for fun DoT rework concept...

Sparxlost

this covers damage over time effects in ESO and how useful they are by design

most damage over time skills now tick contstantly instead of every one or two seconds..
poison debuffs will have the lowest damage per tick with the longest uptimes with bleeds following the same idea but slightly more damage and less uptime per debuff

fire will have the highest damage per tick with the shortest uptimes

all other included dot effects will fit into a normalized middle ground ( have decent damage and uptimes..)

the point is that this change (the continuous damage part) affects skills/effects whose damage would theoretically would be continuous..

examples of skills that wouldnt change..
boundless storm and morphs
bladecloak and morphs
caltrops and morphs
volley and morphs

NEXT thing is that our two lowest but lingering damaging archetypes will get some cool synergy effects
When inflicting a burning status on an enemy with a poison dot applied, enemies become cauterized and the poison status becomes empowered and refreshes until all other poison damage effects fail to reapply it.
when inflicting concussion (lightning status) on an enemy with a bleed effect, they hemmoraghe for a big amount of damage and bleeds deal more damage for the next couple of seconds

poison and bleed effects will have centralized debuffs and ignore resistances once applied to make them realistically deadly.

all others will NOT have central debuffs allowing you to stack them for better effectiveness as resistances DO apply and they will be next to useless with just one dot applied..

things to note
the super extended length and centralization of debuff will not apply to crafted poisons

a lot of bleed and poison abilities have pretty low direct damage,this might open up a slight buff opportunity for those skills to be more usable outside of their debuffs...


this is just an idea of what i think would be fun for eso gameplay combat. i felt like damage over time has always been in a sort of rough spot as far as builds are concerned with them never really being realistically being engaging or fun to play/play against..

Ph1p

What do you mean with “tick constantly instead of every one or two seconds”? A much higher damage tick frequency, like every 0.1 or 0.2 seconds? Wouldn’t that just make for worse combat performance?

JerBearESO

I feel like they mean it would be a per frame tick, which is not possible for this games design. Performance aside, imagine a set like draugrkin with "constant" tick rate.....

Adding status effect combo mechanics could be cool though, but likely more work than payoff for the devs

Sparxlost

Ph1p wrote: »

What do you mean with “tick constantly instead of every one or two seconds”? A much higher damage tick frequency, like every 0.1 or 0.2 seconds? Wouldn’t that just make for worse combat performance?

yes and not necesarily. we already have skills like jabs it would just be like that but longer and without animation or other crazy effects...

i cant imagine it realistically making the game super laggy but honestly that is up to developers...

Sparxlost

JerBearESO wrote: »

I feel like they mean it would be a per frame tick, which is not possible for this games design. Performance aside, imagine a set like draugrkin with "constant" tick rate.....

Adding status effect combo mechanics could be cool though, but likely more work than payoff for the devs

yes that would be ideal, but as close to that as possible would suffice for the concept. idk about draugrkins' but building in eso IS complex and balance is more that what this post provides solely on its own. that being said, it is no reason to shut down or nullify a good idea just because it "seems like too much work". such a core change would undoubtedly affect many of the core mechanics surrounding it in time.. (sets that affect dots, etc)

Braffin

Sparxlost wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

What do you mean with “tick constantly instead of every one or two seconds”? A much higher damage tick frequency, like every 0.1 or 0.2 seconds? Wouldn’t that just make for worse combat performance?

yes and not necesarily. we already have skills like jabs it would just be like that but longer and without animation or other crazy effects...

i cant imagine it realistically making the game super laggy but honestly that is up to developers...

What intervall (because without isn't possible in a binary system) do you suggest for DoTs and what would that improve in comparison to the actual frequency of ticks?

JerBearESO

I beg you understand, adding damage instances is performance expensive. That's why they scaled tick rate back on most DoTs. I would love if ticks were maybe per 0.25 seconds for consistency, totally understand, but it adds much more than you think to calculations on the server. It looks simple, but the behind the scenes processes for each and every damage instance are in fact a lot, so not very likely to see "constant" tick rate, unfortunately

IZZEFlameLash

ESO in its current state struggles with performance even now. Don't know, would be even more slideshow with this current engine.

