Diminishing Returns of Damage Modifiers and Debunking Flawed Arguments

[Friendly Grass]

An extremely common argument on forums is the “op Wolfgang + op spicy jelly 6x op damage”. I see it brought up on a weekly basis. It definitely sounds incredibly strong at first glance.

Why do we consider damage bonuses to be so valuable? Not only because it makes the fight a couple minutes faster, right? But because it saves resources. If you do double damage you need half as much healing, armor, and weapons. But how does this stack with greater damage multipliers? The multiplicative stacking might seem compelling, but is it really as powerful as people claim?

Allow me to explain to you a common mathematical misconception, and how this creates diminishing returns of damage modifiers.

So let’s say you’re fighting a boss. If a normal Wilson requires 100% time, armor, weapons, resources then...

A mighty Wolfgang at max hunger would need only 50% time and resources because of his 2x damage multiplier. [100/2 = 50]

A normal character with volt goat chaud-froid needs 40% time and resources. Saving 60%. [100/2.5 = 40] [100 - 40 = 60]

A Wolfgang with chaud-froid only needs 20% time and resources. Saving 30%. [50/2.5 = 20] [50 - 20 = 30]

A normal character with jelly saves 60% time and resources than they otherwise would, while a Wolfgang with jelly saves just 30% more than he otherwise would. What about with pepper spice?

A Wolfgang with spicy volt goat chaud-froid requires 16.67% resources. So by adding pepper spice to the jelly he saves just 3.33% resources. [100/6 = 16.67] [20-16.67 = 3.33] 

Of course, when fighting in a group a Wolfgang benefits the most from the jelly because it saves resources of teammates as well. Below calculations are just to show this.

So let’s say you’re in a group of 2 people with spicy volt goat chaud froid. If one is a Wolfgang you’ll only need 22.23% resources in total. [100/(2.5*1.2+2.5*2*1.2)*2]

If they’re both normal characters you’ll need 33.34% resources in total. [100/(2.5*1.2+2.5*1.2)*2]

So having that Wolfgang in this scenario saved 11.11% resources than a Wilson. Is this really as overpowered as many claim?

By the way, Wolfgang really just has more of a 1.94x damage multiplier because his hunger isn’t at exactly max at all times during the fight. But I wanted to keep things relatively simple so I assumed the unrealistic 2x multiplier.

Volt goat Chaud-Froid provides a 2.5x damage multiplier against wet targets. And pepper is a 1.2x multiplier.

EDIT: I was never trying to diss Wolfgang (nor Volt Goat Chaud-Froid), my point was that even though damage multipliers are multiplicative, the greater they are the less of a difference they make. It’s simple fractions. The difference between 1 and 1/2 is greater than the difference between 1/2 and 1/4.

Oh and I threw away the dark sword metaphor since that did not go well...

[DrMcGillacactus]

Getting fights over as fast as possible is kind of the point... yes Wolfgang's damage multiplier is ridiculous, but not in a bad way. To me, it just removes tedium. 
 

[Frosty_Mentos]

Honestly it's not the math about him, it's the journey to how he obtains that damage. Takes effort to get to Chaud Froid, but idk it's maybe my old bird DST brainer still does not like how Wolfgang is getting insane damage without looking into much.

P.S.: there's really only one boss like Misery Toad that's pretty annoyingly far to need a lotta swords and work, not that we would be likely to get anything crazy with that much HP anytime soon. It would feel more like a design flaw and we shouldn't have to rely on characters like Wolfgang to deal with that.

[Maxil20]

Personally I never got the reasoning behind overhyping more then a 3X damage multiplier (or even a 1.8X one in most cases) unless you are hardcore grinding a boss and want to get it over with as fast as possible (for me, it's the celestial champion).

If you have 3X damage and sufficient prep, you are going to beat the boss. You do not need Wolfgang unless you need an advantage against a particular enemy, and how many enemies are really going to last long enough to get that ~6X damage value? The only ones I can think of are misery toad, the champion, and Crab King. The bosses can usually drag on for awhile and have abilities that encourage the player to end the battle as fast as possible, but other then that you don't really need them.

There's also the fact that later on, you can usually build gauntlets to fight any boss and greatly boost the DPS. BQ is especially vunerable to this, but just about any boss will work unless it's the champion (why oh WHY can it's laser attack one shot houndius of all things?). It further discourages stacking a high damage multiplier for fights.

