Stat Calculations
Ebonborn
Member
In most MMO's you are discovering in secret how each stat works and the calculations through which to gain an advantage and sometimes sharing those calculations to the public. While this knowledge is important and pivotal the information is sometimes very unobvious, misleading or unshared. I don't know if others would agree but I would like to see a little more depth in explanation of stats and the true effects they have on us. When we are calculating, we as players know the obvious like dexterity is the main stat to physical accuracy and the calculations for physical accuracy. The issue I have is while that is true what are the calculations for how [stat x] impacts [stat y] statistically. Ex. Physical Mitigation and its impact on physical penetration. What are stat caps? What are the TRUE relationships between these stats? While these two stats may have no correlation, I am trying to make the point of stat effects on each other, on gear, on skills and how to calculate these. Is the stat additive or is it going off of the base stat? I like some of the calculations shown with some current spells but would appreciate more clarity.
6
Comments
Obviously there is a discussion to be had about what info should or shouldn't be available to the player, but if it is intended info, then it should either be clearly stated or fun to discover.
All it really takes is a couple guys with access to different classes and gear to smack each other for several hours, and then a few days to just throw the log through python and curve fit. The time comes from guessing what type of function each stat has, or which ones interact with each other.
It will be harder to find bugs without knowing the true functional forms. Which may or may not be intentional from intrepid.
ESO stats are an example of bad design, in which max MP would contribute to dmg output. Some of the stats were even hidden from your character info
Here is also a list of dmg types, all of which were mandatory to every single player, resulting in character build changes every months, due to devs tweaking them:
1) Physical damage (call weapon damage for some random reason and Magic damage. Eventually they became one.
2) Crit rate. Yes, with critical reaching between 70% to 90% for almost every character, you had to balance out your crit rate and consider it as DMG because it affected your output.
3) Critical dmg
4) Penetration
5) Max MP/Max Stamina dmg contribution
Five sources of dmg competing with each other. You lower one to increase the other and the whole thing was basically a math calculation every 3 months. Unnecessary.
There was other types of dmg as well:
Poison dmg
Disease dmg
Fire dmg
Frost dmg
Holy dmg
Physical dmg (not to be confused with weapon dmg, which weapon dmg stat wasnt related to actual weapons.....)
Shock dmg
Magical dmg (not to be... same as above...)
True dmg
Execution dmg
Poison item dmg (......)
A whole new set of dmg stats to consider in making your output stronger.
Other forms of damage came from active skills that had to be slotted for their passive boost, even though nobody used them for active gameplay. What a joke.
And then we had 3 forms of sustain:
Stamina/MP regeneration
Stamina/MP cost reduction
Max Stamina/Max MP (which contributed to dmg). "Which one will be the best this cycle? Maximise it, delete the other two."
Needless to say that all these stats are not tied to anything visual.
Penetration dmg did not come from skills and gameplay involving Blunt weapons.
Critical dmg/rate did not involve rogues.
All these were just invisible numbers. A massive unnecessary selection. A chore to calculate stats which do not change your active gameplay, only the maths behind it.
Some consider these calculations fun or proof of smarts. Maybe they should apply their love of that to something that gets them paid instead of a part of gaming.
Some consider it the edge in competitive gaming. That's only because the Devs allowed for such a mess. The Devs could also prevent it, and it would make no difference to the top players fighting other top players.
Only that the rest of the playerbase would not have to wonder why their chars are all of a sudden so weak, or ask what do the youtubers say this cycle?
They would just go about enjoying their ingame time without having to invest time to nonsense.
I am all for simplified stats. I am pro active gameplay. Active skills. Let players try to figure out their characters cooldowns, costs and skill impact through ingame practice.
Let them build their hotbar to respond to any surprising scenario or enemy, both pve and pvp. Without having to swap builds all the time, rendering them vulnerable to the combined, true open world mmo challenges.
The reason I would like all of this is specifically because I have played too many games that SAID a certain stat did a certain thing, but a bug or bad calculations caused something different to happen, or garnered different stat output. When we can see the calculations, then it is easy to point out the discrepancies. When the calculations are hidden, it takes an internet theory-crafter + mathematician to point out that the numbers dont add up.
I'd like to have enough information to make a decision I feel confident about, but I also think there's room for hiding things like threat calculations, so long as there's some kind of indicator of your threat level, even if it's just green-yellow-red.
instead should have an entire section like the OP stated with clear explanations for skills and calculations.
So I don’t think devs should reveal everything.
Yes. I'm not necessarily asking for the exact formula, just the quantitative facts of what a stat change actually does.
Different builds shine in different places. I would not expect to find a one build performs top everywhere.
It’s clear that builds are situational we agree on that. But it doesn’t change anything to me statement.
At least, my hope is the system is complex enough you can build your character one way or another of a dozen ways. One will be the numerical champion in a situation sure, but the others can also be good enough to fill a role the party needs.
And my tolerance for 'Mystery + Diversity' is way higher than nearly everyone I know... so...
At least TL tier transparency on stats please.
