How would you change penetration values or would you change them at all?

[Phenomenum]

Wait thats for mobs only,right?A bit conused here.

 

Right.

[Rooksx]

I like Phenonomenum's mod, where there is damage reduction at any level of under/over-pen unless you double AR. He compensates for overall lower damage by making crits do +50% damage. I've tried the same fights both with and without the mod, and the difficulty was pretty much the same. It feels better though because every point of Pen has a meaningful effect.

Edited April 5, 2019 by Rooksx

[Phenomenum]

Yeah, thanx. Still, too much things "to compensate".

[MaxQuest]

How would you change penetration values or would you change them at all?

I probably wouldn't change it.

 

Yes, there are some problems with the current system. But the way everything is intertwined, it would take a lot of time to find the optimal state such that it really feels great. And even then it might either get too complex, or require manual AR/PEN changes to some of existing enemies.

 

Looking for some opinions on penetration system!

I haven't sorted my thoughts on this topic yet. But here are some of them:

- AR is way too important. Because being just 3 points over enemy PEN (while not getting crit), decreases damage taken by a factor of 4. And the thing is this doesn't check for the absolute damage value; so it's effective vs xaurips and dragons alike.

- Overpenetration is weird. Where is the edge between penetrating someone's armor and overpenetrating it?

- Overpenetration is weird #2. With 10 PEN you can easily overpen someone with 4 AR in the early game. Fastforward to legendary weapon and armor, and it becomes 15 PEN vs 9 AR. You can no longer overpenetrate, but... what changed?

- Additionally if you crit, but you are still 3 PEN below enemy AR (even with x1.5 PEN bonus), how is that a crit?

- Another thing that is slightly uncomfortable is that CritDamageMult had to be reduced from 1.5 to 1.25 (and is even treated in additive manner) because there is also that x1.5 PEN bonus. But that bonus quite often does not result in overpenetration, especially on PotD where enemies have +2 AR, and iirc additionally get +0.25 AR per upscalled level. At the same time, without that +2 AR the game would feel much easier. But it also feels that Deadfire was mostly balanced around Normal and Hard when looking at weapons viability.

 

That said I like that we have Penetration and relative AR as concepts. But I also like the absolute DR from PoE1. And would rather see them combined. Such that:

- each weapon has: damage, penetration and damage_from_penetration ratio

- each armor has: AR, DR, and penalties

 

For example a rapier deals close to no damage if it can't penetrate the armor. While some two-handed war-hammer doesn't really care if it penetrated or not, since there is still damage going from it's kinetic energy. At the same time a rapier would greatly benefit from criting - read hitting flesh under joint of an armor.

 

The pros of heavy armor being it's great effectiveness vs enemies that don't hit hard and don't crit often. But it's weight being a limited factor for user's agility, lowering his ability to deflect or evade incoming stuff.

 

P.S. But.. that would be a total overhaul.

[anishar]

How about just using a system similar to PoE1, but instead of DR being flat values, it's %dmg reduction values?

And PEN being "ignore %dmg reduction amounts".

 

Main issue with PoE1 was that fast/low dmg weapons were usually weaker than slow/high dmg weapons, as the fast weapon would get the DR applied more often.

 

Let's say an enemy had 10 DR:

 

1 hit for 100 damage was 100-10 = 90 dmg

2 hit for for 50 dmg each was (50-10) + (50-10) = 80 dmg

 

But if you said that instead, 10 DR was 10% dmg reduction, then:

 

1 hit for 100 dmg becomes 100*0.9 = 90

2 hit for 50 dmg each (50*0,9) + (50*0,9) = 90 aswell

 

This way, you don't have penalties when using fast weapons over slow ones.

 

And PEN could be something like "ignores 50% of enemy DR", so an enemy having 10% damage reduction would have 5% instead etc...

 

But surely the devs though about this, and they opted not to go for it, so there might be a reason why this is also flawed?

