coming from other places. Find ways and avenues to bring buff sets back where tanks and healers can't wear them, or can't functionally use them without severe issues. I can still recall the days where sets like Sunderflame and Tong and so on and so forth were put on DPS, limiting "parse" setups. Imagine if groups had to have 6-8 DPS in buff sets like Z'en's and EC instead of trying to ram literally everything they can on healers and tanks.

I was so happy with my Sunderflame stamDK.
Can't even count the number of builds I've had to go through since then.

Why can't they just add new skills and sets instead of readjusting everything all the bloody time?
Didn't they have a policy of not changing visuals and cosmetics anymore? They should apply that to gameplay.

WrathOfInnos

Jazraena wrote: »

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

[...]just get a group that can consistently run at the same time.[...]

Hi, I work irregular times and days. Would you like to try again? Because I can tell you, even arranging for the 4 people of my IRL P&P group to meet is a pain.

Lol, 99% then? My work schedule can also be unpredictable, but I think the vast majority of players have at least a couple hours each week where they know they won't be at work. A couple years ago I was in a group that ran 1:00 AM to 3:00 AM on weekdays because I couldn't do primetime. There are groups running across all time zones, 24 hours a day, and across all skill levels. Finding one or starting one is always an option.

Jazraena

Oh, I know when, but it's irregular, and there's plenty people like me. Schedule conflicts grow exponentially. It makes steady groups at minimum complicated, and for 12 people basically impossible, so if I want to do trials, random groups it is.

MostlyJustCats

WrathOfInnos wrote: »

In general I think the answer is to make buffs more manageable by anyone, not to reduce the effectiveness of group buffs.

I don't think you have to reduce the effectiveness at all - I am personally of the opinion that doing tons of damage is super fun.

I just think it should cost something in terms of effectiveness elsewhere, so that building for 100% damage on every build and every role and every situation isn't the default choice.

Otherwise power creep will always be an issue, especially as group buffs get easier to manage. I am tired of direct nerfs to my characters when they're by themselves to address the fact that group DPS output, which is almost entirely determined by these buffs, keeps going up and never gets managed.