How bad do you think a global nerf on armor would be?

[Arcwell]

1 hour ago, Shosuko said:

Being a nerf does not naturally lead to the conclusion that "this is not a good change at all."  Nerfs can be very important to the enjoyment of a game, in this case maintaining a sense of risk even after scaling up.

There are a lot of perspectives this can be viewed through and I don't think it helps to taint them with each other.

I said I do not see this as a good change. That is not the same as saying this is not a good change. It is my perspective. I was under the impression this thread was about sharing perspectives so we can get a good idea if a 10% armor nerf would overall be a net positive or negative on everyone who would be impacted by it.

According to your own poll on this thread, the majority opinion is that a 10% armor nerf would be a negative change (62.37% vs. 35.49% as of this posting). If you think it would have a good impact that's great, but the majority of people do not agree.

I understand you're offering this as an alternative to planar damage, presumably ending in a scenario where planar damage does not exist and endgame armors have higher damage absorption than ones like night armor / marble armor (please correct me if I'm wrong on that, I'm not entirely sure what the end goal is). Personally I do not see planar damage as problematic, although if it were, I do not think nerfing all pre-rift armor would be a good solution to it, as you suggest.

This comes down to preference, obviously, but I think pre-rift damage absorption is well balanced. 95% is excellent protection with significant drawbacks, 90% is good protection with associated costs, 80% is decent protection and cheap. There is a good reason to pick any one of these depending on your circumstances. In a scenario where armor was nerfed by 10%, I would never consider it a good idea to use 85% (previously 95%) armor given its drawbacks. Nerfs can be good, but I would not consider this particular nerf to be good because it would narrow a lot of the pre-rift armor decision making. Less good options = negative change overall.

[Yuuko]

27 minutes ago, Arcwell said:

According to your own poll on this thread, the majority opinion is that a 10% armor nerf would be a negative change (62.37% vs. 35.49% as of this posting). If you think it would have a good impact that's great, but the majority of people do not agree.

That is only reflecting initial perception.  I think most people in this thread have no clue what the actual impact would be, me included.  I think people greatly overexaggerate what they perceive as bad with no real basis.  The poll has pretty much run its course and I see where people stand - so now its time to debunk what was given as evidence it was bad.

I've seen many games go to trash after they decide to add NG+ type features, games that I really loved to play but turned quite sour as the devs ramped up "difficulty" in horrible ways like power creeping all old gear, then playing catch up with mob stats.  It leads to a cycle where rather than fixing problems they just do another round of power scaling.  Sucks b/c it seems like Klei is already on a path of ignoring a lot of pre-rift content in favor of only balancing around planar forward, but even then they've pumped the numbers considerably since first launch AND we have a whole round of character trees yet to release...  imo this patch cycle is already power creeping out of control.

[Antynomity]

I can't wait for the moment when we're playing Don't Starve Freelance and it comes to a point when we're getting hard hard mode and we need planar+ to make sure all planar equipment is less effective than planar+ equipment!

[_zwb]

8 hours ago, Baark0 said:

Oh neat, do you have a list of all the changes?

Same as what you posted

[Baark0]

13 minutes ago, _zwb said:

Same as what you posted

In that case a few things are off:

Thulecite suit is 90% protection instead of 80%

Night armor is 95% instead of 90%

Hardwood hat is 70% instead of 65%

Everything else looks fine, really cool that you made this, will definitely try these changes in a playthrough.

[_zwb]

20 minutes ago, Baark0 said:

In that case a few things are off:

Thulecite suit is 90% protection instead of 80%

Night armor is 95% instead of 90%

Hardwood hat is 70% instead of 65%

Everything else looks fine, really cool that you made this, will definitely try these changes in a playthrough.

I must have missed those, I'll add them on later

[goatt]

I disagree.

Because it also affects healing.

And because healing requires resources to make, it also affects balancing in early game resource management.

