Discussing Damage, Armor, and Golden Tool rebalances

[Quady14]

Pretty much exactly as you said rezecib, the damage reduction is fine, but nerfing armor and golden weapons, at least to that extent and especially with the severe lack of minerals seems a little too much.

 

The log armor allows you to take a few hits that you may be unable to avoid come larger packs of enemies, such as Day 100+ hound attacks. In situations such as that, enemies start pushing each other forward so that even though you could usually kite a single enemy, it gets pushed as it attacks and manages to hit you even while you attempt to kite it. Warrior Spiders can also be very tricky to evade with their quick jumping attack. Log armor is nice for those situations where you mistime or are just in a bad combat situation. It doesn't prevent you from dying if you rush headlong into a pack of enemies though, and this is established amongst most players because of hitstun and the fact that Don't Starve is not made for tanking intense battles like that, you have to approach it more mentally and use traps or other entities in the world to ward off or trick your attackers.

 

Unless log armor allows you to ignore hitstun or something to that effect I'd rather not see its damage absorption nerfed. Ignoring hitstun would at least let us power through attackers as a team more productively, and give an added pro to outweigh to con of the less damage absorbed, but this would be changing a lot of things inherent to the game's combat and I don't know if the DST team wants to fiddle that much with a major aspect of the game. Could be neat, but it's just a passing suggestion, I haven't thought it through thoroughly. Otherwise I'd rather just see log armor brought back to its original state.

 

As for golden tools, I absolutely don't want to see their durability dropped so low. Even if Caves are added and gold becomes renewable, unless the Caves are more easily accessible than we're currently estimating (having to go as a full party or not at all due to the world transition) it's not really consistent enough to support a full group of people playing on a server for extended periods of time (And I guess I'm talking really extended periods of time, but with Widley's World going upwards of 200+ days, I can absolutely see gold becoming scarce for experienced players).

 

This is maybe getting too much into the topic of limited minerals however. In essence I just don't like this nerf because I like being able to have a tool last on-hand for extended periods of time without needing to replace it every couple trees/rocks/shovel-able things. It's more a matter of convenience than necessity, I wouldn't despise the golden tools being nerfed, but I wouldn't be too happy either, unless their action speed were increased. Again I'm offering new good things to outweigh the cons of the changes, maybe we're missing the intention. Still, I'd like something in return if I'm gonna have to build a new golden tool twice as often as before.

[Isosurface]

local multiplayer_armor_modifier = 2TUNING.ARMORWOOD_ABSORPTION = 1-((1-0.8)*multiplayer_armor_modifier)

Grass suit becomes a cosmetic item?

(armour absorption)^2 is better.

 

As for weapons, I don't think nerfing the damage or the durability is the way to fix things. They should reduce the swing rate instead, e.g. from 1.5/sec to 1/sec, or add stamina cost (hunger point).

[rezecib]

@Isosurface Grass suits would still absorb 20%, but that's still a great point. I never used grass suits anyway, but I shouldn't ruin them for everyone else

 

But in general I also agree with you, I like the scaling of absorption^2 better. Makes log suits a tiny bit better, keeps the better armors good, and doesn't totally destroy grass suits.

[Demoncrusher]

If the issue is scaling with multiple players, would it be possible to introduce a Diablo II style system where difficulty increases as the number of players in a single world increases? (Diablo's minions grow stronger!)

 

That would allow the opportunity for true scaling, rather than a static decrease to various combat related statistics.  This would cater to different size groups, from solo to... whatever the maximum player amount will be.

 

Just a thought.

[imsomony]

If the issue is scaling with multiple players, would it be possible to introduce a Diablo II style system where difficulty increases as the number of players in a single world increases? (Diablo's minions grow stronger!)

 

That would allow the opportunity for true scaling, rather than a static decrease to various combat related statistics.  This would cater to different size groups, from solo to... whatever the maximum player amount will be.

 

Just a thought.

 

I was thinking something like that too, in terms of the damage reduction, but @rezecib brought up a good point that made me rethink it (edited-out non-essentials from the quote). Any mathematical scaling based on the number of players does seem like it would ramp up/down nicely, but it would definitely add struggle with the reward of learning to kite successfully.

