Fixing the armor min/maxing: an interesting new gameplay mechanic?

[Bazy]

I'm going to laugh when everyone running around with naked ranged characters get whooped by enemies burrowing, charging, and teleporting past their frontline.

Even if that were the case... The game is very punishing for anyone besides a tank to take damage. If your mage starts getting attacked it doesn't matter what armor he wears... he is going to have a bad time. 

 

For example, say your mage/rogue/whatever has ~75 health. The mobs in this game hit hard. Having a DR of 6/8/10 compared to 12 isn't going to do anything to keep you alive. You are far better off just doing as much damage as possible.

Edited March 19, 2015 by Bazy

[wanderon]

 

I'm going to laugh when everyone running around with naked ranged characters get whooped by enemies burrowing, charging, and teleporting past their frontline.

Even if that were the case... The game is very punishing for anyone besides a tank to take damage. If your mage starts getting attacked it doesn't matter what armor he wears... he is going to have a bad time. 

 

For example, say your mage/rogue/whatever has ~75 health. The mobs in this game hit hard. Having a DR of 6/8/10 compared to 12 isn't going to do anything to keep you alive. You are far better off just doing as much damage as possible.

 

 

Actually wouldn't that 6/8/12 be half as good as the 12 and twice as good as 0? And wouldn't the penalty also be less than it is at 12 and more than it is at 0?

 

Oh wait I forgot this is the internet so everything has to either be either awesome or useless with no middle ground anywhere - sorry my bad...

[Luckmann]

 

 

I'm going to laugh when everyone running around with naked ranged characters get whooped by enemies burrowing, charging, and teleporting past their frontline.

Even if that were the case... The game is very punishing for anyone besides a tank to take damage. If your mage starts getting attacked it doesn't matter what armor he wears... he is going to have a bad time. 

 

For example, say your mage/rogue/whatever has ~75 health. The mobs in this game hit hard. Having a DR of 6/8/10 compared to 12 isn't going to do anything to keep you alive. You are far better off just doing as much damage as possible.

 

 

Actually wouldn't that 6/8/12 be half as good as the 12 and twice as good as 0? And wouldn't the penalty also be less than it is at 12 and more than it is at 0?

 

Oh wait I forgot this is the internet so everything has to either be either awesome or useless with no middle ground anywhere - sorry my bad...

 

 

It's not that there is no middle ground. It's that the middle ground is useless.

 

When you get struck reliably for 40 damage, it's not going to matter whether you have 6 or 12 DR.

 

What is going to matter is whether you can kill the thing before it kills you or not, or at least do enough damage to it so your next team-mate up for the grinder doesn't die. Or the tank, for that matter.

[drunetovich]

DR is relevant only if complemented with sufficient deflection, otherwise you will get smashed with crits no matter 12 or 0 DR.

[wanderon]

 

 

 

I'm going to laugh when everyone running around with naked ranged characters get whooped by enemies burrowing, charging, and teleporting past their frontline.

Even if that were the case... The game is very punishing for anyone besides a tank to take damage. If your mage starts getting attacked it doesn't matter what armor he wears... he is going to have a bad time. 

 

For example, say your mage/rogue/whatever has ~75 health. The mobs in this game hit hard. Having a DR of 6/8/10 compared to 12 isn't going to do anything to keep you alive. You are far better off just doing as much damage as possible.

 

 

Actually wouldn't that 6/8/12 be half as good as the 12 and twice as good as 0? And wouldn't the penalty also be less than it is at 12 and more than it is at 0?

 

Oh wait I forgot this is the internet so everything has to either be either awesome or useless with no middle ground anywhere - sorry my bad...

 

 

It's not that there is no middle ground. It's that the middle ground is useless.

 

When you get struck reliably for 40 damage, it's not going to matter whether you have 6 or 12 DR.

 

What is going to matter is whether you can kill the thing before it kills you or not, or at least do enough damage to it so your next team-mate up for the grinder doesn't die. Or the tank, for that matter.