I do want to mention though even that if you stack multipliers and use a weapon that doesn't normally degrade quickly (like the hambat), Wolf's damage can help a lot. Even if the resource cost is identical as both characters need a hambat, Wolf can reap the benifits of a hambat much more then other characters would, even with his innate ~1.9-2X damage multiplier. This is especially true if you are fighting groups of weak mobs, which normal characters can struggle with but Wolf can usually 1-2 shot, allowing you to deal with a horde of mobs much more easily (in particular, hound attacks are especially vulnerable to this).

[Caochu]

Why do you start the topic talking about time and resources, to end it talking only about a certain part of the resources ?

Where is the the whole day you will save (8 mn) fighting a Dragonfly with a Wolfgang ? Weher are the healing and armor saved ?

Your demonstration lacks some things imo 

[Spep]

because its fun watching dragonfly go splat in 2 minutes flat.

[clickrush]

That's a good analysis. But I think one has to account for other, less obvious factors as well that are harder to quantify.

Time

For one, as you said there is the fact that you simply take less time to kill a target or multiple targets. I think you are underestimating this effect considerably, because there is an opportunity cost to doing a thing in a real time game. The most valuable resource is time, hence why things like movement speed, crafting/cooking speed and wormholes are powerful features. Saving a minute spent fighting a boss or multiple monsters means you find time to do other things that you find fun or important.

Also you save additional time for preparation. Even though below one minute savings for a fight don't seem like much, you also spend more time indirectly by gathering the required armor, healing, weapons and so on and there are always small things that stack up as well, since you'll also need lantern fuel, sanity restoration and so on.

Risk

You can always die in DST if **** hits the fan. Your buddy goes insane, because they forgot to bring some sanity restoration, meanwhile a hound wave comes at the worst possible time. The boss is close to death, so you take the risk, of keeping the fight going, but you kind of panic, trying to help out your friend but get hit more than you planned for. Frog rain happens at the worst time possible etc. Things spiral out of control and you need to stop the fight or die on the spot.

Any amount of time spent fighting dangerous enemies is an increase in risk. Your resources deplete, your sanity drains, Charlie and the Constant get more opportunities to kill your ass. The faster the fights are the less risk you take.

Focus and Energy

DST can be a taxing video game, you always do things, there is no pause feature and sessions tend to be long (>1h). We do this typically after a day of work, school or other day activities, so concentration and mental energy become a resource as well! It's much easier to focus for shorter periods than longer periods. Mistakes usually happen when people are tired or get distracted.

[Third Porkus]

Idk if you mean Dragonfly as Wolf takes 8 minutes or if you mean it does as other characters and you save time, but Dragonfly only takes 3 minutes as Wolfgang if you are good

[Friendly Grass]

Jeez these replies are overwhelming.

I need to stop procrastinating soo I’ll clear things up later...

[Dextops]

21 minutes ago, Friendly Grass said:

Jeez these replies are overwhelming.

I need to stop procrastinating soo I’ll clear things up later...

yeah ill read your response later

[Tuesday Pidgeon]

I feel like being able to kill a boss in 2 minutes rather than 8 or so would be pretty important, as with the number of saved resources. Great post though, pretty interesting.

[HowlVoid]

You didn't include Wolfgang's speed boost, which yes it matters. That means Wolfgang can generally get in an extra hit per kiting pattern. 

Sorry for being critical with all your posts haha. These number on paper are very different when put into practice because:

Dragonfly- Wolfgang is very reliable at killing dragonfly without walls thanks to his combined damage and speed. I've tried the no wall method with Wormwood but because he doesn't have a damage boost he can get overwhelmed by larvae (ice staff helps). This saves rocks and time.

Bee Queen- Again, speed boost matters and more so than in the dragonfly fight. More hits in for when the grumble bees catch up. 

Other bosses speed matters but not as much. 

Now with damage for some bosses, due to mechanics, it can help more than we give it credit for. Crab King comes to mind immediately with his pesky crabby pincers.  

[BoysenSyrup]

dragonfly go splat faster : )

[Cheggf]

Idk why people hate Wolfgang so much because if you get far enough where you have bundling wraps & character swapping he can do a lot of damage but are okay with Wendy who is about as ridiculous as maxed out Wolfgang starting from day 1.

