Damage bonus from stars

aiqa

I'd like if the damage bonus from stars was changed from a +15% damage strength on 5 stars, to 0% on 5 stars and -15% base damage on 0 stars.

theravenforce

Mhm, they've been an odd little thing for a while now.

Would be nice to have them be meaningful in some way, so they provide a good bonus right now but you feel it if you're careless.

Also it would make the stars from Cosmics more valuable than a "throwaway item".

/Signed

omnilord

Why? It's hard enough just to keep the star level up in a Cosmic fight at any given time. Excluding picture perfect runs, because those rarely happen in my experience.

So why punish players with that kind of an impediment? Especially those that haven't been to Cosmic fights, or even that are new to the game entirely.

"Hey welcome to the game! We're immediately punishing you for playing! " Yeah, that's a great message.

Also, I don't know about anyone else, but when I die in a Cosmic fight I don't waste time trying to refill my stars. I get back in there and contribute the best I can.

theravenforce

omnilord#8416 said:

Why? It's hard enough just to keep the star level up in a Cosmic fight at any given time. Excluding picture perfect runs, because those rarely happen in my experience.

So why punish players with that kind of an impediment? Especially those that haven't been to Cosmic fights, or even that are new to the game entirely.

"Hey welcome to the game! We're immediately punishing you for playing! " Yeah, that's a great message.

Also, I don't know about anyone else, but when I die in a Cosmic fight I don't waste time trying to refill my stars. I get back in there and contribute the best I can.

When you consider how easy it is to refill stars, it would be nice if they meant something whilst retaining that easy to refill bit.

I typically try to re-obtain as many stars as I can before going back into battle, so I would normally carry stacks with me.

sterga

No. You are taking a system that can give players a boost for doing well to a system that is nothing but a negative experience. That means getting an SNR death or a lag death also craps on players. Oh, and Blizzard also explained why this is a bad idea (33:40) several years ago.​​

aesica

Honestly, I'd rather see the star system just...go away forever. While the overall degree in which this happens is small, mechanics like this essentially say to the player, "oh, you're having trouble with this content? Let me make things even harder for you!"​​

aiqa

sterga said:

No. You are taking a system that can give players a boost for doing well to a system that is nothing but a negative experience. That means getting an SNR death or a lag death also craps on players. Oh, and Blizzard also explained why this is a bad idea (33:40) several years ago.​​

It's just less damage with less stars, more damage with more stars and with a bit more a significant effect then currently. The only reason I am proposing a penalty is that a 15% base damage buff with full stars would just inflate damage even more. And I don't think we need that.

If you really think a mouseover tooltip value is the difference between a boost for doing well and a negative experience, I would not oppose to just lying in the tooltip and make the -15% the new baseline. Then you can be even happier with the new +15% base damage.

aesica said:

Honestly, I'd rather see the star system just...go away forever. While the overall degree in which this happens is small, mechanics like this essentially say to the player, "oh, you're having trouble with this content? Let me make things even harder for you!"​​

Death penalties are not a bad thing as long as they are not overly harsh, or completely meaningless (like it's now). They are a means to discourage zerging, and in CO the only real combat upkeep cost since we don't have anything like gear repairs.

I do agree stars in the current form might as well not exist as far as the damage bonus is concerned. You'll be very hard pressed to make a build where you have sufficiently low damage bonus to have that 15% feels like anything significant.

rtma

I can understand you'd like to make it more 'Tactical?' I'd rather not be punished further cause you're squishy/make mistakes/Lagged and otherwise encourage perfectionism, we get enough of that in this business world, spreading more disparity, segregation/division is my concern when people turn the game into a math equation.

omnilord

If you really think a mouseover tooltip value is the difference between a boost for doing well and a negative experience, I would not oppose to just lying in the tooltip and make the -15% the new baseline. Then you can be even happier with the new +15% base damage.



Then what would be different from now? All they'd really be doing is basically nerfing ALL attack power.

aiqa

omnilord#8416 said:

Then what would be different from now? All they'd really be doing is basically nerfing ALL attack power.

The difference is generic damage bonus vs base damage bonus. A loss of -15% generic damage bonus you will hardly notice. A loss of 15% base damage is noticeable but not to the point of being overly punishing, and it's easy to get stars back up, which is exactly what a death penalty should be imo.

omnilord

People shouldn't be punished for dying. Yes, they should be rewarded for doing well and that's what the stars do right now. There's too many problems with the game, like lag, for there to be a punishment system.

Basically the punishment system will discourage players from playing if they're punished for dying because they're new, they don't know the content, they lag, or their build isn't up to snuff compared to some overachievers.

aiqa

There isn't a difference between punishment or reward in the stars mechanic, except the + or - sign. Like I said before, I wouldn't mind the tooltip lying if a - sign bothers you that much.

themightyzenith

sterga said:

No. You are taking a system that can give players a boost for doing well to a system that is nothing but a negative experience.​​

This is what I think too.

Let's not take a system that gives bonuses and change it so that it has the possibility of punishing players. As it is, the star system is something I don't have to bother about much (I do like to have max stars, but I'm not that bothered if I don't).

Get rid of it or keep it as is. Don't make it a negative experience in a fun game.

ealford1985

No.

Do you people just need more of a challenge?

Go fight with energy builders or just run without gear.

Deaths are important in this game, there are perks. I am building up to 3k now.