I'm not saying it's clear in general, but I can say that was clear to me immediately.
Because I've been playing RPGs for so long, that I am used to 'chance to actually affect opponent' and 'chance to apply effect' being separate. Most people who have ever played like... Pokemon... will generally understand that.
But at least in TL if you go into the advanced/additional info in the menu, it tries to make it clear for you, to the point where if you 'thought it might be A, or B', it's enough information to know which one it is.
That might require more experience than I thought, though...
Nonetheless, sure, if not even TL's advanced tooltips are clear enough for most people, then we must go further!
100% this
Secret hidden formulas that only some players figure out through weeks/month of testing and documenting is lame AF.
I want to know that +5 crit actually means +5 to your already 24 crit, and there is a crit chance cap of 75% at +200 crit. You can crit through parry but not dodge, which straight reduces the 75% crit chance cap. blah blah blah...
Fumbling around in these games just picking stuff that is USELESS because you are already capped out or there are diminishing returns, but no one knows, is just frustrating.
This is actually a good image of explanation being needed. How does 234=23.4? lol Or what the fuck is K? lol I understand that K is .1 but just putting the variable there with no explanation isn't enough.
I'm just really, really hoping that the team understands that if they apply 'K' thinking they can design it MOBA style, in an MMO, what they are going to get is closer to BDO, in a bad way.
Just random pearl-clutching from me, but man am I spooked by that variable.
The problem is that we can't "just figure it out".. There are no combat/dps meters.
Lets say you get an item with +30 magic crit. Did that just add 30% crit? Did it just add 29.8%? Did it just add 2%? If you add another +30 magic crit, did you add another 2%? Or is it now adding 1.5%?
You aren't going to "just figure out" that +30 crit was +2% but +60 crit is +3.5% because of diminishing returns.
Even if they gave us meters and the ability to log and track these things, it's still ridiculous and not what should be expected of players to be good at the game. Other people will figure it out, and then make a youtube video or website and then everyone will just go there instead. Better for the game devs to just show it and not be lazy.
What's the point of getting a new item if it is impossible to tell if it is an upgrade or not?
Why don't you hit a mob 100 times and figure out if you had an increase on magic crit or not ?
Obviously if you can't see the dps you do, what I said is pointless, but if you check the streams you can see that when you hit anything it shows how much dmg you've done.
Subjects to change ? I have no idea, but if it stays like this then it's fine.
Although tbf if we are talking about m crit its easy to check the chunk of life u are removing to figure it out but for other things like stun resist or debuff resistance it's much harder to test.
This is not enough data to overcome the statistical error. You could have 0 crits in 100 hits, even if you are supposed to get 5% on average. Definitely not enough to detect the difference between 4% crit and 5% crit with an error of .1%. Probably need thousands of data points for that, shrug.
Sure, people can and WILL do this, if they have to. I've done stuff like this in other games, to get an edge, and have a deeper understanding of what items actually work better for my build. But its tedious, and boring, and not fun. I want to play the game, not spend most of my log-in time creating spreadsheets of stats and damage results on various monsters. Been there, done that.
I want the game devs to respect our time and give us this type of information rather than make us do boring/tedious work to figure out what they can easily tell us if they aren't being lazy.
If this is supposed to be a "next generation MMO" then have the best UI and tooltips in the industry.
Just keep in mind it takes an obnoxiously large dataset early on, and even then you still only end up with a statistical distribution, not the absolute truth (unless they publish the formula used)
Not only that, but we have to do that for many, many different stats, to get a sense of the curve shape, and where diminishing returns start.
It gets even more (un)fun if instead of smooth curves we see breakpoints, you could end up in a situation where if you have 1301 power, and you get a gear piece to boost your total power to 1315, but it doesnt matter because the next breakpoint might be at 1320 for an actual change to anything. Meaning everything from 1302-1319 is meaningless.
Probably concerned about min/maxers pressuring people to take certain builds because they can mathematically prove that they are better or something. Or its the people who aren't good at math and just want to play the game feel that they are at a disadvantage if other players can figure these things out but they cant.
So they could prefer that a few really grinder no lifers test it instead and then pass on 2nd hand info to the community through websites and youtube videos rather than the majority of the players being able to do it.
Its the same argument as not showing us health bars, they want to keep immersion as much as possible, and so any "system" should be hidden from the gameplay itself.
In essence, if the ability says "Boosts crit by 200", immersion would imply pushing that button FEELS good. Theory crafters would dilute the immersion by then quantifying numerically just how good that button actually feels.
Bigger numbers put the feels good chemicals in my brain ya know, which is what makes the number investigation worthwhile to me, but a waste of time to many others because they are happy to just push the button.
And as to Xeeg's comment, it will take many no lifers. Without use of a third party app, we are limited to personal log only. Which means to test out a job like Bard, which is support and buffs allies or debuffs enemies, we have to test bard skills on many allies and then ask them to send the log over to us, since our personal log wont show the effect of our bard skill on the ally, and how that buff interacts with other buffs. And then we have to deconvolve that players own stats from the buff to figure out just how much boost the buff actually did.