Simplify the damage system
Wilson
Join Date: 2010-07-26 Member: 72867Members
Join Date: 2010-07-26 Member: 72867Members
I was going to post this as a reply in another topic but I feel that it's important enough to start a new discussion about.
I think the current damage system is overly complicated. I think it'd be better if armour just worked as additional health. Right now it is really confusing as a lower amount of armour can take more damage than health (this is really unintuitive).
If you have 100 health and 100 armour an attack that does 100 damage should take away all of your armour and leave you with 100 health. This is simple and easy to understand.
Certain attacks bypassing armour and doing direct health damage is also fine (i.e. lerk gas), but having attacks that do different amounts of damage to armour than they do health is just really weird. I understand that armour is supposed to be tough and protective but from a gameplay standpoint it just makes it too complicated. It would be better to just increase the amount of armour and keep it linear rather than making certain attacks do less damage to it.
Your health just disintegrates so fast compared to your armour, but you expect 100 hp and 100 armour to be able to take the same amount of damage. What's the point in having numbers displayed if the player can't relate them in any way.
I don't understand why there are lots of different damage types. Certain weapons being good against structures is fine, but I don't understand the need for puncture damage, light damage etc. It just makes it more complicated with not much gameplay difference. If it's supposed to do light damage then just make it do a low amount of damage full stop. No need for it to do less to armour than health.
I believe you could change the damage system as I am suggesting while not changing gameplay at all by simply playing with the numbers (e.g. it would take the same amount of shots from every weapon to kill as it does now) while making things much more intuitive and easier to understand.
Perhaps there is some great benefit to having this damage model but I can't see it.
I think the current damage system is overly complicated. I think it'd be better if armour just worked as additional health. Right now it is really confusing as a lower amount of armour can take more damage than health (this is really unintuitive).
If you have 100 health and 100 armour an attack that does 100 damage should take away all of your armour and leave you with 100 health. This is simple and easy to understand.
Certain attacks bypassing armour and doing direct health damage is also fine (i.e. lerk gas), but having attacks that do different amounts of damage to armour than they do health is just really weird. I understand that armour is supposed to be tough and protective but from a gameplay standpoint it just makes it too complicated. It would be better to just increase the amount of armour and keep it linear rather than making certain attacks do less damage to it.
Your health just disintegrates so fast compared to your armour, but you expect 100 hp and 100 armour to be able to take the same amount of damage. What's the point in having numbers displayed if the player can't relate them in any way.
I don't understand why there are lots of different damage types. Certain weapons being good against structures is fine, but I don't understand the need for puncture damage, light damage etc. It just makes it more complicated with not much gameplay difference. If it's supposed to do light damage then just make it do a low amount of damage full stop. No need for it to do less to armour than health.
I believe you could change the damage system as I am suggesting while not changing gameplay at all by simply playing with the numbers (e.g. it would take the same amount of shots from every weapon to kill as it does now) while making things much more intuitive and easier to understand.
Perhaps there is some great benefit to having this damage model but I can't see it.
Comments
But thats for later polishing I think.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->What's the point in having numbers displayed if the player can't relate them in any way.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you know the different damage types, you can relate the numbers. :P
It's really a good mechanic to define classes. For example; the fade, puncture damage makes him weak vs structures and good vs marines.
Also, armor counts 3 times as much as HP, as far as I remember.
Starcraft II has armor resilience as well, when i got Starcraft II for the first time, without ever playing a starcraft game before, it wasn't until later that i really learned of the different damage types such that marines would do less damage to a siege tank than to other marines, and that siege tanks blasts were especially good for un-armored units, and firebats flame throwers were better against biological units, but the fundamental concept was still communicated considerably clearly, that firebats were much better at roasting zerglings than toasting a siege tank. I'm trying to say that damage types don't make the game unnecessarily complicated, they add depth for the players who want to really look into what the really most effective strategies are, while casual players won't really see the difference between normal damage and light damage, or between puncture damage and normal damage.
If you have 2 fades attacking a resource tower, just because their damage type isn't ideal for the situation, the resource tower is still going down, and when your a lerk going against an armored marine, yes your spikes aren't ideal for that situation either, but you still stand a chance. Players who casually play aren't the type of people who are competitive and are looking for the best and most efficient strategies, especially new players, damage types don't make too much of an impact on the game to make it absolutely vital for the player to be familiar with all of them. Damage types exist for the people who want to fine tune their strategies, and use the most efficient tools for the battle, which having this additional depth for players to learn is key for competitive and long term play.
I think you can do quite a bit just with health and damage types. Adding armor that sort of worked like health seemed to add unnecessary complexity.
