End All Be All Fix For PvE/PvP Weapon Disparity

[Anglinex]

I’ve said it before and (Despite knowing it won’t go anywhere) I’ll say it again.

While the rift between PvE and PvP players has various causes the biggest I’ve seen has to be the weapon balance changes. It’s too OP for PvP, gets nerfed, is now unless for PvE. Is to weak for PvE, gets buffed, one shots people in PvP.

The way to fix this is to sperate the damage a weapon does to players and what it does to everything else. Doing this will allow weapons to be balanced for PvE and stay that way. While leaving the door open for PvP balancing as needed.

I can’t for the life of my find the name but their was once a mod that did this. Wish I knew which one.

[Anglinex]

I know my solution is prefect but you guys/gals can give feed back.

[DeaconElie]

@Anglinex

The way to fix this is to sperate the damage a weapon does to players and what it does to everything else.

I could be wrong but isn’t that how it works already?

I’m really not sure were this disconnect{?} comes from, but as far as I’m concerned the only difference there should be between fighting each other and NPCs is, people aren’t AI.

Different canOworms.

@Anglinex

While the rift between PvE and PvP players has various causes the biggest I’ve seen has to be the weapon balance changes

But I want to address this statement. The rift; IMO, is artificial and created by PVP players. It’s the nature of the beast. PVP players are simply more confrontational. EVERYTHING turns in to a battle.
I mean seriously, it has been proven that some PVPers will go to battle for the most petty reasons.

On the other hand PVEers tend to be far more nonconfrontational. PVEers are unlikly to report even he most blatant of build TOS violations because they don’t want to ruin some one else’s game.

The only real difference there aught to be between PVP and PVE are the most obvious and simplest. You can damage other players, their thralls, pets, and builds.

[Anglinex]

@DeaconElie

I could be wrong but isn’t that how it works already?

A sword that does 10 damage does 10 damage. The only variables are armor and perks which also exist for NPCs/Animals/Monsters. The thing player don’t share with them is health pool. Max for a player is 800-ish? A T1 Dafari starts at 390 and can max out at over 1000. The player is weaker then the weakest thrall. This makes balancing a weapon for PvE and PvE basically not possible.

[Anglinex]

@Anglinex

While the rift between PvE and PvP players has various causes the biggest I’ve seen has to be the weapon balance changes.

@DeaconElie

But I want to address this statement. The rift; IMO, is artificial and created by PVP players. It’s the nature of the beast. PVP players are simply more confrontational. EVERYTHING turns in to a battle.
I mean seriously, it has been proven that some PVPers will go to battle for the most petty reasons.

On the other hand PVEers tend to be far more nonconfrontational. PVEers are unlikly to report even he most blatant of build TOS violations because they don’t want to ruin some one else’s game.

PvEers aren’t totally blameless in regard to the rift between players. I’ve seen people get bullied out of the room (By PvEers) for attempting to suggest PvP mechanics for a game. PvPers are more prone to kill first and ask questions later but that doesn’t excuse PvEers ruthlessly ejecting them from a conversation.

That said I too am fed up with the general behavior of the average PvP kill monger.

[Xevyr]

@Anglinex

A T1 Dafari starts at 390 and can max out at over 1000. The player is weaker then the weakest thrall.

“Weakness” / “Strength” does not necessarily equal health points…
I can kill the Arena Champion with the starting 200 HP, can the T1 Darfari do that?

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With that being said, instead of adding another plethora of stats (which will most likely not happen), like we pointed out a few times, even earlier today in another thread, a very simple PvPDamageMultiplier server setting could do almost as good of a job.

That way they can reduce damage done to players by other players without having to actually nerf the damage of weapons. They can then tune weapons for the higher HP PvE content and just set up servers so players only receive a fraction of that, for example 50%.

This would already allow for way more balance than we currently have.

[Anglinex]

@Xevyr

“Weakness” / “Strength” does not necessarily equal health points…
I can kill the Arena Champion with the starting 200 HP, can the T1 Darfari do that?

That misses the point entirely. (I once killed the witch queen at level 10 with stone daggers.) NPCs have soooo much more health then players that balancing the damage output of a weapon for one doesn’t and can’t balance for the other. You either two tap a player or you sneeze on an NPC.

@Xevyr

With that being said, instead of adding another plethora of stats (which will most likely not happen), like we pointed out a few times, even earlier today in another thread, a very simple PvPDamageMultiplier server setting could do almost as good of a job.