Sparxlost

JerBearESO wrote: »

I beg you understand, adding damage instances is performance expensive. That's why they scaled tick rate back on most DoTs. I would love if ticks were maybe per 0.25 seconds for consistency, totally understand, but it adds much more than you think to calculations on the server. It looks simple, but the behind the scenes processes for each and every damage instance are in fact a lot, so not very likely to see "constant" tick rate, unfortunately

if everyone in cyrodiil or otherwise got up to day and said, "im just going to spam jabs all day", then they could do that.. i do believe that the function of that would have much more of a negative impact on performance then the function of my proposed changes..

why??

no extended animations

centralized cooldowns

i think another way to look at it is how health decreases in eso... a debuff can be calculated the moment it is applied and run through completely or be purged... the amount of negative effects (dots) you can already stack to achieve the same idea isnt breaking the game currently so i do not see any reason why this should be a problem in theory...

if it did somehow break performance; i would be skeptical..

Sparxlost

but i digress.. it is just a concept for fun and doesnt pretain to how optimizable it would be for visual performance..

Ph1p

Sparxlost wrote: »

if everyone in cyrodiil or otherwise got up to day and said, "im just going to spam jabs all day", then they could do that.. i do believe that the function of that would have much more of a negative impact on performance then the function of my proposed changes..

That’s not at all comparable. Jabs are only available to one class, not everyone. They tick 3 times a second and you cannot have multiple jabs active at the same time. By the way, jabs used to tick 4 times a second and were made to tick slower along with many other DoTs.

In comparison, your suggestion would allow players to place 5+ DoTs that tick 10 times faster or even more. Every single time a DoT ticks, the game needs to check all of your stats, buffs, debuffs plus all of your target’s stats, buffs, debuffs to calculate the damage. It also needs to send this information to you and everyone else in the vicinity. All this is server-side while jab animations are happening on your own computer.

Sparxlost

Ph1p wrote: »

Sparxlost wrote: »

if everyone in cyrodiil or otherwise got up to day and said, "im just going to spam jabs all day", then they could do that.. i do believe that the function of that would have much more of a negative impact on performance then the function of my proposed changes..

That’s not at all comparable. Jabs are only available to one class, not everyone. They tick 3 times a second and you cannot have multiple jabs active at the same time. By the way, jabs used to tick 4 times a second and were made to tick slower along with many other DoTs.

In comparison, your suggestion would allow players to place 5+ DoTs that tick 10 times faster or even more. Every single time a DoT ticks, the game needs to check all of your stats, buffs, debuffs plus all of your target’s stats, buffs, debuffs to calculate the damage. It also needs to send this information to you and everyone else in the vicinity. All this is server-side while jab animations are happening on your own computer.

i still think that it is a poor excuse to say it couldnt work... because that is just how the game works..
and whether or not it would is not the point of this post to begin with..

the point was to propose the idea in theory to the combat system we all know and love.. I appreciate the pessimism though, it is always great knowing your community wants to bore you with how much nothing they can provide to this banquet of theoretical combat gameplay..

Ph1p

Maybe if you further explained the actual benefit of having much shorter damage ticks, we could indeed discuss that instead of technical issues…

Braffin

Sparxlost wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

Sparxlost wrote: »

if everyone in cyrodiil or otherwise got up to day and said, "im just going to spam jabs all day", then they could do that.. i do believe that the function of that would have much more of a negative impact on performance then the function of my proposed changes..

That’s not at all comparable. Jabs are only available to one class, not everyone. They tick 3 times a second and you cannot have multiple jabs active at the same time. By the way, jabs used to tick 4 times a second and were made to tick slower along with many other DoTs.

In comparison, your suggestion would allow players to place 5+ DoTs that tick 10 times faster or even more. Every single time a DoT ticks, the game needs to check all of your stats, buffs, debuffs plus all of your target’s stats, buffs, debuffs to calculate the damage. It also needs to send this information to you and everyone else in the vicinity. All this is server-side while jab animations are happening on your own computer.

i still think that it is a poor excuse to say it couldnt work... because that is just how the game works..
and whether or not it would is not the point of this post to begin with..

the point was to propose the idea in theory to the combat system we all know and love.. I appreciate the pessimism though, it is always great knowing your community wants to bore you with how much nothing they can provide to this banquet of theoretical combat gameplay..

Maybe you would recieve more favourable and constructive answers to your proposal, if the emerged questions were answered instead of complaining about "pessimism".