 

 

There it is again - awesome or useless - I've been playing the BB on hard for a lot of hours with a lot of different PCs + BB team + adventurer teams and have outfitted all of them in various forms of mostly medium armors (no naked adventuring and virtually no plate either) and I rarely have party wipes and while I might lose a team member or two in battle we win much more often than lose. I have also avoided almost all enchanting because I am more interested in what the basic weapons & armors are going to do and these partyies have for the most part done just fine. So I'm sorry but I just am not seeing the whole "useless" thing.

[Luckmann]

 

 

 

 

I'm going to laugh when everyone running around with naked ranged characters get whooped by enemies burrowing, charging, and teleporting past their frontline.

Even if that were the case... The game is very punishing for anyone besides a tank to take damage. If your mage starts getting attacked it doesn't matter what armor he wears... he is going to have a bad time. 

 

For example, say your mage/rogue/whatever has ~75 health. The mobs in this game hit hard. Having a DR of 6/8/10 compared to 12 isn't going to do anything to keep you alive. You are far better off just doing as much damage as possible.

 

 

Actually wouldn't that 6/8/12 be half as good as the 12 and twice as good as 0? And wouldn't the penalty also be less than it is at 12 and more than it is at 0?

 

Oh wait I forgot this is the internet so everything has to either be either awesome or useless with no middle ground anywhere - sorry my bad...

 

 

It's not that there is no middle ground. It's that the middle ground is useless.

 

When you get struck reliably for 40 damage, it's not going to matter whether you have 6 or 12 DR.

 

What is going to matter is whether you can kill the thing before it kills you or not, or at least do enough damage to it so your next team-mate up for the grinder doesn't die. Or the tank, for that matter.

 

 

There it is again - awesome or useless - I've been playing the BB on hard for a lot of hours with a lot of different PCs + BB team + adventurer teams and have outfitted all of them in various forms of mostly medium armors (no naked adventuring and virtually no plate either) and I rarely have party wipes and while I might lose a team member or two in battle we win much more often than lose. I have also avoided almost all enchanting because I am more interested in what the basic weapons & armors are going to do and these partyies have for the most part done just fine. So I'm sorry but I just am not seeing the whole "useless" thing.

 

 

And there it is again - I do X and I'm not instantly murderwiped so everything is clearly balanced.

 

Like I said earlier, you can make it through the game any way you want. It doesn't mean that it's well-balanced or that there's good incentives for you to use X over Y. There is, again, no accounting for taste. But if that is the best argument you can come up with, I think that pretty much just highlights the issue for everyone else.

 

As has been explained in detail, there is no reason to use the middle-ground. If you still do it, well great for you, huzzah, but let's not pretend that you did it due to any reasonable level of cognitive thought on your part. Let's not pretend that you did it because it's a good choice or that it makes sense.

 

Most of us would prefer the game to have a semblance of balance and for our choices to matter, or be able to make choices in style without knowingly gimping ourselves or shooting ourselves in the foot. As of right now, anyone that knows the mechanics of the game lives with the knowledge that unless they go by this false choice, unless they go by this armour dichotomy, they'll be actively working against their character and the party. They will be playing at whatever difficulty +1.

 

Now, many of us can live with this knowledge. Again, just because I see a flaw in the game and point at it, doesn't mean that I'll be min/maxing like some diehard tryhard come release. I have a very specific character in mind, and it's going to happen, whether this is fixed or not. But this doesn't have to be this way. It could be better and it should be better. A bad game mechanic or unbalanced content doesn't suddenly become good just because the computer's harddrive doesn't catch fire and the monitor explode the second you boot the game up.

 

In a nutshell, if you do not adhere to the armour dichotomy as present in the game and you still succeed, and if you still do well, you are doing well in spite of your choices. Not because of them. To me that's like drinking the poison potions in D:OS and say that they're really good potions - no, just as good potions as all the others -, as evidenced by the fact that I still haven't wiped.

[wanderon]

Yeah back to the awesome or useless trumps workable across the board after all just because it works fine is no reason to use it...smfh 

[Luckmann]

Yeah back to the awesome or useless trumps workable across the board after all just because it works fine is no reason to use it...smfh

I'm not sure if you're actually this dense, or if you're just trolling.

