Don’t blame him, forums are becoming more and more difficult by the day to visit. Definitely advised using the Forums at a bare minimum these days.
It’s a modified version of 4.15
It’s not just a few spreadsheets though. Q/A testing for balance would increase a lot. Every new feature would have to be tested for all the different versions of spreadsheets, all the various other things that need to be factored in (server settings, armor, level, thrall type, etc). Balance is complicated as it is now without making it extremely more complicated. I just don’t see how it can be accomplished without diverting development resources from other areas every single patch period.
That said, hadn’t really thought of it that way. So I appreciate you and your dad sharing some game development perspectives.
100% agree. It is hard for some to understand that with x amount of spreadsheets, covering x amount of server/game types, someone at Funcom has to crunch all those numbers, and to test all versions against anything that is added any new patches.
I would love for there to be 100 online server types, PVE/PVP, that have 100 combinations of damage for NPC, minions, and players. But i also know reality. Reality is, that each becomes its own game if it deviates to far from a “norm”, and then becomes extra work on top of already monitoring server exploit reports, bugs, and new content.
As I had stated in another thread the cost to balance the game separately for each game mode (PvP, PvE, PvE-C) would be far to great for Funcom to be practical. So for the sake of their bottom line they have to look at each update they do and try to make it as balanced as they can to appease each of the game modes as much as possible. I do not think they actually do this as I think they go straight to the PVPPPPPPPPPPP side of things first (as the vast list above which were pretty much all done for the sake of PvP clearly shows) and that is exactly what leads to a thread such as this. Much like balancing weapons for the sake of PvP (an extremely important thing to get correct) they need to balance updates for the sake of all game modes not just one. BUT, the question of this thread was do I believe they should balance the game modes separately, not would it be logistically of financially possible. So, I voted HELL YES.
my only concern is that as friendly fire on pets,mounts and thralls is kinda insane even at 0.1 i only want either a toggle for zero dmg within clans or some other fix, as of now i will never use thralls or pets in pvp servers, i just dont see the point, by the time i have killed a boss as melee my pet would be dead, and that would be from my dmg not the boss. 5% in one hit too my thralls or pets with lowes setting is insane. and if they now do get even lower health it will be even more…, so thanks for making thralls and pets and thralls obeying and have commands, but what was the point if they are useless in pvp servers,
I’ll respond myself to clarify on this then go back to my company work.
@MultigunYou do great work and support of your mods. You should be heavily commended. I am also of the belief that you should be one of the modders Funcom should make a deal with to get your mods 100% integrated. Enough said.
My daughter stated correctly. 4.9 is when Data Tables were supported in UE4. Funcom is using a modified 4.15 which does include Data Table Support as well as Loading Data Tables during Run Time.
Let me explain & preface (not directed at you @Multigun ). PvP needs to be Singular in nature. Meaning that ALL 1 handed weapons of the same Tier (ie Iron Tier) should do exactly the same damage. Same can be said of every like item/tier. In basic functionality this levels the PvP data so that everything is normalized and leaves mods and style (animation based) to the players for individual style. There will always be a Meta from players. People are generally smart and find every nook to maximize a build. The numbers work. Tested on my daughter’s private self hosted server some time ago, indeed it applied to both PvE and PvP both but in Theory and Testing it works on all the DevKit items (no DLC items). Think of this like a Skins System.
There is only 1 Data Table that must be loaded from what I see and tested in the DevKit.
ItemTable.csv
We are not changing recipes (RecipesTable.csv) or feats (FeatTable.csv), simply normalizing the PvP Armor and Weapons and there are not 100 different server configurations as ridiculously stated above. There are 3 with only 2 modes => PvE & PvP. Server Admins (as in PvE-C and Hosted Servers) would be more dynamic in nature and would depend on whether or not the PvP Flag is Toggled On (Hours, Toggles, et al). When toggled On all the damage/armor numbers that show in the GUI are represented properly because of the swapped data table.
Depending upon how modified Funcom made UE4.15 they may have disabled the Data Tables being loaded at Run Time. This is only something Funcom can answer but UE4 has this feature On by default so Funcom would have to have manually disabled it.
I also have a really good theory that Role Players (PvE types) would not have an issue at all with normalizing the armor and damage tiers (I know my daughter would not) So in the end only 1 spreadsheet needs to be maintained unless Funcom continues on their current uniqueness for everything design. Which, in interest, is far more difficult to balance. Strange concept.
I did not say there were, i said I would like to see it, so as many play styles could exist.