I'm a skilled player, I don't think I'll be affected too much theoretically. But if we consider newer players (friends) in multiplayer, as well as internet lag accidents, all the battles will effectively cost a lot more resources. Also because you'll have to pause and heal more often during battles, the battle experience will feel less smooth.

One of the main goals of the planar system is to reduce the impact on the early game as much as possible. This alternative solution of downgrading armor is doing the opposite.

On 11/16/2023 at 10:26 AM, Shosuko said:

So a common thread has been "but new players will find this more difficult"

And I don't buy it.  Even putting aside all non-damage related deaths this armor change wouldn't actually change much for them.

I've done a few calculations in this thread showing how this change would play out on effective health, but lets look at that same concept a different way.

A football helmet protects for 80% damage reduction but only has 315 hit points.  If a player (150 health) has only 1 foot ball helmet their effective health is 465.

If a football helmet protected for 70% damage reduction with the same 315 hit points a player (150 health) would be the same 465 effective health.

 

This is a wrong way of doing math for early-game new players' game play, in my opinion.

In the early game, what matters is "how many hits can I take" rather than "how much effective HP do I have".

Take terror beaks (50 damage) as an example, 80% armor ->70% means each hit has increased damage after armor reduction from 10 damage -> 15 damage. For default 150 player HP, players can survive only 10 hits by terror beaks rather than 15 hits. That's 50% more difficult to fight without considering other factors while the effective HP remains relatively unchanged.

50% more difficulty is quite significant in my opinion. I don't think it's fun for players to be kept in ghost mode more often or for longer. It's not fun for me as a skilled player either.

 

I think that's how you should do the math. It's about how fast you die, not how long the armor can last.

 

 Another important thing that players usually fail to consider is the feedback loop and pacing. I imagine this change would make everything slower due to more cost in resources in healings, less time available for other activities, more ghost time, more prep time overall, and a steeper learning curve. Those are what I can think of now speaking of pacing. That will also slowdown the completion of feedback loop for bigger player-self-created goals. I think DST balance and pacing early game is at a sweet spot. I don't see any benefit of risking the change.

People are welcomed to change my mind.

[Cheggf]

On 11/16/2023 at 11:19 AM, MostMerryTomcat said:

Is like you never play pubs, op.

If anyone never plays pubs it's you. The vast majority of deaths are caused by hunger, temperature, sanity, darkness, absentmindedness, a contraction of the AFK disease, or not wearing armor at all. If someone is dying while wearing armor they're probably AFK or just mindlessly holding F without thinking or healing, both of which being situations that wouldn't change with a reduction. 

On 11/16/2023 at 11:19 AM, MostMerryTomcat said:

What's most common strat for newbies/noobs/casuals/"veteran noobs" after learning how to survive some days, that armor exists and gives considerable protection as opposed to.. running butt-naked in the deep dark forests of doom and despair?

TANKING, my brother into the Spaghetti Sky Monster!

And the hard part about tanking is getting the armor. I don't believe for a second there's a single person out there who can acquire the correct amount of armor and the correct amount of healing but can't get slightly more healing. People always overstock on healing anyways, they never do math to figure out how much to bring and just make a ton of food. 

[arubaro]

6 minutes ago, Cheggf said:

If anyone never plays pubs it's you. The vast majority of deaths are caused by hunger, temperature, sanity, darkness, absentmindedness, a contraction of the AFK disease, or not wearing armor at all. If someone is dying while wearing armor they're probably AFK or just mindlessly holding F without thinking or healing, both of which being situations that wouldn't change with a reduction. 

And the hard part about tanking is getting the armor. I don't believe for a second there's a single person out there who can acquire the correct amount of armor and the correct amount of healing but can't get slightly more healing. People always overstock on healing anyways, they never do math to figure out how much to bring and just make a ton of food. 

noobs have problems getting healing, changing this will only make things worst for them and i know this because i played with tons of new players. Just because casuals goes afk doesnt mean that this change wont make thing worst and honestly is a pointless discussion because planar has come to stay, would be more productive to think how to improve rather than arguing about a bad change that wont happend

[HellHeater]

Why does this thread still exist?