 

And at this point I'm afraid to ask.

 

However, I'd like to rephrase something. It's not useless. It's meaningless. Subtle but important difference.

[wanderon]

 

Yeah back to the awesome or useless trumps workable across the board after all just because it works fine is no reason to use it...smfh

I'm not sure if you're actually this dense, or if you're just trolling.

 

And at this point I'm afraid to ask.

 

However, I'd like to rephrase something. It's not useless. It's meaningless. Subtle but important difference.

 

 

That's just it - it's NOT meaningless - it's an option that works and what is ridiculous is to keep telling people that your only options are full plate or naked when that is clearly not so!

[mutonizer]

That's just it - it's NOT meaningless - it's an option that works and what is ridiculous is to keep telling people that your only options are full plate or naked when that is clearly not so!

Only works as long as you don't get crit hit sadly, then it's mostly irrelevant and the reasoning is that since backliners will have low DEF, they'll get crit hit a lot, therefore on anyone but characters with high DEF, any armor is just not worth it.

[wanderon]

 

That's just it - it's NOT meaningless - it's an option that works and what is ridiculous is to keep telling people that your only options are full plate or naked when that is clearly not so!

Only works as long as you don't get crit hit sadly, then it's mostly irrelevant and the reasoning is that since backliners will have low DEF, they'll get crit hit a lot, therefore on anyone but characters with high DEF, any armor is just not worth it.

 

 

My playtime (on hard) in the BB did not show that and I doubt it had anything to do with my playing skills - I used almost all armor options at one time or another.

[mutonizer]

My playtime (on hard) in the BB did not show that and I doubt it had anything to do with my playing skills - I used almost all armor options at one time or another.

It's just math really. Multipliers are applied before DR calculation, so DR just doesn't scale proper because of it, which is exacerbated with crits. It's also just math that low DEF characters (usually your backliners) will get crit hit more often.

 

As a note, doesn't matter if you play on easy, normal, hard, ACC/DEF values are the same. Easy just 1/2 all damage taken while normal reduces it to 75% of normal, afaik. You just have more (harder) mobs on hard is all.

 

And don't get me wrong, I play with most armor options also and on Path of the Damned (where this problem is even more apparent, since mobs get +15 ACC so non tank get crit hit all the time), but I realize that it's far from optimal

Edited March 19, 2015 by mutonizer

[Luckmann]

 

 

Yeah back to the awesome or useless trumps workable across the board after all just because it works fine is no reason to use it...smfh

I'm not sure if you're actually this dense, or if you're just trolling.

 

And at this point I'm afraid to ask.

 

However, I'd like to rephrase something. It's not useless. It's meaningless. Subtle but important difference.

 

 

That's just it - it's NOT meaningless - it's an option that works and what is ridiculous is to keep telling people that your only options are full plate or naked when that is clearly not so!

 

 

Except it is. Well, meaningful options, anyway.

 

Everyone that's gone through the thread, a thread that wasn't even intended for discussing this specific issue (the thread on Defenses is better), knows this. There is zero incentive to use anything between the two extremes, and you've yet to come up with any other argument than "I like it". Throughout the entirety of two full threads, that remains your main argument against rebalancing the armour system or reworking the mechanics.

 

And I don't think anyone can take that seriously.

 

DR only really matters for characters built for defence, popularly known as tanks. Everyone is objectively better off supporting the tank by violently murdering the enemy before they can cause any further damage. And because tanks in general will be doing such abysmal damage in relation to the defences they gain, you will be objectively worse off for each tank beyond the first, or for every character not contributing towards damage to the best of their ability.

 

The fact that you can make it through the game virtually any way you want, whether it's soloing, drinking the piss of Bear Grylls or dressed like the clown from IT, doesn't change this. Yes you can use the in-betweens. But why would you? Other than "I want to". And while "I want to" is a perfectly valid personal fashion statement, one should at least be honest enough and knowledgeable enough to realize that one is gimping oneself.

 

And we're just saying that you shouldn't have to gimp yourself. The armour system should work in such a way as to promote the use of all armours by their own right.