 

[...] kiting is already the optimal form of combat. It would affect groups hitting things more than single players hitting things, but I think it has some other side effects that would be nice to avoid, like making it more difficult to predict how many hits it would take to kill something [...] One of the things I thought was really rewarding about combat in single-player was that you could learn exactly how many hits it took to kill something and strategize around that [...]

[Isosurface]

To factor in the number of players:

    difficulty = (number_of_players - 1) / 3 + 1;

    absorption_DST = absorption_DS ^ difficulty;

 

If there is only one player, the absorption value is the same as DS (difficulty=1). If there are 4, difficulty=2. If 10, difficulty=4. As the number approaches infinity, all armour absorptions go to 0.

[Toros]

I think recieb's time based solution is the most elegant and appropiate when it comes to single-player vs multiplayer balancing.

I don't believe that scaling based on the number of players has a good gameplay justification.

Yes, diablo II had scaling based on players, but armor doing the same is different.

1) Armor scaling affects pvp and pve

2) Players are not all fighting the same enemies the way they are in diablo.

Nerfing players ganging up on a single target is all that is needed.

Rebalancing armor/weapon damage is an entirely different task with different goals.

The first is to prevent multiplayer from becoming too easy. The second is to provide a more diverse set of useful/useless gear.

For example, grass suit needs a niche.

Water resistance would make sense, but that only matters in RoG.

My first instinct would be some sort of stealth or reduction in aggro radius.

Or, maybe rework it entirely into a magic item, so the grass suit is combined with nightmare fuel to make clothing that reduces hunger loss during the day.

[Richie84]

Just read through this topic. Did a search on where people were talking about the damage reduction because I wanted to add my complaint and my two cents in as well. Here goes:

 

From what I'm reading on the forums from various people and people on here, it seems the very experienced players need some sort of difficulty because there are multiple people. I'm all for that. However, here are a few of my complaints.

 

 

My complaints

One of the issues I find with having these nerfs is the fact that when we go to fight stuff with materials. I'm all for forcing cooperation and fighting together, I like the idea they are forcing that on people because for me that makes the game more fun, however my qualm with that is when you have to split up to get materials. If you have one person fighting spiders while we are split up searching for materials, it makes taking on those spiders by yourself more difficult. I'm just not sure I could take on a whole nest by myself with the damage reduction, but if I were to take the whole group to the nest for a "spider run," then we'd have to take the materials I would normally be gathering all for myself and split it among the group. Depending on the amount of players, you would have to take on that many spider nests with the group just to get enough for the group.

 

My second complaint is boomerangs. Granted this is a minor issue, but the damage reduction makes it where I can't hunt rabbits or birds with a boomerang. @rezecib is there a simple fix in the code where you could just exclude boomerang's in the damage reduction for the purposes of rabbit and bird hunting?

 

My solutions

Like I said earlier, I fully agree there needs to be something in place to make it more challenging for the more experienced players. However, for us less experienced players, my suggestion would be some sort of toggle in the game options whether to turn damage reduction on or off. That way those who don't want such a difficulty, until they get more experienced, can enjoy the game their way.

 

My second alternative to damage reduction would be multiplayer specific monsters added to the game. Instead of nerfing everybody, just make multiplayer specific monsters you can choose to go fight or not. They would have more health and maybe even a smart AI if that's what you desire. Make it drop a lot of loot to make it worthy of a multiplayer fight or even other items as rewards. This way we can do our normal farming of spiders, tall birds, pigs, etc. without it getting tedious from having to hit it so many times and so things won't get boring either.

 

Those are my complaints and suggestions. What do you think? For those who have played the beta, what has your experience been and what do you think concerning this topic? Thanks for your reply.

[rezecib]

@rezecib is there a simple fix in the code where you could just exclude boomerang's in the damage reduction for the purposes of rabbit and bird hunting?

I think the better way to do this is to reduce the health of things that are supposed to be 1-shottable with reasonable (e.g. non-fist-damage) weapons. I made a suggestion for eyeplants, birds, and rabbits a while back.