That way they can reduce damage done to players by other players without having to actually nerf the damage of weapons. They can then tune weapons for the higher HP PvE content and just set up servers so players only receive a fraction of that, for example 50%.

This would already allow for way more balance than we currently have.

I see your words yet I don’t understand. My solution doesn’t nerf anything. A damage multiplier is what I’m saying. Just in the form of actually displaying what the weapon will do on the weapon itself.
Example:
10 Player damage
20 Everything else damage
Just rough numbers for the sake of example.

[Xevyr]

@Anglinex

That misses the point entirely.

No it doesn’t, it was a direct reply to your statement:

@Anglinex

The player is weaker then the weakest thrall.

You’re comparing apples to oranges, since players can dodge so you cannot draw parallels between their health amount and something that just stands still and isn’t self-aware…

I was merely pointing out the flaw in your statement… Had you said “The player has less health than the weakest thrall” then that’s a completely different thing, but you said “weaker”.

Hopefully that makes sense, in any case it’s a bit off-topic.

@Anglinex

I see your words yet I don’t understand. My solution doesn’t nerf anything.

I did not say it does… only the first line in that quote is about your suggestion, mainly this:
“instead of adding another plethora of stats (which will most likely not happen)”

The rest of it was proposing an alternative solution that is much more likely to actually happen, since it’s much easier to implement into the game.

[Anglinex]

@Xevyr

No it doesn’t

Yes it does. The entire post is about weapon damage disparity. If it was a stand alone statement with no other context you could make a semantical argument about what strength and weakness is. However it is not. When discussing the damage a weapon deals, the player is in fact “Weaker” then the weakest Thrall.

@Xevyr

@Anglinex

I see your words yet I don’t understand. My solution doesn’t nerf anything.

I did not say it does… only the first line in that quote is about your suggestion, mainly this:
“instead of adding another plethora of stats (which will most likely not happen)”

@Xevyr

With that being said, instead of adding another plethora of stats (which will most likely not happen), like we pointed out a few times, even earlier today in another thread, a very simple PvPDamageMultiplier server setting could do almost as good of a job.

That way they can reduce damage done to players by other players without having to actually nerf the damage of weapons. They can then tune weapons for the higher HP PvE content and just set up servers so players only receive a fraction of that, for example 50%.

This would already allow for way more balance than we currently have.

You did indeed say nerf. I read your response. I don’t get it. It’s not clicking. You want to make everything weaker and then have a buff scale? Or you want to make everything stronger and have a nerf scale? Or what. What are you saying?

[Xevyr]

@Anglinex

Yes it does. The entire post is about weapon damage disparity. If it was a stand alone statement with no other context you could make a semantical argument about what strength and weakness is. However it is not. When discussing the damage a weapon deals, the player is in fact “Weaker” then the weakest Thrall.

I will let others further explain that if they so wish…

@Anglinex

You did indeed say nerf.

Yes… my response contained that word… however I did not say that YOUR solution nerfs anything… which is what you objected to in the quote I replied to…

@Anglinex

I don’t get it. It’s not clicking.

I noticed…

I will try to explain it in more detail.
The game has a set of Server Settings, which I’m sure you have heard of? They are global settings affecting the entire server… such as “harvest rate” for example… or “XP rate”… you might have heard these terms? Yes?

Well, there are also settings that control damage.

For example there is a Player Damage Multiplier that directly scales the damage output of players…

There are also settings for Thrall damage output for example.
Thralls however have it separated, depending on their target. So there are TWO different damage scale settings for them:

• Thrall Damage To Players Multiplier: globally scales the damage output of thralls when they attack human players
• Thrall Damage to NPCs Multiplier: globally scales the damage output of thralls when they attack non-human enemies

In fact the first one (thrall damage vs. players) has been actively utilized throughout the entirety of Age of Sorcery… currently it’s set to 0.5 on all official PvP servers, which means that any Thrall attacking a human player will deal only HALF their normal damage to them

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So, instead of your more complicated suggestion, I suggested adding a similar global setting that thralls already have, but for players.
A “Player vs Player Damage Multiplier” that they could globally set for the server (since we don’t have this yet, we only have an overall setting for player damage, regardless of the target).

This is something that they could reasonably do without too much hassle, so there’s an actual chance that it becomes reality and it can roughly accomplish something similar as your suggestion.

[Anglinex]

I’ve hosted servers before and am aware setting exist yes.