 

 

My playtime (on hard) in the BB did not show that and I doubt it had anything to do with my playing skills - I used almost all armor options at one time or another.

It's just math really. Multipliers are applied before DR calculation, so DR just doesn't scale proper because of it, which is exacerbated with crits. It's also just math that low DEF characters (usually your backliners) will get crit hit more often.

 

As a note, doesn't matter if you play on easy, normal, hard, ACC/DEF values are the same. Easy just 1/2 all damage taken while normal reduces it to 75% of normal, afaik. You just have more (harder) mobs on hard is all.

 

And don't get me wrong, I play with most armor options also and on Path of the Damned (where this problem is even more apparent, since mobs get +15 ACC so non tank get crit hit all the time), but I realize that it's far from optimal

 

See? Mutonizer gets it. It's fine to play that way, no-one is saying it is badwrongfun. The game is playable. But the fundamental armour mechanics aren't good just because they don't set your house on fire and kill your dog. Wearing a medium armour won't make your teenage daughter pregnant with an african tribe or make her birth a redhead. But it's still a needless decision to gimp oneself, not to mention all those that will not be aware of these issues at all.

 

Just because one can say (like Mutonizer and myself) that "Eh, I'll use it in spite of the issues", doesn't mean that there are no issues, or that those issues shouldn't be examined or recognized, and, if possible, fixed. If not now, then in the future.

Edited March 19, 2015 by Luckmann

[DigitalCrack]

 

 

 

Yeah back to the awesome or useless trumps workable across the board after all just because it works fine is no reason to use it...smfh

I'm not sure if you're actually this dense, or if you're just trolling.

 

And at this point I'm afraid to ask.

 

However, I'd like to rephrase something. It's not useless. It's meaningless. Subtle but important difference.

That's just it - it's NOT meaningless - it's an option that works and what is ridiculous is to keep telling people that your only options are full plate or naked when that is clearly not so!

The point trying to be made is not about whether its doable or not. Its that there should be a benefit or incentive to use mid ranged armor just like there is incentive to running full plate or no armor currently. There should be more reason than style choice. Again not about if you can or can't be successful wearing mid range armor, its not balanced because it doesn't do anything better or equal to plate or no armor for character combat performance.

[Zwiebelchen]

Actually, after thinking about it, I support the idea to have CON reduce the recovery penalty on armors (not the recovery time in general). It's a simple idea that fixes two useless things at the same time: medium armors and the constitution stat. Plus it even makes a lot of sense, from a logical point of view.

 

There would basicly still be only two choices then: you go for the best armor that doesn't give you a penalty or go for the strongest armor. However, as not all characters will run the same CON stat, at least it varies from character to character. Also it will actually allow for battle-mage tank hybrids.

Edited March 19, 2015 by Zwiebelchen

[tdphys]

Actually, after thinking about it, I support the idea to have CON reduce the recovery penalty on armors (not the recovery time in general). It's a simple idea that fixes two useless things at the same time: medium armors and the constitution stat. Plus it even makes a lot of sense, from a logical point of view.

 

There would basicly still be only two choices then: you go for the best armor that doesn't give you a penalty or go for the strongest armor. However, as not all characters will run the same CON stat, at least it varies from character to character. Also it will actually allow for battle-mage tank hybrids.

 

The con thing is cool.  Anything that requires a bit of investment to work up the chain of eliminating recovery penalty and def penalties on successive armour types seems good to me.  You could do it with a succession of talents/feats too..  kind of light -> medium ->  heavy armor expert feats.  

[wanderon]

Perhaps I'm just not buying/trusting that the math that concludes there is NO reason to choose mid level armors is in fact correct

 

That it is not skewed to make it fit the awesome vs useless concept so popular with the min-max mindset anyway - or perhaps the conclusions drawn are just incomplete because I have no clue how all the variables involved in a 6 man team battling other mixed teams could be boiled down to such a degree that the numbers involved with armor and weapon use show this concept (all or nothing) to be the only possible conclusion - no exceptions.

 

Instead I am simply satisfied with the fact that they seem to work fine for me and that they seem to offer choices (higher DR vs slower attacks at various break points) that also seem to work for me.