Nope nope nope. Just no.

sterga

aiqa wrote: »

It's just less damage with less stars, more damage with more stars and with a bit more a significant effect then currently. The only reason I am proposing a penalty is that a 15% base damage buff with full stars would just inflate damage even more. And I don't think we need that.

If you really think a mouseover tooltip value is the difference between a boost for doing well and a negative experience, I would not oppose to just lying in the tooltip and make the -15% the new baseline. Then you can be even happier with the new +15% base damage.

[...]

There isn't a difference between punishment or reward in the stars mechanic, except the + or - sign. Like I said before, I wouldn't mind the tooltip lying if a - sign bothers you that much.

... It sounds like you didn't even watch these few minutes of video from a professional in their field working at one of the leaders in the video game market.​​

roughbearmattach

A 15% bonus or penalty from full stars or empty stars makes a tiny difference in level 40 characters running Merc or higher gear.
It's not a 15% "real" bonus. It's added to other bonuses and is subject to diminishing returns.

Stars *do* make a difference when leveling, particularly at levels 6-20. Whatever change might be implemented will potentially have a greater impact on new players leveling a toon for the first time.

aesica

aiqa wrote: »

Death penalties are not a bad thing as long as they are not overly harsh, or completely meaningless (like it's now). They are a means to discourage zerging, and in CO the only real combat upkeep cost since we don't have anything like gear repairs.

Even if death had no numerically-adjusted penalty, it still carries the penalty of sending you away to an out-of-the-way respawn point, so it costs convenience. As for zerging, combat lockouts are a better way to discourage it, but when all your content is presented as open-world boss fights, zerging is pretty much unavoidable. Especially when there's dirty, poorly-implemented 1-shot mechanics involved. (Poorly or untelegraphed fatal attacks that are randomized and/or difficult to anticipate, for example)

aiqa wrote: »

There isn't a difference between punishment or reward in the stars mechanic, except the + or - sign. Like I said before, I wouldn't mind the tooltip lying if a - sign bothers you that much.

And that right there shows that there is indeed a very significant difference. People tend to respond a lot better toward a bonus than they do toward a penalty. Let's say you have two games, one uses a system similar to this game's star system, the other uses something similar to your newly proposed variant. In both games, the player's attack deals the same damage at a given star level. The only difference is that one shows the player's bonus level, while the other shows the player's penalty level. People will still respond more favorably toward the game with the system presented as a bonus rather than as a penalty.​​

jaazaniah1

Honestly, I don't really worry about stars. As an LTS I can top them up once a day for free and some of my characters have so many spare star fills on them that I likely won't ever use them all.

legendarylycan

aesica wrote: »

(Poorly or untelegraphed fatal attacks that are randomized and/or difficult to anticipate, for example)

*cough*rampage gravitar*cough​​

theravenforce

So a few people here have brought up some valid rebuttals for this idea, so I'm re-evaluating my stance, since even though I support something being done with Stars...I'd be somewhat hesitant to make it revolve around something that is already a negative experience i.e. death.


- Bad positioning (due to tanks moving the boss perhaps, or boss oddities or just flat out bad positioning) are already pretty punishing.

- Lag

- Visual FX blindness (sometimes in Cosmic Fights, attacks can vanish if too many effects are present, which can lead to death.)

The bit about lagging is something I hadn't thought about...and would be problematic for the 'system' to take into consideration, unless idle times were drastically shortened in certain areas of the map i.e. Kigatilik's area.

Just thinking then, if players did lag out and die there'd need to be something nearby to allow them to rejuvenate stars easily without having to run to Caprice's VIP lounge or burning through stars which only come from Cosmics or Z Store.

Any system that really messes with Hero Stars should ideally be restricted to Cosmic or Endgame open missions / instances, not a blanket change.

It would be nice if we had a new system "Level 40 End game damage system" which comes into effect in Cosmic scenarios, so players get a reasonable buff to damage output when in Cosmic situations/fights. Maybe something like that could work in conjunction with stars in Endgame open missions or instances.

I imagine Cosmics would have to be tweaked if the buff was too extreme...

aiqa

aesica said:

And that right there shows that there is indeed a very significant difference. People tend to respond a lot better toward a bonus than they do toward a penalty. Let's say you have two games, one uses a system similar to this game's star system, the other uses something similar to your newly proposed variant. In both games, the player's attack deals the same damage at a given star level. The only difference is that one shows the player's bonus level, while the other shows the player's penalty level. People will still respond more favorably toward the game with the system presented as a bonus rather than as a penalty.​​

The only reason I proposed a -15% base damage, is that damage in CO is already extremely high compared to our health. Having a +15% base damage is completely unneeded, but I would still like stars to be do something noticeable. I really don't care if it's +15% or -15% on a tooltip, so if it bothers you then I wouldn't mind the tooltip saying +15%. Trying to convince me one is better than the other is pointless, I don't care about the difference.

aesica

aiqa wrote: »

The only reason I proposed a -15% base damage, is that damage in CO is already extremely high compared to our health. Having a +15% base damage is completely unneeded

Oh don't misunderstand, I get (and actually agree with) the idea behind cutting out some of this game's damage bonus bloat. I'm just not convinced that using an already-lousy system is the best way to go about doing so. If you just got rid of the star system entirely, it'd accomplish the same goal without saying "here's your new penalty system. Enjoy!"

Death still becomes meaningful because when you're face down or running back, you're not doing damage. In content where you're locked out, you're not doing damage until the healer picks you up, or at all if you stupidly release, run back, and watch the rest of the fight from behind the forcefield.​​