Edited April 5, 2019 by anishar

[Kovil]

Okay so looking at Phenomenum's  mod thats the values I came up with(im still not sure there is any benefit to be had by changing anything)

The idea is to give every point some value and make everything smooth.

 

Underpenetration:

 

-5= -75% 

-4= -60%

-3= -45%

-2= -30%

-1= -15%

 

Overpenetration:

 

1.1=+2%

1.2=+4%

1.3=+6%

1.4=+8%

1.5=+10%

1.6=+12%

1.7=+14%

1.8=+16%

1.9=+18%

2.0=+20%

2.1=+22%

2.2=+24%

2.3=+26%

2.4=+28%

2.5=+30%

 

the damage went up across the board which im fine with somewhat

 

From testing it I really didn't see any noticeable changes,only that everyone hits harder and armor is less important overall.Not sure if thats good or bad.

I know most people said not to change anything what I most likely will end up doing but...anyway,what do you think?

Edited April 5, 2019 by Kovil

[Rooksx]

My experience with Phenom’s version of the mod that added scaling for any over-pen was that rogues hit too hard. Enemy rogues were nasty, but my scout Maia with her mortars and arquebus became even more monstrous. Generally speaking, the player has so many more ways to pump out big damage than the AI that scaling over-pen throws the balance off.

[Ensign]

Well, the main design problem with the PEN vs AR system is that the possible range of AR and PEN values you can achieve increases as you progress through the game, but the effective range continues to be constrained to that 3 point difference.  That makes it feel like it unravels late game, where you either stack so much that it defends everything or you don't bother since marginal investments don't do anything for you.

 

PoE1 had a similar problem, where the DR made a big difference early game, but as you progressed damage scaled up much more quickly than armor could, leading to a situation where pretty much everyone wore robes at max level.

 

Regardless of the system you need to design it with the possibility of accepting a wide range of values as you move through the game without breaking down, which neither did particularly well.

[Taudis]

I'll put in another vote for Ensign's level-or-difficulty-scaling-but-not-both. Except rather than messing with level scaling, just leave the difficulty scaling at Vet's +1.
 
IMO underPEN is a bigger issue than overPEN. If you're going to adjust things, I would start on underPEN. Maluses are huge damage reducers and even having AR 1 or 2 greater than PEN is a significant defense. Your scaling by 15% looks right but obviously it's pretty hard to say for sure. Even if you'd like to adjust both sides, I would still test underPEN changes and overPEN changes separately before adding them together. You'll get a better feel for what is working and what isn't.
 

PoE1 had a similar problem, where the DR made a big difference early game, but as you progressed damage scaled up much more quickly than armor could, leading to a situation where pretty much everyone wore robes at max level.

 
PoE1 was way faster and the everyone-in-robes issue was partially due to speed shenanigans that aren't possible in Deadfire. You're right but there's a bit more to it.

[Kovil]

I'll put in another vote for Ensign's level-or-difficulty-scaling-but-not-both. Except rather than messing with level scaling, just leave the difficulty scaling at Vet's +1.

 

IMO underPEN is a bigger issue than overPEN. If you're going to adjust things, I would start on underPEN. Maluses are huge damage reducers and even having AR 1 or 2 greater than PEN is a significant defense. Your scaling by 15% looks right but obviously it's pretty hard to say for sure. Even if you'd like to adjust both sides, I would still test underPEN changes and overPEN changes separately before adding them together. You'll get a better feel for what is working and what isn't.

 

PoE1 had a similar problem, where the DR made a big difference early game, but as you progressed damage scaled up much more quickly than armor could, leading to a situation where pretty much everyone wore robes at max level.

 

PoE1 was way faster and the everyone-in-robes issue was partially due to speed shenanigans that aren't possible in Deadfire. You're right but there's a bit more to it.

The problem is that making underpen bonuses less severe does indeed make the game easier and this wasn't my intention.