 

After playing each party for a time I can "feel" those differences in the way characters function in battle after making changes - how well/often they hit vs how they fare defensively for each class type I use them on and occasionally back that up with some references to the combat log to see what it has to tell me. Anecdotal to be sure but it certainly serves the purpose of telling me what is likely to work FOR ME in the final release and that's really all I care about.

 

As for why I might doubt the "Holy Math" well Mark Twain suggested there were three kinds of lies - lies, damn lies, and statistics -  and my 88 year old mother who was in labor relations towards the end of her working life told me that one of the first things she learned about statistics was that they could be made to argue either side of almost every argument..successfully...

 

And that's that - I am done here...(waits for the cheers) 

[Luckmann]

Perhaps I'm just not buying/trusting that the math that concludes there is NO reason to choose mid level armors is in fact correct

 

[...]

 

That's your prerogative. Some people still maintain that the world is flat. But at the end of the day, it does not change the math.

 

The facts do not hinge on whether you believe in them or not.

Edited March 19, 2015 by Luckmann

[Sothpaw]

Personally I have always just preferred the D&D way and just restrict classes to what armor they can wear.  And here we have a situation where freedom of choice was the goal and we end up with far less variation than D&D where fighters & clerics wore heavy, rogues leather, mages robes, barbs chain, etc.

[Luckmann]

Personally I have always just preferred the D&D way and just restrict classes to what armor they can wear.  And here we have a situation where freedom of choice was the goal and we end up with far less variation than D&D where fighters & clerics wore heavy, rogues leather, mages robes, barbs chain, etc.

I don't agree with the D&D way of restricting what armours classes can wear, but I can go so far as to say that I think it would've been better than this. The intent of the system (as with so many other good ideas of PoE, like, say, Engagement) is great, in my opinion, but the current execution is severely lacking.

[gkathellar]

How is a reduction on recovery time on con conceptually different from an increase in action speed from dex, which is already in the game?

 

Mostly in that it's more limited, which might make it worth scaling the penalty reduction from Con faster. I'm not sure I see a problem with that redundancy either way, though.

[Jon of the Wired]

Everyone in this thread is taking it as given that light and medium armour are dominated by clothing and heavy armour, but no one has actually demonstrated that.

 

Combat can be viewed as an optimization problem where you are attempting to maximize the value of (damage done to enemies) / (per-rest resources consumed). Wearing light or medium armor reduces damage output, but it also reduces consumption of a per-rest resource (Health), so it's only obvious that light and medium armor are worse for non-tanks than clothing if you're assuming that only your tanks are ever damaged. In my experience with the beta, that assumption simply isn't true, and it's likely to be even less true in the full game.

 

To actually know one way or another, you'd have to produce a model that calculates (damage done to enemies) / (per-rest resources consumed) under various conditions. Then you could see whether the conditions where light or medium armor are optimal choices could plausibly occur in the game.

[roguelike]

Unless the fight starts out of a cutscene, the current AI makes it trivial to make sure that only your tank is attacked.  You can try it yourself, have your tank walk forward and draw aggro, then let everybody else walk up and start shooting stuff.  See how long it takes for anyone else to get damaged.

 

Even if that were ever fixed, both deflection and DR give minor boosts to surviability when you have none and increasingly larger benefits as you stack them.   Characters with low defense gain little if they choose to invest in defense but lose a large amount damage.

[gkathellar]

To actually know one way or another, you'd have to produce a model that calculates (damage done to enemies) / (per-rest resources consumed) under various conditions. Then you could see whether the conditions where light or medium armor are optimal choices could plausibly occur in the game.

 

Alternately, you could call on the consensus view of people who have spent a lot of time examining the issue.

[DigitalCrack]

Characters with low defense gain little if they choose to invest in defense but lose a large amount damage.

Right here is the heart of problem.  People use no armor over light and medium armor because the damage output lost is so much greater than the defense it gives.  Which is why plate is the only armor worth using and only for characters that built to be tanks, whose damage output is a non-factor. 

 

Not to say you can't use mid range armor and make it work, it just wont ever be beneficial or advantageous to do so.