If I understand, you are stating that every weapon tier for each weapon type would basically be a skin, and the weapons not truly unique. I have no knowledge of how the meshes work either. Are are they different for each legendary variant now (outside of a few that we can visually see are the same like a some of the legendary maces)?
I wonder how much people would not like that every legendary ax is basically the same, except for may a buff or a perk. I could see that as a fix if the meshes are not factored into hit box, etc.
Okay serious question time. Please help me understand. What about weapons needs balancing? Ahah the weight above and below the hand grip! Seriously tho. Spears were to op. Thoses claws everyone complains or brags about I kinda get. But do they have the same effects when a thrall uses them? I really dont know ive never gotten those claws, they dont help me build dlc theme parks.
In my mind weapons should be pretty easy to balance, base damage range for 1h or 2h, multiplier for material tier, wiggle room on base damage range for debuff variety. Are we talking specifically about legendary and boss loot weapons? Cause frankly fun>balance when it comes to end game pve imo.
I really dont understand why making the thralls take a damage penalty against players isnt the solution. Save you boss arguments, those have been beat to death over the last 100 posts. If you wanna punch a boss to death naked for a challenge have at it! Dont tell me ive gotta change my playstyle cause you think things are to easy. Quit your job and become a sushi chef. Making sushi is easy for me, so cmon noobs quit being cheese.
As is all we get is wild swings of nerfs and buffs. I understand different opinions, just doesn’t make sense given the past nerf/buff cycle we’ve seen. Either way they arent going to separate the modes, so the wild swings will continue.
You were referencing this in regards to Funcom having to balance all of these combinations later in your post…inferring 100’s of spreadsheets to balance. In fact there are 1000’s of combinations with all the sliders. In reality there is 1 spreadsheet with unlimited game customization for Single Player and Hosted Servers.
You are sort of looking at it upside down. The Mesh and Hit Box would remain the same for each and every Mesh and Animation that Drives them. The Data Table (ItemTable.csv) generates the Stats for said weapon. So in example an Iron Broadsword and an Iron Mace would end up with the same damage since they share the same Iron Tier Base (16-18 Damage seems about right). Armor Penetration should be delegated to the current available mods. They are indeed separate items in the table but very easy to make the numbers match. Took me a couple of hours to normalize the entire table. Iron/Steel/Hardened…etc. Exceptional and Flawless of course would be Constant Multipliers to the standard items. Simple math that works.
As to Legendary Items. They should be around equal to Flawless Epic Whatever since this Tier is also basically a Legendary (or will become Legendary once used for awhile). I do in fact agree that having these wild and amazing meshes for the legendary items that can be found should have some uniqueness to them but not so much so that it takes away from the absolute ease of balancing a numbers game.
Let’s be honest here…anyone with some decent math skills and DevKit access…tell me how you balance the damage reduction equation? You cannot with the current system.
I will not post the equation since Funcom is currently re-balancing and likely changing/tweaking it. The equation is available via Reddit but the posting is 3yrs old. Search for Stats calculation explained if you want to do your own fun and testing. As far as I know since December 2019 the equation still works. There is a simplified equation but as the post states that at about 70 Armor it becomes error prone.
I appreciate the breakdown, but balance broken down for PvP vs PvE is far more involved than changing weapon balance in the ItemTable. If you nerf or modify weapon damage for PvP, you are also making it so it has a lower damage output in PvE engagements on that same server, for one.
This discussion isn’t about straight weapon damage either. It was spawned having to do with Follower balance.
I remain unconvinced that the two should be separated, and neither am I convinced that it’s a simple process overall. Can the tools be made easier? Sure. But the full balance sweep from top to bottom and having several versions of that from now until the end of Conan Exiles development is far more complicated than adjusting a few numbers in the ItemTable.
This! It’s not just the stats. More importantly, it’s not just the weapons and armor. Look at @Croms_Faithful’s list:
All of these affect the balance both in PVE and PVP.
And don’t forget the “economy” – not in the trading sense, but in the sense of farming, grinding and stockpiling, which is a huge aspect of Conan Exiles.
Finally, what have people been debating hotly these last few weeks? It’s not weapons and armor, it’s “are horses OP”, “are thralls too strong” and “should Funcom bring avatars back”.
Bonus: what pops up in every single discussion about balancing PVP? “Should players be able to carry so many explosive jars?” (which occasionally segways into the discussion about the 5th enc perk)
Not just on paper, it does in fact work. I do this every day in UE4 as to swapping data tables at run time. Part of my business for software engineering services. Not only is it possible, it has been in the UE4 game engine since v4.9 (Funcom is using v4.15). So it is in fact very possible to have separated and balanced PvP and PvE settings with a simple toggle to re-load the appropriate DT. Simple stuff really.
