Reaper: why lowering player damage output isn't the answer

[Capricorpus]

I'm going to start off on a positive note. The idea behind reaper is a good one; players have been asking for more challenge for years, and at this point making elite more difficult (as was a commonly suggested solution) was unrealistic primarily due to the amount of complaining that would've generated.

That being said, there are things that I like about the implementation of reaper difficulty and things that I dislike. In this thread I'm going to focus on one particular dislike, explain the two main flaws within the decision to make the mechanic the way that it is, and propose a straightforward solution that I'm sure you (the devs) considered when discussing how to implement reaper.

Why reducing player damage output for reaper was not a good solution

Player damage output is reduced by roughly 92% in reaper 10. The goal of this mechanic was presumably to make it more difficult slash time consuming to kill monsters via straightforward damage output, which is something that it has succeeded in. However, this decision has resulted in

1) A system that changes the LGS ender set from overrated to extremely overpowered/undisputed best in slot
2) A system where effects that ostensibly increase your damage output don't actually provide you with any benefit

Since I assume issue #1 is fairly self explanatory I'm going to move right to explaining issue #2.


Reduction by percentage, low dice, and rounding


As we all know, spell power of the appropriate type increases the base damage of your spells of that type by 1% per point. If you cast greater ruin (base damage: 1000) with 800 force spell power, it'll do exactly 9000 damage (1000 + 8(1000)=9000), if you cast it with 801 spell power it'll do 9010 damage (1000 + 8.01(1000) = 9010) and so on.

I'm going to be using spirit blast as my sample spell, because (for better or for worse) a lot of people play warlocks right now and it has relatively low base damage. Please keep in mind that the issue I'm about to describe is applicable to ALL spells, although due to the nature of the issue it affects spells with lower base dice (and therefore lower scaling with spell power) far more than it does ruin (although even ruin can be affected). It should theoretically affect melee/ranged chars as well (in regard to melee/ranged power, additional damage stat, deadly and similar stuff) but I haven't looked at those numbers yet.

The issue is as follows: due to player damage being reduced in reaper, it is possible to get spell power that does absolutely nothing. For a spell such as greater ruin that has the highest base damage in DDO, that number is low. For something with low base dice, that number gets high very quickly.

See, it's largely due to the rounding that DDO has to do. The base damage of a spell is always a whole number, but when you get some spell power and multiply it by a percentage it often isn't. Spirit blast has an average base damage of 35 (10d6, average d6 damage is 3.5 x 10). With 10 spell power, you get 35 + 35(.1) or 38.5. Monsters in DDO take damage in whole numbers, so assuming DDO utilizes standard rounding rules the monster you're attacking will take 39 damage. CORRECTION: As per Geoff's post below, DDO rounds down to the nearest whole number, so you'd actually do 38 damage.

Any spell that does less than 100 base damage will require more than 1 point of spell power to deal more damage. In the case of spirit blast, in standard quests you'll need 3 more spell power to see a difference, and that'll get you about 1 more point of damage on each monster hit. 3 spell power is a pretty low number.

In reaper 10, that number jumps to about 33. Because it's always easier to show than tell, I've included line graphs showing the 100 spell power damage progression of spirit blast.



As you can see, the graph of standard spirit blast damage shows a fairly linear progression, although it isn't perfectly straight due to rounding. The reaper 10 graph demonstrates an abrupt, stepped progression where most of the time you gain spell power it isn't having any impact on your damage output.

Any mechanic that results in players being able to obtain higher "damage dealing" numbers without actually dealing any more damage is a flawed one.


The easiest solution is the obvious one

Instead of reducing player damage in reaper, increase the hp of the monsters. This will simultaneously prevent the LGS ender set bonus from becoming absurdly overpowered and allow players to continue to see noticeable benefits when they increase the numbers on their character sheets.


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I apologize for any grammatical errors/unclear sentences, it's hard to put in effort when you consistently get the feeling that no matter what you say nothing is going to change.

If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to post the tables from the above graphs and/or more numbers
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EDIT: Updated r10 sb damage graph to make it a bit more accurate

[Eth]

On that note, since I only played casters so far in reaper, how is something like a 1d6 weapon proc rounded?

[Elfishski]

Instead of reducing player damage in reaper, increase the hp of the monsters. This will simultaneously prevent the LGS ender set bonus from becoming absurdly overpowered and allow players to continue to see noticeable benefits when they increase the numbers on their character sheets.

Good analysis of the issue there. At lower levels, vorpal weapons (which luckily we can't take a step without tripping over one) become far more desirable relative to other weapons as well, for the same reasons.

The main downside to just scaling up monster HP would be seeing monsters with 10,000,000 hitpoints, and none of us really wants to see that...

With the apparent huge bonuses to character hit points, it feels like they're trying to bring character and monster hit points much closer together given how far diverged they have become, and in general that would make for a better game I think, but you've highlighted an important problem with doing so given all the systems designed around that divergence in the meantime.

[Capricorpus]

Good analysis of the issue there. At lower levels, vorpal weapons (which luckily we can't take a step without tripping over one) become far more desirable relative to other weapons as well, for the same reasons.

The main downside to just scaling up monster HP would be seeing monsters with 10,000,000 hitpoints, and none of us really wants to see that...

With the apparent huge bonuses to character hit points, it feels like they're trying to bring character and monster hit points much closer together given how far diverged they have become, and in general that would make for a better game I think, but you've highlighted an important problem with doing so given all the systems designed around that divergence in the meantime.

I'd argue that it would be better to have the inflated hp monsters and let us do normal damage. Looking at it from a practical standpoint, it would take you the same amount of time to kill it whether your damage is decreased or the monster hp is increased, and as I've already stated there are significant issues with decreasing player damage instead of increasing the hp.

Looking at the issue from an entirely different area, it isn't much fun to step into a dungeon and start doing 10 damage a hit. If that were the only possible way to make reaper monsters take longer to kill I'd say go for it, but it (obviously) isn't.

[GeoffWatson]

See, it's largely due to the rounding that DDO has to do. The base damage of a spell is always a whole number, but when you get some spell power and multiply it by a percentage it often isn't. Spirit blast has an average base damage of 35 (10d6, average d6 damage is 3.5 x 10). With 10 spell power, you get 35 + 35(.1) or 38.5. Monsters in DDO take damage in whole numbers, so assuming DDO utilizes standard rounding rules the monster you're attacking will take 39 damage.

DDO actually rounds down at each step, so it'll be 38 damage.

For Eth, 1d6 would round down to 0 at 92% reduction, as would anything less than 13.

[Capricorpus]

DDO actually rounds down at each step, so it'll be 38 damage.

For Eth, 1d6 would round down to 0 at 92% reduction, as would anything less than 13.

I wasn't aware that DDO always rounded down (granted, I never actually bothered to check).

Thanks for enlightening me.

[Yellowfinger_McSneak]

Great breakdown.

Sadly the devs don't care what you have to say, they won't even consider changing anything, and they won't even respond to this topic. They decided reducing player damage output was the way to go, so that's the way it's going to be no matter how little sense it makes.

Once they decide to do something their requests for "feedback" are all fake outs, although every once in a while they'll actually respond to critiques with claims that their decisions are justified by bogus "internal testing". That's your best case scenario here.


Dev: "The decision to scale down player damage in Reaper difficulty was the result of internal testing, and the feedback we've received on that choice has been mostly positive"