4 hours ago, clickrush said:

For one, as you said there is the fact that you simply take less time to kill a target or multiple targets. I think you are underestimating this effect considerably, because there is an opportunity cost to doing a thing in a real time game. The most valuable resource is time, hence why things like movement speed, crafting/cooking speed and wormholes are powerful features. Saving a minute spent fighting a boss or multiple monsters means you find time to do other things that you find fun or important.

You are not considering the time it takes to kill the Bee Queen without chaud-froid, get the volt goat horns, get the 25 moon rocks, get the 3 purple gems, change to Warly, cook all the chaud-froid, bundle all the chaud-froid, and change to Wolfgang.

[Yuuko]

Linear progression is actually diminishing returns?  I've heard that before.  It doesn't address the issue at hand though.  Wolfgang without stacking multipliers is where the "less resources / less time" arguments come in.  Even without stacking anything you go from 100 darkswords to 50.  Combined with movement speed this puts him significantly under 50% time required to task as other characters.  If that isn't enough for you to think MAYBE something is op...  then we're already done.

Without stacking anything Woflgang has an innate speed and damage boost that puts him well above other characters in how quickly, and easily he can accomplish almost every single task in the game.

That is the argument for nerfing Woflgang.  Not stacking multipliers is simply a concession from this argument.  If we can't take this obviously OP thing and get it nerfed, can we at least stop it from being even more OP?  Apparently not.

[Grim the]

Chaud-froid also takes time to get if you don't have an auto farm. Make sure that's considered when doing a fight.

[Yuuko]

3 hours ago, Cheggf said:

You are not considering the time it takes to kill the Bee Queen without chaud-froid, get the volt goat horns, get the 25 moon rocks, get the 3 purple gems, change to Warly, cook all the chaud-froid, bundle all the chaud-froid, and change to Wolfgang.

Great, all the extra steps Wolfgang has to take to get to x6 are super inconvenient time sinks...  All the same steps everyone else has to do to get to the same 2x he has lol

[HowlVoid]

3 hours ago, Cheggf said:

You are not considering the time it takes to kill the Bee Queen without chaud-froid, get the volt goat horns, get the 25 moon rocks, get the 3 purple gems, change to Warly, cook all the chaud-froid, bundle all the chaud-froid, and change to Wolfgang.

That applies to everyone that decides to use Chaud-froid, though? Not to mention that Wolfgang does not need it, but characters with 1.0x damage DO in order to stand toe to toe with him or beyond. 

[Friendly Grass]

Okay. So idk where all these assumptions came from. I thought I was fairly clear. Y'all are acting like I titled the thread "I hate Wolfgang".

7 hours ago, GrMcGillacactus said:

Getting fights over as fast as possible is kind of the point... yes Wolfgang's damage multiplier is ridiculous, but not in a bad way. To me, it just removes tedium. 

Sure. But my point still stands? Replace 100 dark swords with 100 minutes in your mind (doesn't work for the last bit but that wasn't my main point anyways). Tada. But, ending the fight a couple minutes faster is not the point in the forum arguments. The goal is to debunk said arguments.

And idk what your point is about Wolfgang's damage multiplier. I never said it itself was good or bad. My point was just that stacking it with other multipliers has diminishing effects. Pretty straightforward and it's just good to know.

6 hours ago, Frosty_Mentos said:

Honestly it's not the math about him, it's the journey to how he obtains that damage. Takes effort to get to Chaud Froid, but idk it's maybe my old bird DST brainer still does not like how Wolfgang is getting insane damage without looking into much.

P.S.: there's really only one boss like Misery Toad that's pretty annoyingly far to need a lotta swords and work, not that we would be likely to get anything crazy with that much HP anytime soon. It would feel more like a design flaw and we shouldn't have to rely on characters like Wolfgang to deal with that.

My post was just an antithesis to the argument that 6x damage is overpowered. In which case it is the math about him.

7 hours ago, Caochu said:

Why do you start the topic talking about time and resources, to end it talking only about a certain part of the resources ?

Where is the the whole day you will save (8 mn) fighting a Dragonfly with a Wolfgang ? Weher are the healing and armor saved ?

Your demonstration lacks some things imo 

"Dark swords can also be replaced with “percent of resources”.

This includes all resources. You can replace 100 dark swords with 100 potatoes or football helmets or whatever in your mind. It still works the same @Grim the @HowlVoid @Shosuko @Zeklo. Sorry if I was unclear.