Small note to this. I started in UE4.1 but never switched from Unity 4/5 until UE4 supported DTs. I coded everything in Unity in C# and it was a f-ing pain (does not support Data Tables without major work). FYI for NWN modders, Bioware made a thing called 2da which means Two Dimensional Array…Data Table to do all sorts of game configurations. Nifty stuff and old.
It is not complicated. I will explain and show below.
Okay, since I am in this dialogue and you folks are being very civil in this later segment, and since I am having a very nice 21yr Grangestone Scotch, let’s discuss this further with some numbers and equations! Some of you know how I love math and data!
In the current design of Unique for Everything the game will never be balanced => ever since every weapon does a different amount of damage then with Light and Heavy and a vast array of various armor numbers is a balancing nightmare. Funcom could use average mean ranges for each tier but why add so much work and simply make life easier? I really don’t get it. As I show below these small differences in numbers just don’t make sense.
Obviously before we get going here we need to take the number data with a grain of salt. Meaning Funcom is going through balancing and who knows what else is going on. So this data may or likely will change. It is really close and gives a really good sample of what is going on Under the Hood so to speak.
So let’s look at Melee Damage. It is the most common and we will look at two values with straight damage with no buffs.
d + (d * (STR/100))
This is a standard damage equation that Funcom uses. Highly doubt it has been changed since it calculates fast and is about as standard as it gets for a Non-Dice rolling game.
So let’s use a Normalized Iron Tier Weapon. Does not matter which because they should be all the same. So let’s say Iron Tier should be 16-18. So let’s split it and go with 17 for a light attack. Heavy Attack I still believe are 1.5x but I don’t exactly remember so for this example we will use it. If you know what the real multiplier is then use it to plug into your own work.
Average Strength: 20
17 Weapon Damage (Light Attack)
17 x 1.5 = 25.5 (Heavy Attack)
STR/100 = % so 20/100 = 0.2 or 20%
Light Attack Damage Output: 17 + (17 * 0.2) = 20.4 Damage Output
Add Perks & Buffs on top of this.
Heavy Attack Damage Output: 25.5 + (25.5 * 0.2) = 30.6 Damage Output
Add Perks & Buffs on top of this.
For Steel Tier I would say 26-29 and since each Tier should be +10 over the previous the Steel Tier should be 27 if the Iron Tier is 17. In our legitimate example. You can make a simple spreadsheet and plug the numbers in for each tier on your own. The numbers work. I tested them in my own pak (mod) with reworking just the ItemTable.csv (non DLC items of course).
As to separating PvP and PvE. I am also not convinced it needs to happen. If the weapon damage numbers are normalized by tier with some decent Legendary Items that are not too far over the Flawless Epic Crafted counterparts then this game will be very well balanced. So no, PvP and PvE do not need to be separated if this is the case. Currently this is definitely not the case and will be a hard swallow.
Now let’s take a look at Damage Reduction of Weapon Damage Output due to Armor. This of course we all see and know. And you will see specifically WHY the crazy health pools exist in the first place.
So this nutty abomination of an equation: How does one actually balance this curve nightmare?
d * (1.01 + (0.00005 *a)) ^(-1a) + a * (d/1000) * 2
d=Damage Output
a=Armor Value
I guess the point of this is that armor is in fact a limiting effect. Meaning you need A LOT of armor to get close to 100% and likely 99% is in fact maximum DR.
So let’s take everyone’s favorite Ancient Scorpion Queen and let’s get at her with our Trusty Steel Sword (27 Damage!)
a=72 (curious number!)
hp=19,628
You can figure out on your own the animation speed to get DPS (Damage Per Second). You can also add some buffs to these numbers (% buffs are best as adders) to further increase damage output to the NPC or to the Player. One can easily calculate the damage output of a follower as well. Have some fun with this. MS Excel is out friend! You can add sliders to this as well to have some fun generating some really solid numbers. Up to you.
Time is Fun is relative to the individual and the team both. The difficult part here is when Multi-Player is involved and only a Single Player and a Follower are taking on the Boss. This is unbalanced by its very nature. The PLAYER created this unbalance, not Funcom (the designer). Let’s actually ask the question together.
How many hits should it take to clobber an epic boss down?