[Popian]

41 minutes ago, HellHeater said:

Why does this thread still exist?

Because you bumped it.

It’s also not too bad of an idea, but would be more ideal to have been done before the game was released.

[Yuuko]

18 hours ago, arubaro said:

noobs have problems getting healing, changing this will only make things worst for them and i know this because i played with tons of new players. Just because casuals goes afk doesnt mean that this change wont make thing worst and honestly is a pointless discussion because planar has come to stay, would be more productive to think how to improve rather than arguing about a bad change that wont happend

sry is it hard to kill a butterfly, learn to eat blue mushrooms, or use a crock pot?  They must learn these at some point b/c armor only lasts so long.

19 hours ago, goatt said:

In the early game, what matters is "how many hits can I take" rather than "how much effective HP do I have".

Take terror beaks (50 damage) as an example, 80% armor ->70% means each hit has increased damage after armor reduction from 10 damage -> 15 damage. For default 150 player HP, players can survive only 10 hits by terror beaks rather than 15 hits. That's 50% more difficult to fight without considering other factors while the effective HP remains relatively unchanged.

50% more difficulty is quite significant in my opinion. I don't think it's fun for players to be kept in ghost mode more often or for longer. It's not fun for me as a skilled player either.

How are "effective health" and "how many hits can I take" different?

I mean if you have 1 football helmet at either 80 or 70% reduction you get 465 effective health.  If you're attacked by a terror beak you'll die on the 10th hit either way because your armor will break after its 315 hits.  With 1 armor the answers to these questions are the same.

IF a player can stack a second helmet, they could also have stacked some healing instead.  Killing butterflies, picking blue mushrooms, or cooking any number of crock pot foods can help them heal.  Its pretty obvious a first line of defense is a piece of armor, with 70 or 80% it is still the greater advantage BUT you cannot tank forever.  All this change does is put the need for healing ahead of a second helmet.

And really if they're tanking so much that they need 2 80% football helmets and haven't healed... they aren't lasting much longer anyway lol

[Antynomity]

6 hours ago, HellHeater said:

Why does this thread still exist?

because that's what the forums are for, discussing ideas, additions and everything else about klei games

[arubaro]

4 hours ago, Shosuko said:

sry is it hard to kill a butterfly, learn to eat blue mushrooms, or use a crock pot?  They must learn these at some point b/c armor only lasts so long

noobs using blue mushrooms hahahahaha 

cant believe you said that

[00petar00]

On 11/17/2023 at 5:44 AM, Shosuko said:

That is only reflecting initial perception.  I think most people in this thread have no clue what the actual impact would be, me included.  I think people greatly overexaggerate what they perceive as bad with no real basis.  The poll has pretty much run its course and I see where people stand - so now its time to debunk what was given as evidence it was bad.

I've seen many games go to trash after they decide to add NG+ type features, games that I really loved to play but turned quite sour as the devs ramped up "difficulty" in horrible ways like power creeping all old gear, then playing catch up with mob stats.  It leads to a cycle where rather than fixing problems they just do another round of power scaling.  Sucks b/c it seems like Klei is already on a path of ignoring a lot of pre-rift content in favor of only balancing around planar forward, but even then they've pumped the numbers considerably since first launch AND we have a whole round of character trees yet to release...  imo this patch cycle is already power creeping out of control.

This might be just me but I don't understand the difference if armor is nerfed or planar system exists, it would just make the game harder from the get go if planar is removed and your suggested changes are accepted.

Power scaling and power creep will exist in any game like this if it gets updated for long enough. DST was a very unlikely exception until we got planar introduced and I don't even consider this as all that bad as it is fine in most of the other games I play.