And again, I wasn't trying to diss Wolfgang. Just explaining the diminishing returns of additional damage modifiers.

7 hours ago, clickrush said:

Time

For one, as you said there is the fact that you simply take less time to kill a target or multiple targets. I think you are underestimating this effect considerably, because there is an opportunity cost to doing a thing in a real time game. The most valuable resource is time, hence why things like movement speed, crafting/cooking speed and wormholes are powerful features. Saving a minute spent fighting a boss or multiple monsters means you find time to do other things that you find fun or important.

Also you save additional time for preparation. Even though below one minute savings for a fight don't seem like much, you also spend more time indirectly by gathering the required armor, healing, weapons and so on and there are always small things that stack up as well, since you'll also need lantern fuel, sanity restoration and so on.

Risk

You can always die in DST if **** hits the fan. Your buddy goes insane, because they forgot to bring some sanity restoration, meanwhile a hound wave comes at the worst possible time. The boss is close to death, so you take the risk, of keeping the fight going, but you kind of panic, trying to help out your friend but get hit more than you planned for. Frog rain happens at the worst time possible etc. Things spiral out of control and you need to stop the fight or die on the spot.

Any amount of time spent fighting dangerous enemies is an increase in risk. Your resources deplete, your sanity drains, Charlie and the Constant get more opportunities to kill your ass. The faster the fights are the less risk you take.

Most of what I said applies to time and other resources as well. Dark swords were just an example so that what I was saying made some level of sense.

7 hours ago, clickrush said:

Focus and Energy

DST can be a taxing video game, you always do things, there is no pause feature and sessions tend to be long (>1h). We do this typically after a day of work, school or other day activities, so concentration and mental energy become a resource as well! It's much easier to focus for shorter periods than longer periods. Mistakes usually happen when people are tired or get distracted.

What does this have to do with my post? I just want people to be aware of the indirect diminishing effects of additional damage modifiers.

6 hours ago, Dextops said:

yeah ill read your response later

lovely

5 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

You didn't include Wolfgang's speed boost, which yes it matters. That means Wolfgang can generally get in an extra hit per kiting pattern. 

Sorry for being critical with all your posts haha. These number on paper are very different when put into practice because:

Dragonfly- Wolfgang is very reliable at killing dragonfly without walls thanks to his combined damage and speed. I've tried the no wall method with Wormwood but because he doesn't have a damage boost he can get overwhelmed by larvae (ice staff helps). This saves rocks and time.

Bee Queen- Again, speed boost matters and more so than in the dragonfly fight. More hits in for when the grumble bees catch up. 

Other bosses speed matters but not as much. 

Now with damage for some bosses due to mechanics it can help more than we give credit for. Crab King comes to mind immediately with his pesky crabby pincers.  

Also unrelated to my post unless I'm missing something. I never said Wolfgang is bad against bosses? I said also applying spicy volt goat jelly as him isn't as strong as most think.

1 hour ago, Shosuko said:

Linear progression is actually diminishing returns?  I've heard that before.  It doesn't address the issue at hand though.  Wolfgang without stacking multipliers is where the "less resources / less time" arguments come in.  Even without stacking anything you go from 100 darkswords to 50.  Combined with movement speed this puts him significantly under 50% time required to task as other characters.  If that isn't enough for you to think MAYBE something is op...  then we're already done.

Without stacking anything Woflgang has an innate speed and damage boost that puts him well above other characters in how quickly, and easily he can accomplish almost every single task in the game.

That is the argument for nerfing Woflgang.  Not stacking multipliers is simply a concession from this argument.  If we can't take this obviously OP thing and get it nerfed, can we at least stop it from being even more OP?  Apparently not.

We can address this another time. I'm addressing the common argument I hear that the potential 6x damage is op.

[HowlVoid]

43 minutes ago, Friendly Grass said:

 

Yes. That 6.6 damage is applied more times than normal. Think of it like an increased attack speed. This furthers the gap between Wolfgang and other characters CONSIDERABLY. In other words, comparing the numbers simply isn't enough to say "Wolfgang is not op". Your comparing raw damage but not damage over time which is far more important.

As others have already said you are greatly missing the time element in your examples. Time also plays an important part in saving resources, like when a character gets hit. Killing something faster means less probability for error. Less healing=more dps.