I am actually asking you folks to produce this number based upon your play experience. Run the numbers. Be a hero and figure out what Feels Right To You. Then bring that to the table for Funcom to analyze. Make a poll for it and stay civilized. Funcom wants this to happen. Funcom and the players NEED this to happen. So as a community. Organize and Make it happen. Do the work, together.
Folks are making this complicated but this is not complicated math and does not need to be.
I will check for any responses or questions to this as long as it stays civil. Wow that scotch is awesome!
My goodness @krix_ost that was amazing, very insightful and incredibly detailed. Thanyou so much for sharing that with us all! Unfortunately poor Croms_Faithful is technologically challenged, so much of what you said sounded unintelligible to myself. So no questions from me. But you clearly know your stuff and members who can put this information to good use will Im sure. Again great job again and thankyou kindly for sharing.
Although as true blooded Australian guy, I can safely say that I understood and greatly appreciated this
I am ever so envious right now. Please have one for me.
No, because I switch between modes whenever I feel like it and it would be jarring for the game to be dramatically different for different characters. I think more cohesion should be the aim, not less. Just because it’s hard/a process doesn’t mean it can’t be successfully done.
How many testers verified the numbers are normalized?
And hit box, attack animations change the DPS. Again, intrigued by the idea of what you state. But a few tests vs 10000 people playing is a big difference.
Are you missing something here? Asking a legitimate question. Normalizing a Spreadsheet is about making the Armor and Weapon tiers identical…or in the right word…Normalized. Normalizing has to do with taking Up and Down data and Normalizing it…Averaging is another term…Average Mean in accurate…Normalizing is an Engineering Term because it also accommodates lots of related things. And in fact we are doing Engineering Tasks here.
The server we ran turning CE into a NWN/D&D-like server was private invite only and was 7 players. But the numbers of players are irrelevant. Has to do with pure unadulterated numbers generated by equations (formulae).
Not going to do the work for you but…ask yourself what SHOULD Iron Tier do for damage in CE (this game)? In YOUR opinion…nobody else. Is it 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 52? Do the test yourself in single player. Come up with that number YOU feel is right. That is your BIAS. In my opinion Iron Tier should be 17 baseline then everything is based from there at a +10 Bias per Tier (ie Steel (T2) = 27, Hardened Steel (T3) = 37…et al). Then from there YOU need to ask yourself…how many hits is acceptable to slay a Normalized Level 60 Average Player? How many? Come up with a number that Feels Right To You and plug that into the equations (spreadsheet) and play with the numbers. Have some fun with this.
This is NOT an exact science. Has to deal with FEEL and that differs from player to player. YOU (All Players on Funcom provided Servers) and Funcom need to come to an understanding what is deemed Balance.
Note: Personally I prefer a D20 (AD&D 3.5-ish) type of system. Bioware & Obsidian used this to great result. Proven and mostly adapts to computer gaming if done right.
Here is the Conan Exiles Weapon Wiki. Has all the data for weapons and the same for armor. You can reverse engineer the multipliers yourself for Exceptional, Flawless, and their Epic versions where they apply. It is not difficult. Basic math.
Wiki for Weapons: Weapon - Official Conan Exiles Wiki
You will have to get ItemTable.csv from the DevKit on your own. Right Click on that and Export.
And since I am here and answering this, usually FireSpark81 does these types of tests. And lo and behold he actually does something related to what we are talking about now and it is from March 30, 2020. So very recent. Took me 22 minutes to find these.
and
This is exactly the type of test that is done BEFORE and AFTER the ItemsTable.csv mod is made. Plug those numbers into two separate tabs (copies) and see the results.
At the end of the day YOU have DATA that YOU deem RIGHT. Get it?
Then you and 10,000 others can present this to Funcom. They can NORMALIZE this data from players super easy. Would take a solid week to do from 10,000 people. I can absolutely tell you that the data differences would be minimal at best.
Cannot say that any other way. Now back to my Sunday and BBQ.
I’m pretty sure he gets it, but you guys keep talking past each other.
Sure, we can do the work and come up with normalized stats for weapons and armor. And the end result of that would be just the normalized stats for weapons and armor. It doesn’t automatically follow that this would balance the game.
@WhatMightHaveBeen mentions hit boxes and animations and their influence on DPS. I have previously mentioned the economy of the game. @Croms_Faithful has listed a lot of other concerns that have nothing to do with weapons and armor.
Those are all aspects of game balance and, as such, have a place in this discussion about whether the modes should be balanced separately – and whether balancing them separately is feasible or not.
I am ever so envious right now. Please have one for me.
Cheers Mate! or maybe you know this one? Cheers Big Ears!..Same Goes Big Nose!