A higher tick-frequency will inevitably lead to increased server load, while there was shown no real benefit in doing so until now.

Honestly, a phrase like "most damage over time skills now tick contstantly instead of every one or two seconds" isn't helpful at all, simply because ticking every second over a given amount of time (the DoTs duration) is already ticking constantly for that duration.

That's why you're asked to clarify your suggestion and add which benefits are gained to justify the increased server load.

Sparxlost

Braffin wrote: »

Sparxlost wrote: »

Ph1p wrote: »

Sparxlost wrote: »

if everyone in cyrodiil or otherwise got up to day and said, "im just going to spam jabs all day", then they could do that.. i do believe that the function of that would have much more of a negative impact on performance then the function of my proposed changes..

That’s not at all comparable. Jabs are only available to one class, not everyone. They tick 3 times a second and you cannot have multiple jabs active at the same time. By the way, jabs used to tick 4 times a second and were made to tick slower along with many other DoTs.

In comparison, your suggestion would allow players to place 5+ DoTs that tick 10 times faster or even more. Every single time a DoT ticks, the game needs to check all of your stats, buffs, debuffs plus all of your target’s stats, buffs, debuffs to calculate the damage. It also needs to send this information to you and everyone else in the vicinity. All this is server-side while jab animations are happening on your own computer.

i still think that it is a poor excuse to say it couldnt work... because that is just how the game works..
and whether or not it would is not the point of this post to begin with..

the point was to propose the idea in theory to the combat system we all know and love.. I appreciate the pessimism though, it is always great knowing your community wants to bore you with how much nothing they can provide to this banquet of theoretical combat gameplay..

Maybe you would recieve more favourable and constructive answers to your proposal, if the emerged questions were answered instead of complaining about "pessimism".

A higher tick-frequency will inevitably lead to increased server load, while there was shown no real benefit in doing so until now.

Honestly, a phrase like "most damage over time skills now tick contstantly instead of every one or two seconds" isn't helpful at all, simply because ticking every second over a given amount of time (the DoTs duration) is already ticking constantly for that duration.

That's why you're asked to clarify your suggestion and add which benefits are gained to justify the increased server load.

as a concept and not an official suggestion, potential problems with server quality are pretty much irrelevant because we are talking about gameplay functionality...

centralized debuff justifies a significant buff to certain dots as you wouldnt be able to stack a ton of them or at least as many as before making the utility easier to fine tune for those who prefer the gameplay mechanic.. with certain dots functioning as a secondary damage feature with situational potential and others still requiring more dedication to the mechanic.

and the shorter ticks would help because having huge bursts of damage being the buff would be obnoxious and just plain dumb..

of course it would take ACTUAL testing to see the benefits as you have to think about other variables. eso is a big game with lots of sets and gameplay mechanics, the balancing of dots would realistically start here but it wont end here..

long story short: the benefits would be to the gameplay variety aspect of the game. and as we dont have any real idea of how well it COULD be implimented into the game i have no reason to believe that server load would realistically be a problem. just based off of what random people would say..

if the game cant handle the idea that players health would steadily drain in response to certain debuffs then obviously it would be bad for the game.. but the poiint wasnt to create a healthy product for our seemingly terrible servers, but to promote a better concept for gameplay immersion and balance..

Braffin

Sorry, but I think you simply mix up frequency of ticks with the duration of a DoT. Increasing the frequency doesn't change the duration at all.

Seems more like you are interested in limiting the amount of DoTs players are able to maintain.

Definitely not interested in this.

MindOfTheSwarm

If you’re going to suggest ideas you need to be more clear. Write out a draft first and then section things clearly. You also need to say why you feel these suggestions would be positive for the future of the game addressing gameplay styles and the identity of classes and elemental damage types that would be affected both positively and negatively.

Example:

Magic Elemental Identity suggestion.

Fire = Best Single Target DoT damage.
Lightning = Best AoE Burst damage.
Frost = Best AoE DoT damage (either straight up or through higher chill chance.)

(This is pretty much already the standard).

Not saying this is what you meant but summarising your suggestion at the end will help get your point across more concisely.

