Armor Up - Developer Diary #1

[HatsuharuZ]

Yes, it gives us additional effects to put on future gear.

Sev~

Why not just decrease EE monster stats/damage/CR/HP/whatever slightly?

[Urjak]

This is the worst new I ever read about DDO. This will take away the last tiny bit that makes this game at feel a bit like D&D. If you are already at it ... why not just remove the d20 altogether? Honestly I really do not understand what Turbine wants to achieve with these kinds of things O_o ... why are you desperately trying to turn this game into just-another-wow-clone??? IMO, the ONLY reason this game lasted so long is because it was DIFFERENT, it had its D&D roots, lots of different character build options and it was pretty darn rough (in comparison to some other games).

To be a bit more specific:
.) When we had EPIC quests, they forced us to group up if we wanted to have realistic chances. We also needed at least somewhat balanced groups. The loot was really hard to get. Did people complain? Of course they did ... that's what people do after all. But we had an active endgame scene! Now that everyone and their grandma can solo epic elites faster than one can fill up an lfm, EE loot drops (mostly) being ridiculously frequent and additionally (mostly) available on the asah for cheap, we have no endgame scene to speak of. Yeah, sure there is a handful of people (like me) still grinding deathwyrm completions ... but on most PUGS I already know half the people joining, which effectively says it all.
.) When enhancement trees weren't so front loaded and overall character power was lower, we even needed to group up on heroic content! I can remember times when we would spend hours to finish an elite harbor quest, with multiple recalls while one was holding the instance and so on. That was fun! You really had to play TOGETHER, not just zerg alongside each other (don't get me wrong, zerging can be fun as well - but all the time???). Really, nowadays the only time I group up is when I want to run a raid - the rest of the time - why bother? Grouping just means spending a lot of time waiting to then zerg some dungeons silently/sleepwalking ...
.) When Turbine announced they would extend the game into epic levels, I was both excited and worried, because they announced they would only go to level 25 and in pen and paper the epic powercurve only starts to really rise at around level 30 - Turbines solution to this "problem" were destinies - which had nothing to do with D&D and will never have - of course I loved them in the beginning, because they were new stuff to try out - now I wished they were never introduced, as some abilities are simply so much more powerful than the rest that the number of viable builds is actually pretty darn short. Additionally Turbine balanced everything around these new abilities (just saying 300k hp for red named quest foes) and now they face the problem that if one does not use one of the few "cookie-cutter" builds, there is no way to even remotely catch up with the players who use them.
.) Then Turbine had the idea of ideas: Our players realized that AC is useless - so lets rework it! To make it simple: Old AC system: AC is useless unless completely maxed out, noone cares about it, but at least it is easy to understand and follows D&D rules. New AC system: AC is still rather useless - yes it is not as completely useless as before, but on the other hand incoming damage rose so high, that just a few hits mean instant death anyhow - in the end: Again noone cares, but the system is far more complex, not D&D and additionally all enhancements and items increasing player to-hit became completely useless (especially since in addition to the AC changes, grazing hits were buffed as well to make sure there really is no boon to having a high to-hit)
.) At the same time a new, again non-D&D, much more readily available source of damage mitigation became available: Dodge - So that now monks not only have improved evasion, awesome saves, dps, CC - na, lets give them the best defense as well -> the 6 monk splash became more or less inevitable for martial characters, as there aren't too many sources of: medium to high AC (around 100 AC no prob for monks), 28% dodge (ninja spy) and almost permanent 20% incorporality (ninja spy).
.) So ... lets add PRR and see if it makes a difference: it doesn't ...
.) We also had a pretty cool loot system ... until someone decided that solar V, deadly, accuracy and so on were a good idea ... I bet a lot of work was put into that system - effect of it? None, vendor trash is still vendor trash, but at least the vendor trash no longer has D&D enchantments on it O_o

So, now comes this new great idea:
Lets add MRR (that one I might - MIGHT - have kinda accepted), MP and RngP (I refuse to abbreviate it as RP O_o)
I mean - really??? This game has a lot of problems currently - these things will help NONE of them

What do I think these will have as effects?
MRR:
Evadable damage is so massive that when you put your character into a situation where you would normally really like to have evasion, MRR would need to be so high that it effectively was as powerful as evasion itself in order to make a real difference. That in turn would just mean that everyone would just TR there monk splashes into some heavy armor build - yay you moved the problem, but in the end its the same - there still is no choice in - do I want to be light and agile and thus very good in evading fireballs but in case some weapon hits me I'm dead vs. do I want to be a moving fortress of steel, impenetrable for weapons, but in case I get too much attention from casters, I m toast - if both systems provide the effectively same protections, you could just remove both system at once and just scale down the damage mobs do - saves on lag as well as there are less computations needed then.