I don’t know what about my suggestion seems “Complicated” to you but what your saying is just another flavor of what I’m saying. Only difference is you are suggesting it be a slider server owners can control. When I am just saying it needs to happen.

Making PvP damage different then PvE damage.

[Xevyr]

@Anglinex

I don’t know what about my suggestion seems “Complicated”

It does not “seem” complicated… I know exactly how either of those things can be accomplished…

Your suggestion involves 10 times more work and I am also sure the devs will never do it, so I figured I would suggest something involving much less work that we actually have a chance of getting… that’s all…

[Anglinex]

I have nothing against your idea. Just seems like you’re assuming somethings about what I’m saying. I don’t care how they do it. It just needs to happen. Make weapons do different damage to players then everything else. I just also want to see the numbers somewhere.

@Anglinex

Example:
10 Player damage
20 Everything else damage
Just rough numbers for the sake of example.

[Xevyr]

@Anglinex

I have nothing against your idea.

I did not think you would, that’s why I suggested it I agree, the goal is to separate PvP damage from PvE damage.

@Anglinex

Just seems like you’re assuming somethings about what I’m saying.

Again, I was not assuming too much, other than what you said, and the reason I said it’s more complicated, is because it simply is.

The key point where your suggestion differs is that you’re suggesting they add a “PvP damage” value to weapons themselves.

That would mean creating new fields in the item table for PvP damage… then coming up with suitable values and updating them for all 1015 weapons…
Creating a new damage type based on this newly added field and calculating all the relevant modifiers for that as well…
Later on selecting to use this damage type from the attack data based on the target and do the subsequent calculations with this.
And you also want them to update the UI with something that isn’t even really relevant information unless they’re individually tuned (even then it’s just relative comparison, since your 10 damage sword right now, does not do 10 damage like you stated above… that’s just the starting point of the calculations)

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In contrast my suggestion involves creating a variable… and multiplying a value with that variable later on at a specific point in the calculations… That’s it

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Hopefully that cleared up why I was suggesting this instead, I just think Funcom is way more likely to do this version.
But in any case, I get that you just want some version of it that accomplishes this separation of PvE and PvP damage, so it’s all good.

[Anglinex]

Only real Issue I see with yours is if a specific weapon is still to “OP”[ as the PvPers would say] for PvP they would still need to change the damage value of the weapon and that still would effect how it works in PvE. However it does potentially blanket fix the majority of issues.

I brought up the mod because if someone could find it (again the name is lost to me) Funcom could potentially use it? 90% of the work done already. Just give the guy some credit… or higher him.

[Taemien]

The issue here is scope. There is literally hundreds if not thousands of items that would need to be rebalanced. Invariably after trying to go item by item, things will be missed, values may get fat fingered, and so forth making a mess of things. So this makes this a bit of a fantasy and a pipe dream.

The other suggestion of server settings is also problematic. It doesn’t address the issue, it tones it down. So if the server setting is set at 50% PC damage to PCs for example. An OP weapon does 50% less damage, but so does everything else. The OP weapon is still OP. It may not one-shot anymore, but it is still killing in far less hits than its alternatives.

There is another way however.

Instead of using the stats on a weapon or armor, or rather making new stats on all weapons and armors. The system determines your ability (damage reduction, damage, armor penetration specifically) based on the following criteria:

Tier (Stone, Iron, Steel, and Hardened Steel*)
Type (Light, Medium, and Heavy armor, or type of weapon like Dagger, Broadsword, Mace, etc.)

*Using anything above Hardened Steel defaults to hardened steel.

Now this is going to irritate some because they are going to be clamoring about what is the point of getting anything above hardened steel. Well… first… that’s PVE content. So PVE for PVEers, and PVPers should be focused on PVP right? And second, you still get the other effects that those items give, its only damage, armor pen, and damage reduction that is standardized. So there will still be ‘better’ equipment outside of Hardened Steel.

If needed those effects on certain weapons and armors could be turned off or mitigated if needed based on the setting of the server. So if PVP is enabled, stuff like the Lifeblood Spear or other things that aren’t bad in PVE, would be ‘nerfed’ only on servers with PVP on. So yes the PVE will be nerfed on PVP servers. But a PVP server is for PVP and not PVE (probably could make this a separate setting so private servers who use PVP on PVE type for certain reasons can still do so, they do exist).

But if you want true balance, this is how you go about doing it. This way they only need to balance pretty much one tier (Hardened Steel, whereas the others are just slightly weaker) of weapons and balance them to each other selecting a single value to rule them all. Which means in PVP you won’t be likely to use the best ‘meta’ as much as you would the weapon type and armor you like.