The question is why would the playerbase want to see armor nerfed just to avoid power creep in the late game? While I agree that there isn't much of a choice and most players that survive long enough will enable rifts that doesn't mean that I want armor to be nerfed from day 1 so that planar system is removed.

It massively depends on what future updates hold, I don't think that rifts will continue receiving updates until it does start to matter much more compared to how it is currently, my thoughts are that klei will move on to the next content arcs whether it be caves, ocean or anything else. Currently planar system is quite insignificant because there are only so many enemies that are aligned shadow or lunar side.

[Yuuko]

2 hours ago, arubaro said:

noobs using blue mushrooms hahahahaha 

cant believe you said that

Eh, it was one of the first ways I learned to reliably heal.  Butterflies and how to chase them, and which mushrooms do what to sanity and health.  I'd often get blue and green, cook the green, and eat between the two to balance my health and sanity.  The caves are actually pretty noob friendly for setting up a base and getting more familiar with the world b/c you have ez lightbulbs and other light sources, and a good supply of mushrooms.  Foods were also important to learn early game.  Crock pot dishes for better hunger, or restoring health and sanity like fish sticks, trail mix, etc and of course drying racks - funny b/c I don't use much of any of these now but they were all quite important to me as I learned the game.

That's my own noob experience thinking back to my beginnings when living through a year was still challenging and I wasn't rushing any bosses.  If they don't learn how to heal or handle sanity monsters they are going to die no matter how many football helmets they have lol.

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

This might be just me but I don't understand the difference if armor is nerfed or planar system exists, it would just make the game harder from the get go if planar is removed and your suggested changes are accepted.

I feel the primary point justifying planar damage to players, and it piercing armor is that player armored scaled too high.  People often said that DST gets too easy when you're somewhat good at it because things like tanking are very effective with 95% armor.  Wanda was released as a "glass cannon" but many point out that with her suitability towards 95% protection night armor makes her very tanky even at very low health.  Even putting Wanda aside, in order to not 1-shot a character a player is able to tank 20 hits at 95% without even stopping to heal.

Planar comes out to "fix" this by restoring player vulnerability.  It pierces non-planar armor absolutely shredding players, but even with planar armor you are significantly weaker then 95% marble suit against raw damage.  Its a re-balance to restore vulnerability but if the problem was armor getting too high then we need to just cut armor rates.  That 95% marble suit will always be there showing us what armor "should" be, forcing planar to catch up.  Once planar scales up and we're back in the stale tanking game state what do they do?  planar2?  The entire game is warped by this.

1 hour ago, 00petar00 said:

Currently planar system is quite insignificant because there are only so many enemies that are aligned shadow or lunar side.

Klei is never going to be able to put the planar arc down.

I've seen some people say this, that planar is just some small percentage of content, but planar doesn't stop once its started.  It may only be a few mobs, but these few mobs are constantly in our faces.  I fight BS plants multiple times per session of play, more then hound waves or anything else.  BS materials are stacking up quicker then hounds teeth, and now glass shards rain from the sky adding to the litter of seeds and rot...  We just finished a round of character re-works spanning multiple years yet Klei just started that all over again with planar centric skill trees.

Just what kind of content can be added with all of this going on that isn't directly a part of it?  Anything without planar is going to be anti-climactic, labeled as newb / casual content b/c its too easy with 95% armor still around for it...  with significantly stronger planar weapons on top of that lol.