MP and RngP:
"Boss, we got a problem!"
"Yes?"
"We have so many multiplicators for raw weapon damage that players ..."
"Yada, yada ... that's why we gave mobs ridiculous amount of hp, right?"
"... errr ..."
"And casters lots of ways to preserve SP while dealing ridiculous amounts of damage at the same time as well thanks to multiplicators"
"... ya, but ..."
"But? Is this about ability damage? Don't you remember to what THAT one lead? With current attack rates, we'd need to ridiculously inflates monster attributes as well ..."
"... na, not that one ..."
"What is it then? Don't bring up that pvp argument again - no one cares about pvp"
"Well, the players stopped caring about small elemental weapon procs from our enhancements as they are barely noticeable in epic elite content!"
"Hmmm, well then lets just add some multiplicators for weapon procs as well!"
"But, won't that ..."
"Increase the powercurve again? Hmmm, ya - just double all CR20+ foe's hp - that should fix it"
"... what about ..."
"Arcanes and divines? We could give them a way to increase their crit multiplicator - or maybe a new multiplicator? What about Arcane Power? Stacks with SPP multiplicatively ..."
"... wouldn't that be overkill?"
"Ya, let's just wait a bit on that one, so ..."
"But what about the power difference between destinies?"
"Well, haven't we already announced that we will revisit the weaker ones? Let's just give them some damage multiplicators as well - that should fix it - preferably without the annoying 50 charges for blitz"
...
D'OH

In my opinion Turbine should atm focus on:
.) Add incentives for grouping - epic elite SHOULD NOT BE INTENDED TO BE SOLOABLE!
.) Either add a new harder difficulty or make epic hard far harder than it is atm, then make only the hardest two difficulties drop epic loot - and at a far scarcer rate than the last packs (with exception of the raids which actually have a terrible drop rate)
.) Make some of the old packs free-to-play to draw in more players - really - was just in the situation that I gave advice to a returning player and two friends of mine considered starting to play DDO - only then one realizes how terrible the situation has become for FTP - really - when you start playing now, it is incredible demoralizing to see - yay 5% of the game are FTP, I won't be able to reach level cap, can't use epic abilities, can't run Sagas, ... and buying all of the available content and stuff exceeds what I earn in one month ... really? That's how you expect to recruit new players? As new content arrives and old content becomes more and more outdated some of it really should be given away for free!
.) Make loot rarer - yeah for a time it was cool to be able to get the best loot in no time (especially when time is a very limited resource) - but at the same time this means that content becomes more and more once and done - for example e3BC: I think I ran the chain twice (all except the last one on EE) and got all the loot I wanted (1xboots, 2xgloves, 2xrapier) - really, is that how you want to keep people busy? ... You know, only TR'ing all of the time becomes old as well ...
.) More D&D instead of less - be unique - not like the rest, there is no way DDO can hold its own once it looses its unique features
.) Make more builds viable that are actually different, making all builds equal does not increase build variety - it just makes the build irrelevant
.) Sometimes its okay to nerf things ...

Sooo ... spent more time than intended on this ... hope I managed to express my feelings about this proposed change in a somewhat understandable way^^

[PsychoBlonde]

Interesting. Will our standard bonuses from say Power Attack and Deadly Items be converted to Melee Power or left as is?

I was wondering about this. It'd make sense to convert them to the new system instead of having insane gobs of different systems working in conjunction.

I wouldn't mind if they included Blitz and Adrenaline in this change, making them nice but not as spectacular as they are currently.

[Severlin]

Added text about MRR caps and using Evasion with shields that got dropped from the original edit.

Sev~

[Firewall]

I see Melee Power and Ranged Power very sceptical. I expect this to destroy the balance of some great and established existing builds buffing some to uberness and nerfing some to oblivion. Especially leveling or collecting Karma in Off-Destinies you will loose a lot of power. Also what is with out-of the box builds that for example use Divine Crusader for the damage bonus and +1 crit range with a ranged weapon? Will Divine Crusader also give a bonus to ranged damage or will we now have either melee or ranged useful ED's?

And are there any news what you want to change concerning the percieved uselessness of AC?

[Severlin]

So... is it your intention to use this to scale up enhancements that are "+X damage on melee/ranged attacks" and/or "you perform a melee/ranged attack at +X[W]"? What about enhancements that are "you do 1-10 acid/force/whatever damage on successful vorpal/crit/whatever"?

