Damage types - Bad design?

spoqster · July 2023

I am not sure if this is the right spot to post this, but since the changes to the Ancient Knowledge passive are being discussed in here it seems as good a place as any. I guess I mostly hope that here is a higher chance for one of the developers to see this and pass it on.

My feedback is not about the Ancient Knowledge passive per se (got another post about that in here), but about the damage types in general. My line of work is in product development (web apps mostly) as a product executive with a strong UX background.

My feedback is that the damage types (direct, over time, channeled, area of effect) and how they are communicated in the game fails a very basic design principle: One of the first things you learn in UX design is that good design is unambiguous - you should immediately know how to use an object by looking at it. A good example of this are doors that can only be pushed and have a metal plate (and no handle) to signal this behavior to the user. A bad example of this are doors that can be only pushed, but have a handle. This concept is called a Norman door. (There is quite a bit of literature on this.)

For the most part, the damage types in ESO fail this principle of being easily understood at first glance. Sure there are some examples where it is clear:

A direct hit ability like Dizzying Swing will be direct damage
A dot will be damage over time
An aoe will be area of effect damage

But the problems begin right after that:

Is the first tick of a damage over time ability direct damage or damage over time? Or both?
Is a ground dot both aoe and damage over time? Or is it only one or the other?
Can an ability be two damage types at once or only one at a time?
Is an ability with a cast time like solar flare a direct damage ability or a channeled ability, or both?

There is no way to clearly answer these questions with common sense or from reading the ability descriptions.

One of the least intuitive examples is Templar Jabs:

It surely must be a channeled ability
But the individual jab hits could be considered direct damage
The damage is done over a duration of 1.x seconds, so it could be counted as damage over time
The damage is done in a cone, so it could be counted as an aoe

All four seem intuitively viable. And it's completely unclear if it's just one of those, some of those or all of those.

So far this design problem was mostly restricted to the CP system, but with the changes to Ancient Knowledge (which I generally like), I believe it will become a more prevalent problem and will affect more players earlier in their journey.

Of course there are more important issues in the game. Of course you can just google the answers (sometimes). Of course you can play the game on a non-optimal level without knowing the answers. All of these are correct. But as a professional, I believe the goal of design should be to provide a good user experience, and the current system fails at that.

Necrotech_Master · July 2023

the first tick of dots is still considered a dot, not sure why it would be considered direct

also aoe can be dot (example: wall of elements) or direct (example: impulse)

jabs and flurry are weird skills, they are a channel, but are considered a series of direct dmg hits (not considered dmg over time even though they deal dmg over the cast time)

status effects are also not always clear either, some status effects are dot (example: burning, poison, chilled) but some status effects are single instances of direct dmg (example: sundered, concussed)

a better way to think of things is that there is 2 types of dmg: direct dmg, and dot dmg
there are 2 types of "targeting" for each skill: aoe and single target
there are also 3 types of "casting": instant, cast time, channel

a skill is usually a mix of 1 type from each of those 3 categories (though like usual there are some exceptions if it has multiple parts)

using jabs as an example again, it is channel + aoe + direct dmg

picking another random skill, say wall of elements, it is instant + aoe + dot

another example, say poison injection: instant + single target + direct + dot (this skill has both a direct dmg and a dot component, though the majority of the dmg comes from the dot component)

usually the way i look at the skill, if it says "deals X dmg per second" or "deals X dmg over Y seconds" that is usually a dot

sometimes it just takes playing around with the gear or skill to figure out what it does, because the descriptions sometimes dont clearly state what the effect is doing

Brandark · July 2023

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

sometimes it just takes playing around with the gear or skill to figure out what it does, because the descriptions sometimes dont clearly state what the effect is doing

That is OP's point. Descriptions can and should be better.

JerBearESO · July 2023

There are multiple variables making up the damage type, not a singular variable. That's where the confusion comes in.

For full clarity, they would need to have each ability, in its info, simply state these variables. We would then clearly see what each ability were. And implementing that should be easy enough. All the structure is already there so all they need do is slip some strings into the info for the ability. There surely has to be add-ons for this already?

ssewallb14_ESO · July 2023

Wholeheartedly agree and this has been a problem for a while now.

Other outliers:

"Curses" like Daedric Curse and Inevitable Detonation
Pets
Dots with an initial hit, like Searing Strike
"Multi-target" AoE skills, like shrouded daggers.
Lightning Staff Heavy Attacks (there are 3 totally different damage scalings in a single heavy attack)
Short duration skills with multiple hits (Jabs, Flurry, Bound Armaments)

The game should have something indicating damage scaling type built in to the tooltip IMO, like maybe a set of colors, or something you can mouse over.

katorga · July 2023

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

the first tick of dots is still considered a dot, not sure why it would be considered direct

Because ZOS loves to mix it up and make it confusing.

Burning embers, does initial hit of direct damage and then x damage over 20 seconds.