[grm9]

10 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

Just what kind of content can be added with all of this going on that isn't directly a part of it?  Anything without planar is going to be anti-climactic, labeled as newb / casual content b/c its too easy with 95% armor still around for it...  not that we wouldn't be using planar weapons against it anyway b/c they are just stronger too lol

they might start adding knockback to more bosses like nightmare werepig so tanking is still bad even if it doesn't deal planar damage, also, making tanking unviable is probably a bad idea until dodging becomes optimal and more fun for all fights, bq without minions and minimal gear FW, for example, require tanking because otherwise the fight will be twice as long and, in case of bq, not fun at all and idk if you can consistently dodge and deal damage to tier 3 shadow bishop and shadow knight without teleportation/glitches and shadow rook requires speedboosts that are either character-specific or RNG if you're doing shadow pieces on day 21 (RNG for getting the lazy explorer from AG and RNG for getting a tusk from the first 1 or 4 walruses) or seem to be a glitch in case of the wardrobe dodge 

[Arcwell]

13 minutes ago, Shosuko said:

I feel the primary point justifying planar damage to players, and it piercing armor is that player armored scaled too high.  People often said that DST gets too easy when you're somewhat good at it because things like tanking are very effective with 95% armor.  Wanda was released as a "glass cannon" but many point out that with her suitability towards 95% protection night armor makes her very tanky even at very low health.  Even putting Wanda aside, in order to not 1-shot a character a player is able to tank 20 hits at 95% without even stopping to heal.

Planar comes out to "fix" this by restoring player vulnerability.  It pierces non-planar armor absolutely shredding players, but even with planar armor you are significantly weaker then 95% marble suit against raw damage.  Its a re-balance to restore vulnerability but if the problem was armor getting too high then we need to just cut armor rates.  That 95% marble suit will always be there showing us what armor "should" be, forcing planar to catch up.  Once planar scales up and we're back in the stale tanking game state what do they do?  planar2?  The entire game is warped by this.

I do not think the "armor scaling is too high" argument was ever a good one to begin with. Armors with higher damage absorptions are specifically made more expensive because it factors into the preparation time needed for fights, which is a huge deal in a game where (almost) everything breaks with enough use. It facilitates a decision for the player to choose if they want to spend more or less resources on preparation which will inevitably impact the fight. You want a hard fight but little to no prep time? Make a football helmet. You want an easy fight but more prep time? Make a marble suit. You want to literally have no fight at all but have astronomical prep time? Use gunpowder. They're all good choices, and none of them invalidate the rest because they have their own upsides and downsides. A 10% nerf kills the upside of more expensive armors making them in more cases than not simply a bad choice compared to the other options.

[Yuuko]

7 hours ago, grm9 said:

they might start adding knockback to more bosses like nightmare werepig so tanking is still bad even if it doesn't deal planar damage, also, making tanking unviable is probably a bad idea until dodging becomes optimal and more fun for all fights, bq without minions and minimal gear FW, for example, require tanking because otherwise the fight will be twice as long and, in case of bq, not fun at all and idk if you can consistently dodge and deal damage to tier 3 shadow bishop and shadow knight without teleportation/glitches and shadow rook requires speedboosts that are either character-specific or RNG if you're doing shadow pieces on day 21 (RNG for getting the lazy explorer from AG and RNG for getting a tusk from the first 1 or 4 walruses) or seem to be a glitch in case of the wardrobe dodge 

Marble suit counters knock back, so unless its knock back + planar like ZomBearger the tanking situation is still present.  The downsides of marble are pretty low b/c you can always unequip it if you need to move.

7 hours ago, Arcwell said:

I do not think the "armor scaling is too high" argument was ever a good one to begin with. Armors with higher damage absorptions are specifically made more expensive because it factors into the preparation time needed for fights, which is a huge deal in a game where (almost) everything breaks with enough use. It facilitates a decision for the player to choose if they want to spend more or less resources on preparation which will inevitably impact the fight. You want a hard fight but little to no prep time? Make a football helmet. You want an easy fight but more prep time? Make a marble suit. You want to literally have no fight at all but have astronomical prep time? Use gunpowder. They're all good choices, and none of them invalidate the rest because they have their own upsides and downsides. A 10% nerf kills the upside of more expensive armors making them in more cases than not simply a bad choice compared to the other options.