So basically, you might as well just increase the health of all of the units and get rid of the armour completely = What you just said right there.
I like the damage complexity because it adds more passive combat just because people who are skulks will learn to hack away at the buildings while the Fades and Lerks take care of the marines.
The armour should stay the same as it is now.
It just creates this weird situation where a player can take lots of damage with a little amount of armour but then their health drops a lot faster. Rather than this exponential increase in damage I think it would be much better to keep it linear. It would essentially work the same without the rapid change in damage that you could absorb.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->So basically, you might as well just increase the health of all of the units and get rid of the armour completely = What you just said right there.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes, sort of. Having the armour on a second meter allows for it to be upgraded easily and repaired by marines, but essentially it would just be an extension of your health.
In a pure RTS game having damage types like this is fine, but I don't think it works as well in a FPS.
I think a better way to do it would be to just make weapons do different amounts of damage to different lifeforms. So for example a sentry would do 10 damage per bullet to a skulk, but 1 damage per bullet to an onos. Regardless of the amount of health/armour they currently had, it just always does a consistent amount of damage. Instead of this change that happens when a unit runs out of armour and begins to take massive damage. Again, there is no visual way to know when a unit has ran out of armour or not; it's just a really unintuitive mechanic.
This way you could group units into light, normal and heavy classes. Weapons would do a certain amount of damage to these and it would be consistent across the board. E.g. The rifle would do 20 damage to light, 10 damage to normal and 5 damage to heavy. This way all you would need to know is what lifeforms are light, normal and heavy and it would be easy to understand. Damage would be linear and the player wouldn't need to worry about the enemies armour level. It would also keep with the visual impression that an onos is a well armoured tank while a skulk is weak with little armour.
Just look at the different Calibers.
If you got shot with a Gun and you wear a Kevlar Vest you will often break your Rips.
Several hits on a kevlar will destroy it.
Also a bigger gun does more DMG.
F.e. compare a Cal 50 rifle or a M3 blast to a 9mm when wearing a vest.
So if you are used to Guns (RL and ingame) you know they have different types of DMG.
But I can also understand your position but I prefer the NS2 way of DMG and health than TF2 style.
If anything, improve the importance of armor (maybe reduce health, increase armor to be on an equal level), and give specs to both teams so their damage can either be bio/armor centric. Lets make NS2 more of a strategy game rather than try and dumb it down.
The main problem with this system is that there is no way for players to know the enemies armour level. Yes, you can look at an Onos and it looks strong and armoured but it might have 100hp and no armour. Since there is no way to tell the enemies current armour level, you can't make the choice to use a different weapon which is effective against them in that situation. Unless there is a visual indicator to tell the players when the enemies armour has been depleted then it doesn't make any sense.
The other problem with the current system is the rapid decrease in damage that you can take once you have no armour. As soon as your armour runs out your health decreases much faster. This is unintuitive and leads to frustration for players as they thought they could have survived for longer than they did.
As I understand it, having different damage types is there to make certain weapons effective against specific units and less effective against others. You can still have this with health and armour being equal in their ability to absorb damage by making the weapons do less damage overall to that specific unit.
By grouping player classes into armour types you can remove this exponential increase in damage and keep the differences in weapon effectiveness.
E.g.
Skulks = Light Armoured
Lerk = Normal
Onos = Heavy
Weapons would do different amounts of damage based on the armour type of the unit they are shooting.
Rifle = 20 damage to light, 10 damage to normal and 5 damage to heavy.
They wouldn't do a certain amount of damage to armour and then a different amount to health. This would keep the current idea that certain weapons should be more effective against certain units and simplify it, making it easy to understand and keeping damage you can take linear.
You could even have upgrades which change the units armour type (e.g. skulks upgrade to normal armour type), this would be extra cool if the skulks skin changed to show players that skulks can now take more hits.
I think this is a much better way of doing it.
But, the system is already in place, and if anything rather than rewriting it, lets just figure out how to make it better.
The example you brought up is the same system but on a other way.
The only thing you have to know is that after 6 Pistolhits (min 120 max 156 heavy [1:1 vs armor] damage in 0,6s) all aliens have no more Armor and you can switch to the LMG/SG. And witch attacks are best vs structures or marines.
But a easy way to symplify it would be, that the Armor is attacked first and then the health and to show wounds/bleeding aliens and marines in alienvision shine in differen colors (100-90% red, 89-50% orange, 49-1% yellow).
The difference is that in CS you always have a set amount of health and armour and you can't heal. You also die a lot quicker than most of the classes in NS2 and the armour doesn't really work the same, it just softens the amount of damage you take and increases the amount of bullets it takes to kill a little bit. The way armour works in CS is fine for that game, but I don't think it works well in NS2.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->The example you brought up is the same system but on a other way.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That is exactly the point. It would get rid of the rapid decrease in damage you could take and make it easier to understand while keeping all of the other good points of the current system.