We don't need to scale up +X[W] effects since Melee Power automatically scales all base weapon damage.

We can (and will) add Melee Power scaling to static effects that, as you say, do "1-10 acid/force/whatever damage" as we do passes on specific trees. Making those abilities useful.

Sev~

[OverlordOfRats]

Just trying to figure out if I understand the new PRR system.

On live my ranger(lv25) has chain mail and a PRR of 37 for 20.19 mitigation.
My paladin(lv15) has full plate and tower shield and a PRR of 44 for 23.23 mitigation.

100 points of damage to both. The ranger takes 80 damage and the paladin 77.


With the new system the ranger's PRR would be 47 and the Paladin's PRR would be 89.

100 points of damage to both. The ranger takes 68 damage and the paladin 53.

Is that correct?

[B0ltdrag0n]

We don't need to scale up +X[W] effects since Melee Power automatically scales all base weapon damage.

We can (and will) add Melee Power scaling to static effects that, as you say, do "1-10 acid/force/whatever damage" as we do passes on specific trees. Making those abilities useful.

Sev~

You are not selling the Melee power / ranged power thing very well. Frankly I, and many others here, are skeptical and see it as a end around that wont actually solve any existing issues, while adding complications.

I will say that if you DO add it. It must remain enhancement/Destiny in nature. Absolutely do not put this on loot.

[RedHost]

It seems like once or twice every year lately it becomes necessary to entirely reinvent ddo's core game mechanics and loot system in order to keep it from breaking itself as the game progresses. And every time there are a lot of lingering problems with the transition to the new system such as player crafting being largely left behind, old content becoming ridiculously easy, or certain old attacks becoming much stronger than they were. And the game becomes more and more laggy with each new designer's iteration. Sadly, none of these systems ever manage to unify anything or have enough foresight to be scalable enough to not have to be replaced again.

It almost feels like ddo has become Turbine's "designer training room" where they can learn how to design and implement features that they come up with, which may or may not have anything at all to do with d&d or ddo. Meanwhile, the game starts to look like an excessively laggy frankenstien's monster with a bare facade of d&d tacked to it.

[N-0cturn]

@Armor changes

I like the idea to use larger shields as an alternative to evasion. It fits the build of the knight that uses his shield to deflect the dragon breath or fireball.
However I am not sure if about heavy armor giving more protection against magic damage however. It probably will work but it feels weird. It will probably make Eldritch Knight much more popular and I fear that we will see a lot of turtle spellcasters after these changes.

@ Melee Power / Ranged Power

I honestly don't see why you would add another multiplier to damage, that is already multiplied by the crit rate, attack speed, double-strike, helpless mod and flat damage bonuses. If this bonus will multiply the normal weapon damage it will unbalance the whole system even further.

Currently many effects like the paladin bonus damage (or Frenzy bonus damage) do not scale well because they do not profit from the crit rate and bonus effects like blitzing, which are arguably the most important multipliers. So I am perfectly fine with adding a spell power to those. But it should not affect the normal weapon damage in any way. Also for the Paladin abilities I would simply let it scale with positive Spellpower.

With this is mind it feels silly to make a difference between ranged and melee. Just add the according spellpower to all enhancements (elemental arrows would benefit from fire, ice etc spellpower...) and add a spellpower for the enchantments like frenzy that are not covered.

EDIT: I write to slow...

Yes.

We don't need to scale up +X[W] effects since Melee Power automatically scales all base weapon damage.

This is exactly what I disagree with. Those effects are already nice since they get multiplied by crits and blitzing.

We can (and will) add Melee Power scaling to static effects that, as you say, do "1-10 acid/force/whatever damage" as we do passes on specific trees. Making those abilities useful.

This is what I would like to see. Without that first part that will increase the distance between geared out fotm builds and more casual players. It could also easily lead to a further trivialisation of Heroic content if you don't plan of rebalancing all quests.

[Sebastrd]

Greetings,

Hmmmm

Sev~

I'd like to see these changes in action, but I'm cautiously optimistic.

[Thar]

Added text about MRR caps and using Evasion with shields that got dropped from the original edit.

Sev~

WHY must you insist on nerfing evasion with heavy shields? Didn't i show already why this is a bad idea for light armor tanks. You are destroying that build! Must I repeat that the evasion is not that much of a gain vs the loss of other abilitites, AC, PRR, AND now MRR that it's forcing builds to heavy armor OR to use light shields that don't exist.

WHY MUST YOU MAKE US REGRIND all new shields!

WILL you even make all new named light shields form lvls 1 to 28?