I'd like to believe this one.  It wasn't my idea that armors scaled up too high tbh, I'm all over the place defending it ahead of planar release - but with planar release people are using this as a justification for planar so I'm tackling the idea.  Mostly I believe you're correct that the cost and health of armors can be used to justify higher armor values, I much prefer a more open-ended DST where we have more options in how we deal with content.  This was actually my initial gripe against planar, that it reduces player agency and variance.  The zombosses are a good example of this b/c mostly you just have to play that boss's game like a series of quick time events - I don't want the zombosses to change b/c I think mostly they are pretty cool and there is room for some things to be that way, but the swarming of in-your-face bs plants is really getting old now... lol

[goatt]

15 hours ago, Shosuko said:

How are "effective health" and "how many hits can I take" different?

"Effective health" means the effective health of armor, I believe. "How many hits" means the effective health of the player.

With 80% reduction, player's effective health is 750, with 70% it's 500.

[Cheggf]

1 minute ago, goatt said:

"Effective health" means the effective health of armor, I believe. "How many hits" means the effective health of the player.

With 80% reduction, player's effective health is 750, with 70% it's 500.

No, effective health means the health you effectively have and is the same as "how many hits can I take". Armor durability is the health of the armor.

[Yuuko]

7 hours ago, goatt said:

"Effective health" means the effective health of armor, I believe. "How many hits" means the effective health of the player.

With 80% reduction, player's effective health is 750, with 70% it's 500.

Effective health is a way to normalize values to make them more comparable.  Its a common practice in MMO where you may have different ways to gain raw health or armor stats and can help you determine which is more valuable at what point.

In this community people commonly point out that high damage reduction armor in DST gives incredible effective health but I feel they often leave out that the armor its self has finite health.  I've seen the claim that a default 150 health character stacking 95% damage reduction has an absurd 3000 effective health !!O_O!! SUPER TANKY but then you see that night armor only has 525 hit points...  Your actual effective health with just 1 night armor is only 675, not 3000.

Similarly with 80% reduction you have an effective health of 750, much greater than the 500 you'd have if they were reduced to only 70%... BUT the football helmet only has 315 health, it breaks before you die either way so your effective health is just 465.

The difference - which I feel I've been pretty clear about - is that with 80% resist you can go through 2 armors back to back without healing where 70% means you need to learn healing sooner.  My counter to this is that if you tank through 2 football helmets and haven't learned how to heal you're probably dead anyway lol  I do not think taking a bit more damage when armored is seriously punishing for new players as they are far more likely to die from not wearing armor in the first place, not healing ever, night / fire / starving / cold, or situations were even 95% protection wouldn't save them like getting swarmed by a hound fort / frogs / etc.  More important than stacking armor OR healing is just not taking that damage in the first place...

 

[goatt]

11 hours ago, Shosuko said:

Similarly with 80% reduction you have an effective health of 750, much greater than the 500 you'd have if they were reduced to only 70%... BUT the football helmet only has 315 health, it breaks before you die either way so your effective health is just 465.

If you want to take this into account, we can also do some Maths.

When the 80% armor is still alive against 50 damage hits, 315 damage can take 8 of those 40 damage hits, during which players will take 80 damage. When the armor breaks, players will have 70 HP, and can take 1 more hit naked. So that's a total of 9 hits.

When the 70% armor is still alive against 50 damage hits, 315 damage can take 9 of those 35 damage hits, during which players will take 135 damage. When the armor breaks, players will have 15 HP, and can take no more hit naked. So that's a total of 9 hits.

 

On paper, they are the same. But the number 9 is not relevant. Most normal new DST players are terrified and they don't look at actual numbers or do the math. They walk up to something and don't know what will happen or what has happened. They react by fight-or-flight. It's the time afterward that they start to reflect and evaluate what happened. If they walk away from danger before the armor breaks, 80% armor leaves you way more health than 70% armor. The more you stay in danger, the more mess 70% armor will make. The danger would become a much bigger factor to end the game for the new players early because they are not good at restoring health.