Sparxlost

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

If you’re going to suggest ideas you need to be more clear. Write out a draft first and then section things clearly. You also need to say why you feel these suggestions would be positive for the future of the game addressing gameplay styles and the identity of classes and elemental damage types that would be affected both positively and negatively.

Example:

Magic Elemental Identity suggestion.

Fire = Best Single Target DoT damage.
Lightning = Best AoE Burst damage.
Frost = Best AoE DoT damage (either straight up or through higher chill chance.)

(This is pretty much already the standard).

Not saying this is what you meant but summarising your suggestion at the end will help get your point across more concisely.

if you think about it, you would prolly understand the benefits that i did explain for this change.. the benefit for dots as a whole..
most elements have pretty useful debuffs already so if they underperform as dot builds it is likely due to a lack of dot effects for their damage type(lightning and ice) fire would likely be used exclusively with poison and maybe you would see lightning with bleed, but lightning damage in general applies chance to increase damage taken, which could be very useful if there were more lightning single target dots in the game. same goes for ice damage with its debuff that applies weakness to crits..

i get that it would be convenient for some people but i dont NEED to spell everything out word for word.. i make a statement, and people who play the game should get a good idea of why it might be better or worse realistically. without me having to list every reason why i think that... this is the forums, not my personal soapbox to try and prove anything i believe to be superior in nature to what i already exists. just a place to converse about potentialities.

poison and bleed has gotten a lot of love through sets to make up for their sheer lack of utility when compared to the potential of their elemental counterparts (fire). this change, i believe, makes them more useful or just as useful in a different way to elemental dots.

MindOfTheSwarm

Sparxlost wrote: »

MindOfTheSwarm wrote: »

If you’re going to suggest ideas you need to be more clear. Write out a draft first and then section things clearly. You also need to say why you feel these suggestions would be positive for the future of the game addressing gameplay styles and the identity of classes and elemental damage types that would be affected both positively and negatively.

Example:

Magic Elemental Identity suggestion.

Fire = Best Single Target DoT damage.
Lightning = Best AoE Burst damage.
Frost = Best AoE DoT damage (either straight up or through higher chill chance.)

(This is pretty much already the standard).

Not saying this is what you meant but summarising your suggestion at the end will help get your point across more concisely.

if you think about it, you would prolly understand the benefits that i did explain for this change.. the benefit for dots as a whole..
most elements have pretty useful debuffs already so if they underperform as dot builds it is likely due to a lack of dot effects for their damage type(lightning and ice) fire would likely be used exclusively with poison and maybe you would see lightning with bleed, but lightning damage in general applies chance to increase damage taken, which could be very useful if there were more lightning single target dots in the game. same goes for ice damage with its debuff that applies weakness to crits..

i get that it would be convenient for some people but i dont NEED to spell everything out word for word.. i make a statement, and people who play the game should get a good idea of why it might be better or worse realistically. without me having to list every reason why i think that... this is the forums, not my personal soapbox to try and prove anything i believe to be superior in nature to what i already exists. just a place to converse about potentialities.

poison and bleed has gotten a lot of love through sets to make up for their sheer lack of utility when compared to the potential of their elemental counterparts (fire). this change, i believe, makes them more useful or just as useful in a different way to elemental dots.

I agree that DoT’s need a bit of elemental identity to be locked down.

Fire is obvious. Single target high damage DoT’s. Perhaps with more ‘while burning’ buffs.

Frost I think fits perfectly with AoE DoT’s. Making them more about zone control rather than melting single targets.

Lightning is a tricky one. Maybe some kind of ‘static charge’ effect that causes afflicted targets to occasionally send out a spark to a nearby enemy.

Disease is also underrepresented across the whole game, let alone DoT’s. So not sure about that one.

bar_boss_A

The big problem with dots in the game is: not every class has a purge in it's toolkit. This should change, alas not every class should get cleansing ritual. Some should get a passive which is activatable through gameplay/ others conditionally passives which remove only damage dealing debuffs. Then, when every class has its way to deal with dots, rework them to be more intuitive, aka damage ticking every 0.2s, impactful (increasing the damage - casted sticky Dots contribute at most 3% of overall damage), and shorter (5- 16s at most).
To combat the server load: sticky DoTs should not be affected by armor, and damage should be computed only when applied. This would result in a reduced workload per tick (resulting in only having to calculate crit and damage buffs/debuffs per tick)