This contant change in mechanics really makes me want to quit this game. Pick a seat and move the car forward.

[Severlin]

Okay, this is generally a pretty minor boost, but a bumps a bump. This is not going to "help players survive ee"... thats like saying well getting hit for 290 instead of 300 means you can totally survive ee now. Unless you have some other changes in mind, this is kind of false advertising at best and misguided development at worst. What, exactly, is the intent here... just to buff PRR use at the upper values? Or to dramatically change how players interact with EE content?

At 100 PRR a hit that did 300 previously would under the new system actually do 250 with the new formula. But remember that heavy armor and shield now gives an additional 45 PRR so that hit would be ~204 for that character wearing heavy armor with a shield.

Okay... no change from the other thread except now theres stuff it wont block. Meaning a situation where all the "we want it dangerous so it does force" lines for boss design come out. Same thing that happened to traps, poison, fom effects, etc. Its a way to build in a weakness so content can autobeat players. Is there an actual reason behind this, or is it just a way to stop people from actually having meaningful defense against everything. I still feel like its going to be too powerful, only now with obvious things its pointless against as a quick-fix workaround because its too powerful.

Our intention is to not release new creatures that negate the mitigation system we put into place.

I cannot help but feel this is another situation where instead of fixing the problem, you are reinventing the wheel, and it will just result in a period of drastic imbalance followed by a settling into a new situation which is largely the same as the previous one. I will reserve any actual outrage until further details emerge, but I must stress *caution*. This sounds terrible, like its going to be a project which consumes more time than you have to spend, and leaves the game worse off than it is currently. It will literally take rebalancing everything, and history has shown there is just *terrible* follow through on such things. Sigh.

PRR is a system that is already in the game, and players are already familiar with it. Armor already gives a built in amount of PRR. That's why we choose to use and extend that existing system.

Heavy armor is currently 6+bab... is that a typo? Anyhow, this is a good move actually. Its a bit 'heavy' for heavy armor, but honestly, thats probably fine. This is a fair change.

That's short hand for 6 + Base Attack Bonus. Heavy armor currently gives that on live.

Sev~

[bbqzor]

Resistance Rating Caps and Evasion
In addition, there are new or changed caps on certain scores based on the armor you are wearing.

Buckler: None
Light Shield: None
Heavy Shield: No Evasion feat
Tower Shield: No Evasion feat

Magical Resistance Rating Cap for armor

Robes or Outfit: 100
Light Armor: 200
Medium Armor: No cap
Heavy Armor: No cap

Note that we have designed this so characters cannot gain both Evasion and the shield bonus coupled with high levels of resistance rating. This is intentional, as a character with both would be too powerful.

Facepalm. You have learned nothing. Evasion with heavy shields is only a problem because youre creating the problem. Just dont make heavy shields so powerful and dont mess with a 8 year game history and an even longer pnp history of function which, literally, has never been a problem until now. You are already biting off more than you can chew with all these other changes, rewriting the whole melee epic dps balance equation, and reviewing literally every type of combat there is, WHILE trying to redo enhancements, and now redoing destinies by proxy. Why would you add an unwanted and unneeded shield alteration, which will do nothing but nerf current builds, put stress on future itemization, and require a rework of existing itemization to that plate? Double facepalm.

As for the armor caps... 100 MR on robes/outfits is too low. There are numerous situations where current builds are already past that point, without even trying for it. It needs to be something like 150 so no one winds up taking OFF prr/mrr after the changes, thats just silly. Similarly, light armor should probably go to 250 (few people are at 200 now, but with the changes to how the armor adds, the promise of future loot helping, and the inclusion of light shields providing more benefits for anyone trying to use a s/b evasion character their values should increase). You dont want to institute a new system promising "room for future growth" with the bulk of the player base utilizing it to almost immediately hit the ceiling.

In short, allow evasion in heavy shields, make heavy shield "multiplier" 1.5, raise cap on unarmed to 150, raise cap on light armor to 250, and maybe we have something. Frankly, Id rather see the whole mrr idea die in a fire but since you obviously wont let it go, the last thing I want to see is having it come out where it just makes heavy armor guys basically invincible. I have more heavy armor guys than evasion toons, so I would definitely benefit from that. But its not good for the game. At all. And will just lead to nerfs down the line as you realize youve over done it. At least set it up so people can all make use of it... if everyone has it, then no one will need nerfing to maintain relative balance. Bleh.