Here's a quick graph of the current system:
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/sV48j.jpg" border="0" class="linked-image" />
This shows a player taking the same amount of damage over time. Once you run out of armour your health drops a lot quicker from the same weapons. IMO, this shouldn't be the case and if this graph were a straight line it would be a lot more intuitive in-game.
IMO you either need to show when this point occurs in game (i.e. when the enemy runs out of armour their model needs to change or some other cue) or change the system so that it works with armour types rather than damage types like I have suggested. I really don't like the idea of giving a visual cue in game to the player except for in special circumstances. I think it's a lot simpler to just change it to armour types and keep the damage they take from weapons the same on both health and armour.
Maybe they are too far along to change this now but I feel like it's overly complicated and unintuitive for new players especially. IMO the system I have described is much better.
I like the damage system because you can use the pistol on things with high armour then after the armour is gone you take them out with your primary weapon (Best way of combating a fade when you have a rifle).
The damage system is here the stay.
<!--quoteo(post=1873889:date=Sep 9 2011, 04:06 PM:name=Wilson)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Wilson @ Sep 9 2011, 04:06 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1873889"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->...exponential increase in damage...<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I'd just like to point out that there is no exponential increase at all. An exponential increase would be if each shot more damage than the last, and the difference would be greater than the previous two shots. Ifd you look at the damage/time graph, there would just be a jump in damage, but the derivate would be zero at all times (assuming D2-D1 --> dD, i.e continous damage)
Not only that, but the health/time graphs you show would result in a decrease, and it's still not exponential. The health decreases faster, yes, but it's not exponential, simply a different linear derivate.
I don't get why armour needs to be 3x health or whatever it is. There is no reason for it and it just makes things more complicated. If you want armour to be able to take 3 times more damage then just give the players more. Instead of 5 armour for skulk give them 15. Keeping health and armour equal - simpler and more intuitive. If anyone can explain why they decided to use the current system, please tell me. The only reason I can think of is that people may expect armour to be stronger than health, but you can easily just give more armour to the player (e.g. if I have 100 health and 200 armour I know that my armour is stronger and can take more hits). The value can signal how strong the armour is in relation to health.
The current system also has this gameplay element where you can wear down the armour of your enemy and then they become weaker (as weapons can do more damage to health), but I really think there would need to be visual cues as to when the player has ran out of armour for this to make sense. I don't like this gameplay mechanic though. I think it will just become a nightmare to balance all the weapons as they are all doing different amounts of damage to health and armour.
For example, right now it is better to shoot aliens with your pistol first before switching to your rifle. To me this is unintuitive as you expect your primary weapon to be better and the secondary used for finishing off. A way to quickly fix this would be to change the rifle to deal heavy damage, but then it starts to seem pointless to have different damage types if the majority of weapons deal heavy damage.
At the moment certain weapons like the rifle are underpowered in certain situation (against fades and classes with lots of armour) while other weapons are overpowered (using pistol secondary against fades can completely wipe all their armour in 1 clip). I think if the current system remains then this situation will continue for a long time and it will be very difficult to balance.
I genuinely believe a better system is to create armour classes for each unit which have a different damage multiplier while keeping health and armour equal in hit points.
Weapons would deal a base amount of damage to normal armour types and that amount would be multiplied by a certain amount to determine the damage to other classes.
E.g.
Skulks = Light armour class
Gorge = Normal
Fade = Heavy
Rifle damage:
Normal = 10 dmg
Light damage multiplier = 1.2, therefore damage = 12
Heavy damage multiplier = 0.8, therefore damage = 8
Therefore if gorges had 100 health and 100 armour it would take 20 shots to kill them. If they were changed to light armour type it would take 17 and if they were changed to heavy it would take 25.
You can then adjust the damage multiplier for each weapon to make them effective against certain units and worse against others. There could also be a damage multiplier specifically for structures which would allow control over exactly how much damage each weapon would deal against buildings.
This keeps things simple and easy to grasp. Your weapon does X amount of damage and is weak against heavy units but strong against light. It does the same amount of damage to health and armour which keeps things consistent throughout fights, rather than damage increasing mid battle. All you need to know as a player is what classes are light, normal and heavy and that can easily be conveyed through the player models (e.g. Onos is big and strong = heavy armour).