 

My second alternative to damage reduction would be multiplayer specific monsters added to the game. Instead of nerfing everybody, just make multiplayer specific monsters you can choose to go fight or not. They would have more health and maybe even a smart AI if that's what you desire. Make it drop a lot of loot to make it worthy of a multiplayer fight or even other items as rewards. This way we can do our normal farming of spiders, tall birds, pigs, etc. without it getting tedious from having to hit it so many times and so things won't get boring either.

While it would definitely be cool to see smarter monsters or new monsters, I don't think that's going to happen, for a few reasons. One, Klei wants to avoid adding content that would be applicable to single-player unless they're also adding it to single player. Yes, these enemies may be targeted at multiplayer, but I'd bet if they drop anything useful that many would also want to see them in single-player and feel left out if they weren't. Second, it's difficult to write. AI is hard to write and computationally expensive, so (third) if it does get added it will slow down servers. So.... I would like to see it, but I don't expect to.

[ZnSstr]

I have just one suggestion

 

Range weapons should be click to ground not click to enemy. Clicking directly on enemy is kinda lame in multiplayer because engine of the game will calculate the trajectory. But clicking on ground and shooting in that direction is about player/enemy reflexes to hit/dodge.

[J192]

I have just one suggestion

 

Range weapons should be click to ground not click to enemy. Clicking directly on enemy is kinda lame in multiplayer because engine of the game will calculate the trajectory. But clicking on ground and shooting in that direction is about player/enemy reflexes to hit/dodge.

That would make ranged weapons obsolete because ranged weapons fire projectiles, not hitscan.

[lone wolf]

so um does anyone have the percentages that were changed?

[Tomer8009]

Instead of reducing effectiveness of weapons, armor, and tools in multiplayer, make it so that lonely players lose sanity 100% faster and gain sanity 50% slower, unless it's PvP, of course. e.g. If lonely Wilson picks up an evil flower then eats it, then lonely Wilson loses 20 sanity. If lonely Wilson eats a pumpkin cookie, then Wilson gains 8 sanity.

Co-operating with other players shouldn't bring penalties such as lower damage and stuff like that.

Heck, make players who leave their friends alone get instantly killed or whatever, just don't punish effective teamwork.

I actually don't own DST Beta.

and you thought my mechanic is stupid....

[J192]

and you thought my mechanic is stupid....

Great job not reading the whole thread. You can specifically see me disagreeing with what I said because the others convinced me it was a bad idea.

[Fyrjefe]

Great job not reading the whole thread. You can specifically see me disagreeing with what I said because the others convinced me it was a bad idea.

I haven't been here long, but I can tell you this much: don't feed the Tomer.

[lone wolf]

alright rezecib i made a steam guide based on the basic values of items as displayed here if you would like me to take it down just say so

[rezecib]

alright rezecib i made a steam guide based on the basic values of items as displayed here if you would like me to take it down just say so

 

I responded on the guide, but I think you misinterpreted some things.

[shigad]

unless it's PvP

 

wow, you just made a wonderfull way of cheating! making a server PvP and not fighting each other!

[rezecib]

Hmm, if this thread starts getting necro'd more it can be locked, since the current combat retuning has addressed all of these issues

[J192]

wow, you just made a wonderfull way of cheating! making a server PvP and not fighting each other!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_quoting_out_of_context

[shigad]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_quoting_out_of_context

because people will make a PvP server only to not suffer that penatly to sanity

[J192]

because people will make a PvP server only to not suffer that penatly to sanity

Ew, you drank milk in a baby bottle. Grow up and start drinking milk from glassware.

 

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Just because I thought it was a good idea in the past, doesn't mean I still think it is in the present. Opinions can change, you know.

[shigad]

Ew, you drank milk in a baby bottle. Grow up and start drinking milk from glassware.

 

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Just because I thought it was a good idea in the past, doesn't mean I still think it is in the present. Opinions can change, you know.

oops, i wouted you without reading the wholke thread, sorry.