On some skill the initial direct damage and first tick of the dot happen at the same time, on other skills the dot starts 2s later.

They don't even state the frequency. Some dots are every 2s, some are 1s, some are .6s and some are .3s. Go figure.

jaws343 · July 2023

katorga wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

the first tick of dots is still considered a dot, not sure why it would be considered direct

Because ZOS loves to mix it up and make it confusing.

Burning embers, does initial hit of direct damage and then x damage over 20 seconds.

On some skill the initial direct damage and first tick of the dot happen at the same time, on other skills the dot starts 2s later.

They don't even state the frequency. Some dots are every 2s, some are 1s, some are .6s and some are .3s. Go figure.

No, not really.

Burning Embers explicitly calls out the direct damage portion. DOTs do not call out their first ticks in the tooltips, just their per tick or over time damage. In every case where the application of a DOT skill also applies a direct damage component, the tooltip very clearly separates the two damage types. Embers is one example, Meteor is another.

Necrotech_Master · July 2023

katorga wrote: »

Necrotech_Master wrote: »

the first tick of dots is still considered a dot, not sure why it would be considered direct

Because ZOS loves to mix it up and make it confusing.

Burning embers, does initial hit of direct damage and then x damage over 20 seconds.

On some skill the initial direct damage and first tick of the dot happen at the same time, on other skills the dot starts 2s later.

They don't even state the frequency. Some dots are every 2s, some are 1s, some are .6s and some are .3s. Go figure.

stuff like burning embers and poison injection do direct and dot, but the dot and direct are 2 different components stated separately (i even used poison injection in my examples lol), the direct component is not part of the dot

pure dots, like soul trap or structured entropy/degeneration, dont have any direct component and is only the dot

MashmalloMan · July 2023

To add to what they're saying, rule of thumb, if a skill states an initial hit, the dot portion almost always begins after a 1-2s delay.

This was implemented to prevent scenario's where these dot skills essentially became better versions of spammables that only deal direct DMG.

Example: Venomous Claw briefly became a Stam DK spammable for a patch cycle 3-4 years ago because the first tick of the dot happened within the 1second global cooldown.

For comparison sake, let's say it did 7k DMG upfront, then 15k over 10s. The first tick of the dot would be about 1.5k. so every cast of the skill was basically 7k + 1.5k for 8.5k DMG, outpacing the spammable options they had at the time. It was also dirt cheap at -25% poison skill cost.

ZOS learned their lesson and now they try to avoid that. They did it with Stampede a few patches ago by delaying the dot DMG aspect.

Also, most ground dots tick on 1s intervals just because it's more reliable, they brielfly made them tick on 2s and the PTS blew up. It was a terrible change because it was easy to avoid.

Self applied (Deadly Cloak/Hurricane) and applied to enemy dots (Rending Slashes/Claw) tick on 2s intervals.

There is a few exceptions like the Poison Bombard and DK AOE Root (blanking on names) that are short 5s dots with direct DMG at the beginning, these tick on 1s intervals(if memory serves me)... Most likely because they're so short.

All skills fall into 3 categories as the person above explained. Cast type, targeting, and damage. Actually 4 if you consider element. 5 for cost.

In most cases, I find that intuitive. The very few scenario's that they still haven't nailed are channeled skills like Arcanist Beam vs Templar Jabs. Effectively the same format of skill, but one is direct, the other dot.

Jabs vs Rapid Strikes. Unless they fixed it from when I tested it a year ago, Rapid Strikes is a direct damage skill that has dot level status effect chance (low) and procced Azureblight which only works from dots.

Skills like Haunting Curse are smart enough to note 2 sources. The first larger hit is single target, the second smaller hit is aoe.

Silver Shards behaves as an aoe, but appears as single target with cleave. Shrouded Daggers, similar scenario. The point is they both can be aoe, so they are treated as such.

spoqster · July 2023

If we took 10 skill examples being discussed in this thread, and created a quiz where we ask to fully classify the damage: I bet we couldn’t find a single eso player who will get 10/10 skills correct - including all developers of the game.

kojou · July 2023

spoqster wrote: »

If we took 10 skill examples being discussed in this thread, and created a quiz where we ask to fully classify the damage: I bet we couldn’t find a single eso player who will get 10/10 skills correct - including all developers of the game.

And this is why all skills need an "Advanced Stats" tab. It should show how much damage and which damage types modify it.

Personally, I wish they would just make the staves have a buff to crit chance if the goal is to get more players to "front bar" staves in trials. The main reason daggers are preferred for trials is the crit chance stat from twin blade and blunt. Making these specific ambiguous buffs just makes it more confusing.

Tannus15 · July 2023

100% agree.
The tool tip for a skill should tell you everything you need to know.
melee vs ranged, direct damage, damage over time, including which slottable cp's affect it.

This would not only make it easier to focus your builds, but also allow us to raise bugs when we see something not working properly.