Intellect: wrong AoE calculation

[Daskard]

Apparently the game calculates the AoE of skills wrong.

In the following screenshot from my Cypher you can see the issue:
2.5 m * 0.85 = 2.125 m
2.5 m + 2.1m = 4.6 m, not 3.4m

Am I missing something?

[thelee]

Intellect/overseeing don't boost radius, they boost total area affected (because otherwise you'd have extremely increasing returns, because area is proportional to the square of radius).

 

So really the equation it's solving for is to find r in: (recall that area of a circle is pi*r^2)

 

pi * 2.5^2 * (1 + .85) = pi * r^2 (where .85 is the total area of effect bonus)

 

the pi's cancel out, so you're left with:

r^2 = 2.5^2 * 1.85 = 11.56

r = 3.4m

Edited March 19, 2019 by thelee

[Phenomenum]

Aha. Very user-friendly UI (sarcasm).

[thelee]

Aha. Very user-friendly UI (sarcasm).

 

i mean, i'm not going to really defend the tooltips (tooltip summaries for action speed/recovery time are the worst), but the game explicitly calls out intellect/overseeing/etc as +x% area of effect, not radius. (historical lesson is that poe1 used to actually boost radius in early versions and that got changed out to a similar area-based system after everyone realized how silly a decision that was; the wording also changed)

Edited March 19, 2019 by thelee

[Daskard]

 

Aha. Very user-friendly UI (sarcasm).

 

i mean, i'm not going to really defend the tooltips (tooltip summaries for action speed/recovery time are the worst), but the game explicitly calls out intellect/overseeing/etc as +x% area of effect, not radius. (historical lesson is that poe1 used to actually boost radius in early versions and that got changed out to a similar area-based system after everyone realized how silly a decision that was; the wording also changed)

 

 

Yes, intellect influences the area of effect. And as you can see in the screenshot, the parameter "area of effect" at an AoE spell is a linear value given in Meters and called a radius.

So if I, as a developer, give the description, that intellect adds a certain percentage to the area of effect and state that percentage at that parameter "area of effect" which is stated as a radius, that percentage should influence that radius.

 

That was one of the main reasons I pushed that stat. Unnecessarily confusing, I have to say.

 

For action speed at least there is a solid reason why you have two words - action speed vs recovery time:

Action speed reduces not only recovery/reload time, but also attack time. So there you have a different word for a different factor. Some equipment only reduces recovery time and it's stated as exactly that.

For the AoE issue on the other hand we have a percentage stated as a influence at a radius, which doesn't influence that radius in the way presented.

 

Solution:

1. Make the description of intellect more destinctive for new players (such as my newbie self).
2. Recalculate the AoE-percentage so that for each spell at the radius value the actual percentage, that influences it, is shown.

This way you can keep the static percentage of the intellect in the character creation, while you can state a dynamic percentage for each AoE skill depending on its base radius.

Edited March 19, 2019 by Daskard

[thelee]

Yes, intellect influences the area of effect. And as you can see in the screenshot, the parameter "area of effect" at an AoE spell is linear value given in Meters and called a radius.

So if I, as a developer, give the description, that intellect adds a certain percentage to the area of effect and state that percentage at that parameter "area of effect" which is stated as a radius, that percentage should influence that radius.

 

That was one of the main reasons I pushed that stat. Unnecessarily confusing, I have to say.

 

Intellect is still a good stat to push (possibly the best). 

 

Also, the line of your reasoning is a bit... not apparent. The area of effect line is giving you the parameters needed to compute the "area of effect." It does not follow at all that you should be increasing those input parameters, because they may be completely orthogonal to an actual "area of effect" (this is emblematic of disagreements I've had with people confused about linear/increasing/diminishing returns). 

[thelee]

Solution:

• Make the description of intellect more destinctive for new players (such as my newbie self).
• Recalculate the AoE-percentage so that for each spell at the radius value the actual percentage, that influences it, is shown.

This way you can keep the static percentage of the intellect in the character creation, while you can state a dynamic percentage for each AoE skill depending on its base radius.

 

if I understand #2 correctly, you're talking about doing something like how action speed is translated to tooltips for recovery time, normalizing it to the actual unit in question (in this case radius)? I think this would be hella more confusing for the layperson (there were plenty of bug reports early on about people confused that their dexterity or other such bonus was translating into a weird number for their recovery).

 

I think the simplest fix would be like #1, to change the "area of effect" line in the ability description to something like "targeting" and then have a combat mechanics entry/highlighting the "area of effect" description for intellect or overseeing that describes how it affects abilities that have a listed radius, and how it affects total area done, not directly influencing the radius.

Edited March 19, 2019 by thelee

[Daskard]

if I understand #2 correctly, you're talking about doing something like how action speed is translated to tooltips for recovery time, normalizing it to the actual unit in question (in this case radius)? I think this would be hella more confusing for the layperson (there were plenty of bug reports early on about people confused that their dexterity or other such bonus was translating into a weird number for their recovery).

 

I think the simplest fix would be like #1, to change the "area of effect" line in the ability description to something like "targeting" and then have a combat mechanics entry/highlighting the "area of effect" description for intellect or overseeing that describes how it affects abilities that have a listed radius, and how it affects total area done, not directly influencing the radius.

 

 

I would do both in a way.

My main goal is a better introduction of the mechanic to the user.

 

I understand the devs' predicament: How do you return deminishing results for a linear value?

And they found a good solution. Now we just need their idea to be more obvious to the new user.

 

So I'd improve not only the descriptions at the first occasion the user gets in contact with these mechanics (character creation), but also the description, where they see their chosen attribute values take effect right from the start.

 

They should not only improve the descriptions in the character creation (for dexterity as well as intellect), but improve the skill description in the way you described it, as well (see screenshot as reference, bold = changes):

Targeting: Foe Target + 3.4m Radius

Area of effect: 37m²

 

Tooltip at "37m²":

"20m² Base, +70% intellect, +15% Overseeing (...)"

 

Now the mechanics would be obvious and people, even if they didn't get it at the start, will at least understand it quite early.

[thelee]

That's a pretty decent solution.

 

But unfortunately considering we still have a combat tooltip screen that can run out of room to display buffs/debuffs I think this might be an extremely lower priority for devs to clarify

[Boeroer]

That would be really nice.

 

But unfortunately: what thelee said last.