[Friendly Grass]

1 minute ago, HowlVoid said:

Yes. That 6.6 damage is applied more times than normal. Think of it like an increased attack speed. This furthers the gap between Wolfgang and other characters. In other words, comparing the numbers simply isn't enough to say "Wolfgang is not op". Your comparing raw damage but not damage over time which is far more important.

As others have already said you are greatly missing the time element in your examples. Time also plays an important part in saving resources, like when a character gets hit. Killing something faster means less probability for error.

Okay there’s some miscommunication. First off, I know how speed works and I know that Wolfgang is good against bosses. I repeat, my point is that Wolfgang doesn’t gain as much benefit from jelly. Or jelly doesn’t gain as much benefit from Wolfgang. You can think of it however way makes you happy.

THE TIME ELEMENT AND RESOURCES IS THE WHOLE POINT. Damage modifiers have diminishing effects for how fast you kill the enemy and how many resources you spend killing the enemy. I really don’t know how to be more clear.

[HowlVoid]

18 minutes ago, Friendly Grass said:

Okay there’s some miscommunication. First off, I know how speed works and I know that Wolfgang is good against bosses. I repeat, my point is that Wolfgang doesn’t gain as much benefit from jelly. Or jelly doesn’t gain as much benefit from Wolfgang. You can think of it however way makes you happy.

THE TIME ELEMENT AND RESOURCES IS THE WHOLE POINT. Damage modifiers have diminishing effects for how fast you kill the enemy and how many resources you spend killing the enemy. I really don’t know how to be more clear.

Ok how about this:

11.11 more darkswords means 1,100 more hits. Thats a lot.

Also I kept looking at you data for a long time wondering why it didn't make sense to me and I figured it out, the extra Wilson you added ended up bringing Wolfgang's dps down. Im not a mathematician so I don't know the word for it.

When compared 1v1 Wolfgang will need 16.67 and Wilson will need 33.33 (not sure why you rounded wilson so low lmao the 30 you presented is off for rounding).

What this tells you In-game in layman's term is that it will take Wilson twice as long to kill what ever Wolfgang is killing. 16 more darkswords means 1600 more hits.

The you presented the group data with 1 wilson+ 1 Wolfgang and your data was misrepresented as this brought Wolfgangs dps down. What you should of done to keep it from being misrepresented is 2 Wolfgangs vs 2 Wilsons, essentially quadrupling the effect Wolfgang has. 

This is what Wolfgang does:

He cuts resources down essentially in half. This is what's op.

 

 

 

 

[Yuuko]

@Friendly Grass I think you get off on the wrong foot b/c you're talking about something that isn't really the issue.  Few people actually have a problem with stacking multipliers, they have a problem with just how OP Wolfgang is.  All the bickering both ways about that has reduced some ppl to accept his constant OP presence with a minimal request to at least flatten the edge cases ie stacking multipliers so that other characters come a bit closer when they've gone through so much effort.

People are probably going to be frustrated without a bigger discussion.

[CossonWool]

9 hours ago, Friendly Grass said:

So let’s say you’re in a group of 2 people with spicy volt goat chaud froid. If one is a Wolfgang you’ll only need 22.23 dark swords in total. [100/(2.5*1.2+2.5*2*1.2)*2]

If they’re both normal characters you’ll need 33.34 dark swords in total. [100/(2.5*1.2+2.5*1.2)*2]

Would an accurate summary be: "Wolfgang is ~2x damge, but if you add a Wilson then it's ~1.5x average"? Wolfgang damage has diminishing returns on average when you add things that aren't Wolfgang - is that a good description of the misconception? I don't mean that in a sarcastic way, the original post is just confusing with the example so I'm not sure I get the point.

[HowlVoid]

3 minutes ago, CossonWool said:

Would an accurate summary be: "Wolfgang is ~2x damge, but if you add a Wilson then it's ~1.5x average"? Wolfgang damage has diminishing returns on average when you add things that aren't Wolfgang - is that a good description of the misconception? I don't mean that in a sarcastic way, the original post is just confusing with the example so I'm not sure I get the point.

Lmao you explained what i just explained but waaaaaaay simpler. Thank you! 

Yes the Wilson is wasting resources by having to share the same darkswords as Wolfgang!  

This data is weird... Its just a weird way of saying Wolfgang becomes worse when paired with a character with normal damage.