There will still be meta builds based on stats on armors of course, there’s no getting around that. But at least there will be more variety of weapon types. But removing the disparity. As well as any effects on PVE.

This system should be relatively easy to implement comparatively to pretty much any other alternative. Requiring a reference to a much smaller table when referencing the values of damage, armor pen, and damage reduction when a PC is attacked by another PC.

And when a rebalance is needed, the table values are altered. Thus avoiding any sort of changes affect PVE as it would be entirely divorced. And we also avoid stat and gear escalation going forward in PVP. When new content is added, new dungeons, and all that, no new equipment will ever be OP in PVP by the nature of being capped. The effects are the only thing that will need to be looked at, and can easily be adjusted by the aforementioned setting mentioned earlier.

The downside is some people might see less incentive to get some higher tier equipment. I get that. And that is a side effect of this. But I believe that since this is a PVP oriented change, that disincentivizing PVE in a small way is acceptable. Making it a setting that PVP servers can opt into, will allow those running said servers to determine if PVP or PVE is more important.

But I suspect most PVP servers would elect to choose a more PVP oriented setting. PVPers would rather PVP more than PVE after all.

[Xevyr]

@Taemien you’re overcomplicating it even more than OP
No… some new type of smart dynamic damage application system is not going to be a thing… the first reason for it would be that it makes absolutely zero sense… the second being that it’s just as “high effort” (in fact, more) when it comes to what the devs are typically willing to get into. You can trust that damage calculation in Conan is going to be largely the same even in 10 years or when the game dies.

There’s actually no problem with the server setting and imo it’s going to be the best solution we’re going to get - if, we ever get any solution.

@Taemien

It doesn’t address the issue, it tones it down.

The “issue” mainly lies in one-shot weapons or too quick deaths in PvP because of generally high damage values… toning it down literally IS the solution…

Beyond that they can be balanced individually… when they don’t have to nerf stuff to the ground, then they can be equally balanced for PvE too at the same time but with a proportional multiplier… The conflict you have with this is only “theoretical” once you put it into context of the actually existing weapons, there aren’t any issues…
In fact, it fixes several others… for example the spear could finally be useful for PvE if they can bump up the damage value on that individually and have it affected by the PvP multiplier to bring it back down.

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As for the other presented problem by Anglinex of not being able to individually balance… Who do you think is going to individually balance weapons for PvP?
The players? or the developers who don’t really play PvP?
So in that regard the “blanket” reduction in damage will simply make player HP more “robust” and less susceptible to insta-kills. And to be fair in a lot of cases it might even be better than what individual values Funcom might come up with for PvP (no offense to them…)

If your target doesn’t die from 3 hits… you can always hit him a 4th time till he does so I really don’t see a problem in that direction…
Set the multiplier to where the most potent weapon is comfortable and if everything else has to do another hit, I’m sure most PvP players would agree that would be totally fine… as long as they can’t infinity-dodge them…
Then you can even bring up the other weapons to a similar level… and PvE players will be fine with damage increases… in fact if it goes overboard they can always bring back some of that boss and wildlife HP to make everything balanced

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Bottom line, the multiplier imo. is versatile enough to make it way better than what we’ve had up to now. To where most of this is not a problem anymore… There will always be nerf and buff cries… even if you had a team of global experts individually balance every weapon, there’s going to be a ton of people crying that something needs a nerf or a buff but that’s fine…

[MarcosC]

I think the most important characteristic of your suggestion is being apparently feasible, @Xevyr.
Unless we’re missing something, I fail to see why devs shouldn’t at least try it.
I wonder if something in the coding makes the implementation of a pvp dmg modifier a difficult task, that being the reason why we don’t have it. It’s a simple and elegant solution that should have been tested years ago. That’s why I wonder if there’s some hidden difficulty in applying it.

[Xevyr]

@MarcosC

I wonder if something in the coding makes the implementation of a pvp dmg modifier a difficult task

No, it’s pretty straightforward and can be done in a fairly short amount of time.
I guess they just never wanted to do it? idk

[Taemien]

A multiplier makes underpowered weapons even worse. That’s my biggest concern with it. If the only concern was to limit one shots, then capping PVP damage to 199 would fix that.

But balancing ~14 weapons would be something that could be easy to do with available metrics. If a weapon over or under performs to the other 13, then its simple to tweak. With zero affect on PVE.