[Thar]

What do I think these will have as effects?
MRR:
Evadable damage is so massive that when you put your character into a situation where you would normally really like to have evasion, MRR would need to be so high that it effectively was as powerful as evasion itself in order to make a real difference. That in turn would just mean that everyone would just TR there monk splashes into some heavy armor build - yay you moved the problem, but in the end its the same - there still is no choice in - do I want to be light and agile and thus very good in evading fireballs but in case some weapon hits me I'm dead vs. do I want to be a moving fortress of steel, impenetrable for weapons, but in case I get too much attention from casters, I m toast - if both systems provide the effectively same protections, you could just remove both system at once and just scale down the damage mobs do - saves on lag as well as there are less computations needed then.

way^^

What he said....

really dev's scale down the damage and this mess won't be needed. things should not hit you for 300 pts of damage on a swing from a trash mob.

[bbqzor]

That's short hand for 6 + Base Attack Bonus. Heavy armor currently gives that on live

Yeah, I know... your OP post said in the new system its 4+bab. 2 less. Yea, its only 2, but wondering if its a typo or an intended change. Thanks for replies.

[Severlin]

This will take away the last tiny bit that makes this game at feel a bit like D&D.

These are systems that are already in place. Yes, we are rounding them out and providing a bit of definition. PRR has been in the game for a long time and armor currently gives PRR on live. MRR is simply an extension of that system.

Melee Power and Ranged Power are just cleaning up and defining a lot of the places in the Epic Destinies that increase damage by a specific percent. The game already does this; we are just cleaning things up a bit and providing the ability for enhancements and feats to scale.

Sev~

[Thar]

Facepalm. You have learned nothing. Evasion with heavy shields is only a problem because youre creating the problem. Just dont make heavy shields so powerful and dont mess with a 8 year game history and an even longer pnp history of function which, literally, has never been a problem until now. You are already biting off more than you can chew with all these other changes, rewriting the whole melee epic dps balance equation, and reviewing literally every type of combat there is, WHILE trying to redo enhancements, and now redoing destinies by proxy. Why would you add an unwanted and unneeded shield alteration, which will do nothing but nerf current builds, put stress on future itemization, and require a rework of existing itemization to that plate? Double facepalm.

As for the armor caps... 100 MR on robes/outfits is too low. There are numerous situations where current builds are already past that point, without even trying for it. It needs to be something like 150 so no one winds up taking OFF prr/mrr after the changes, thats just silly. Similarly, light armor should probably go to 250 (few people are at 200 now, but with the changes to how the armor adds, the promise of future loot helping, and the inclusion of light shields providing more benefits for anyone trying to use a s/b evasion character their values should increase). You dont want to institute a new system promising "room for future growth" with the bulk of the player base utilizing it to almost immediately hit the ceiling.

In short, allow evasion in heavy shields, make heavy shield "multiplier" 1.5, raise cap on unarmed to 150, raise cap on light armor to 250, and maybe we have something. Frankly, Id rather see the whole mrr idea die in a fire but since you obviously wont let it go, the last thing I want to see is having it come out where it just makes heavy armor guys basically invincible. I have more heavy armor guys than evasion toons, so I would definitely benefit from that. But its not good for the game. At all. And will just lead to nerfs down the line as you realize youve over done it. At least set it up so people can all make use of it... if everyone has it, then no one will need nerfing to maintain relative balance. Bleh.

apparently nothing was "learned" in the feedback already given on these topics...

[Severlin]

WHY must you insist on nerfing evasion with heavy shields? Didn't i show already why this is a bad idea for light armor tanks. You are destroying that build! Must I repeat that the evasion is not that much of a gain vs the loss of other abilitites, AC, PRR, AND now MRR that it's forcing builds to heavy armor OR to use light shields that don't exist.

WHY MUST YOU MAKE US REGRIND all new shields!

WILL you even make all new named light shields form lvls 1 to 28?

This contant change in mechanics really makes me want to quit this game. Pick a seat and move the car forward.

There is a post about our plans to fill the Light Shield gap as people level coming down the pipe.

Sev~

[Severlin]

Just trying to figure out if I understand the new PRR system.

On live my ranger(lv25) has chain mail and a PRR of 37 for 20.19 mitigation.
My paladin(lv15) has full plate and tower shield and a PRR of 44 for 23.23 mitigation.

100 points of damage to both. The ranger takes 80 damage and the paladin 77.


With the new system the ranger's PRR would be 47 and the Paladin's PRR would be 89.

100 points of damage to both. The ranger takes 68 damage and the paladin 53.

Is that correct?

Correct.

In addition, the ranger would gain 10 MRR. The Paladin would gain 45 MRR and that would double to 90 MRR against effects that require a Reflex saving throw.

Sev~