 

For intermediate players, the effective health of armor doesn't matter, because no one would want to go in with under-preparation. It's safe to assume they always have enough armor. So what matters here is the effective health of players. When you said "football hemlet ... breaks", you were doing theoretical calculations based on 1-helmet-only restriction. But that's far from real-game scenarios, in which people have tons of armor intentionally.

 

The primary purpose of armor is always to prolong the life of a player, not the life of armor. Arguing that it's good for the armor is not a strong argument. The downside of making the game significantly hard for players is too much..

 

12 hours ago, Shosuko said:

My counter to this is that if you tank through 2 football helmets and haven't learned how to heal you're probably dead anyway lol

That's a good point if it's used to judge skill players.

But it won't sell the game, or make the game pleasant to play, especially for new players. You have to consider the pacing and the learning curve for those who are still testing the water. DST doesn't give clear instructions, and blaming players for learning too slowly or too inefficiently is not a good argument.

 

12 hours ago, Shosuko said:

I do not think taking a bit more damage when armored is seriously punishing for new players as

The punishing part includes the additional difficulty followed. With (much) lower health, new players will die much quicker to other threats. It's also harder to restore health, which means they will feel being held back by themselves or the game. Those will give players an "I'm stuck" feeling. If they do know how to heal up, they'll have to spend more time on healing themselves back up and less time to do other fun stuff of their choice.

Balance or pacing in this case specifically refers to how much time players can spend freely versus how much time they have to sacrifice to restore stats. Difficulty in this case means that downgrading the armor will push the players into a vicious cycle much quicker or more easily. Therefore, it will negatively impact both the pacing and difficulty.

Going back to the main topic of the intention behind planar damage, armor downgrading is contradictory to that in a major way.

19 hours ago, Cheggf said:

No, effective health means the health you effectively have and is the same as "how many hits can I take". Armor durability is the health of the armor.

I was just interpreting how those terms were used under this thread, and how I used it was different from that. I was trying to do a dictionary defining.

[Yuuko]

8 hours ago, goatt said:

On paper, they are the same. But the number 9 is not relevant. Most normal new DST players are terrified and they don't look at actual numbers or do the math. They walk up to something and don't know what will happen or what has happened. They react by fight-or-flight. It's the time afterward that they start to reflect and evaluate what happened. If they walk away from danger before the armor breaks, 80% armor leaves you way more health than 70% armor. The more you stay in danger, the more mess 70% armor will make. The danger would become a much bigger factor to end the game for the new players early because they are not good at restoring health.

 

At no point did I ever say this was not a nerf.  Of course you're left with less health after 1 armor breaks BUT after 1 armor breaking you need more armor and healing either way.  This only puts the need for healing ahead of the value of a second armor - but as for new player experience I strongly doubt many players are dying and quitting the game because they have 2 football helmets and die before the second one breaks...

MOST deaths by a wide margin are from people not wearing armor at all, not healing at all, or dying by non-damage means like starving, darkness, heat / cold.  A nerf to armor doesn't effect any of these, and once a player can stack armor and heal well as you said:

Quote

... the effective health of armor doesn't matter, because no one would want to go in with under-preparation.

This would mean you need to weave healing into fights more if you intend to tank but really I don't see how that is a bad thing.  It is not essential that tanking be more efficient then any other strat.

[Cheggf]

10 hours ago, goatt said:

For intermediate players, the effective health of armor doesn't matter, because no one would want to go in with under-preparation. It's safe to assume they always have enough armor. So what matters here is the effective health of players. When you said "football hemlet ... breaks", you were doing theoretical calculations based on 1-helmet-only restriction. But that's far from real-game scenarios, in which people have tons of armor intentionally.

You admit it isn't hard to properly prepare and nobody is going in unprepared but still pretend like everyone only knows how to get exactly the amount of healing they need right now and it's impossible for them to get slightly more.