What about puncture damage? :P
<!--quoteo(post=1874969:date=Sep 16 2011, 12:00 PM:name=Wilson)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Wilson @ Sep 16 2011, 12:00 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1874969"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->For example, right now it is better to shoot aliens with your pistol first before switching to your rifle. To me this is unintuitive as you expect your primary weapon to be better and the secondary used for finishing off. A way to quickly fix this would be to change the rifle to deal heavy damage, but then it starts to seem pointless to have different damage types if the majority of weapons deal heavy damage.
At the moment certain weapons like the rifle are underpowered in certain situation (against fades and classes with lots of armour) while other weapons are overpowered (using pistol secondary against fades can completely wipe all their armour in 1 clip). I think if the current system remains then this situation will continue for a long time and it will be very difficult to balance.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It seems intuitive to me, as the pistol is more precise than the rifle is.
Rifles should be underpowered versus units with lots of armor, they are free if you got an infantry portal. The rifles would be way OP dealing heavy dmg. The only thing a vanilla rifle should balance with is a vanilla skulk.
A good fade won't let you get a whole clip of secondary pistol into him, he should have killed you already when you fired like 3-4 shots. I like the primary more against fades, because of the fast firerate you can get. That is also more forgiving if you miss a single bullet.
I think balance is decent atm., I see the main problem in the alien(mostly) resource model. And overall resource flow.
Maybe make Harvesters/Extractors cost 15? And a Hive 75.
As far as marine weaponry go (except gl) they really should not be adjusted until framerates improve and people who can actually aim start to play the game.
Coming from MMO's where knowing what damage type was good against what monster is key. If you just did flat amount of damage and had a flat amount of health it would be boring. "Ohh ###### thats a fade, i should be using this weapon, or that weapon" You would just use the weapon that did the most DPS because the damage dealt would be flat across the board.
It promotes depth in how you move around the map, how you interface with the enemy. If it was changed it would be med spam spam spam spam.
There are some tweaks to the mechanic that could be done indeed, but going to a flat health system is NOT the answer.
We'll agree do disagree then :)
But why on earth is the armor worth like 3 more than the health? That just confuses all the new players and doesnt add anything to the gameplay compared to the situation that armor and health were worth the same.
But on the other hand. I think that balancing stuff like this is not the most important matter at this point of development.
But why on earth is the armor worth like 3 more than the health? That just confuses all the new players and doesnt add anything to the gameplay compared to the situation that armor and health were worth the same.
But on the other hand. I think that balancing stuff like this is not the most important matter at this point of development.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Coming from NS1 I have no problem with different hp value for both, it was 1armor is worth 2hp and I assume it is still the same, since both health and armor were drained simultaniously having 0 armor served as a warning point where engaging was extremely dangerously for most lifeforms.
Small thing hardly worth argueing for me, I think the biggest idea behind the armor system is just "because its supposed to be tougher".
Yeah, that's the only reason I could think of. I don't think it would be a huge deal if armour was just 2x health, although I think it just makes things unnecessarily complicated. Just double the armour value and it works the exact same while being simpler.
My biggest gripe is the fact that weapons do different amounts of damage to health and armour - heavy damage, piercing damage etc. and it's not just because armour is double health. It just makes things really confusing. There's no way to tell an enemies armour level so you can't really make a good weapon choice. You just need to assume they have armour and go with weapons that deal heavy damage first.
I really believe if the weapons dealt different amounts of damage to the units, but the damage to the health and armour was the same it, it would be a much better system. I also think it'd be a lot easier to balance as you could tweak individual weapon damage for specific units.
I havent tested but arent the damage types related to units not the armor value ie. skulk and lerk are light (regardless of currect armor) and the rest heavy while marines are light and exo heavy. Puncture does good damage to both heavy and light but not structure?
Above is assuming, because if it is the way you explained it, it would be very hard to find damage threshold you can endure safely if the order of damage you take would make difference (when engaging different weapons).
No. That's what my suggestion is. At the moment certain weapons do half damage against armour (sentries, hydras), some do extra against armour (shotgun, pistol) and some do extra against health (lerk spikes).
The units specifically aren't light or heavy, it's the damage type that certain weapons do.
Here is the blog post about it: <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2010/6/damage_types_in_ns2" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/news/2010...ge_types_in_ns2</a>
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Above is assuming, because if it is the way you explained it, it would be very hard to find damage threshold you can endure safely if the order of damage you take would make difference (when engaging different weapons).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yes, exactly. It's very unintuitive. If you shoot a fade with your pistol first and then the rifle, it would take less shots to kill than if you did it the other way around.
[EDIT] Just quickly tested it. If you shoot 5 secondary pistol shots into a fade with armour 3 it then takes 24 rifle bullets to kill it. If you shoot 24 rifle bullets first, it then takes 8 secondary pistol shots. So it took me 3 shots more just because I did it in a different order.