I'm just a scaling question..

micky1p00

I know the scaling is a sore topic, that is with us for months.
But there is one thing I don't get and I've mentioned it back in m16, well not true, I don't get many things, but to this topic:

With all the stats capped at the percent level why they need to be scaled at all?

A player can't get over 50% mitigation, or 50% crit chance, or over 100% damage increase from CA, and so on for every stats except for 3.

So why to bother to scale them or touch them at all. If someone reached the cap in the content, any progress will not give them anything. If they didn't at worse they will reach said cap and nothing more.

There are 3 statistics that do need addressing, power, weapon damage, and HP.
Even stats like critical severity and outgoing healing are capped by the slots and possible items.

There are ways to scale it all proportionally and everything, there were multiple suggestions, but at the end, why bother and fight it, when it is capped o begin with?

arazith07

I've brought this up multiple times as well, and never really got a straight answer. My best guess is so that players won't try and abuse the system and move some of the stats around while scaled to achieve higher power and HP.

carloswartune

arazith07 said:

I've brought this up multiple times as well, and never really got a straight answer. My best guess is so that players won't try and abuse the system and move some of the stats around while scaled to achieve higher power and HP.

But this kind of manipulation is only possible in badly designed "proportional scaling" systems, like the one we currently have, where you'll be way stronger in scaled content if you run naked.

If they did something like this instead:
- 1) let the capped stats like Armor Pen, Def, and so on untouched because the % cap already limits them
- 2) define a "hard cap" for Power, HP, and Weapon Damage for each piece of content. For instance, "80k power is the max for Tiamat". Your power wouldn't be scaled, it would just be set to the cap if it's higher than the cap.

Then such manipulation would outright not work and the system would be much simpler to explain and understand.

arazith07

carloswartune#5709 said:

arazith07 said:

I've brought this up multiple times as well, and never really got a straight answer. My best guess is so that players won't try and abuse the system and move some of the stats around while scaled to achieve higher power and HP.

But this kind of manipulation is only possible in badly designed "proportional scaling" systems, like the one we currently have, where you'll be way stronger in scaled content if you run naked.

If they did something like this instead:
- 1) let the capped stats like Armor Pen, Def, and so on untouched because the % cap already limits them
- 2) define a "hard cap" for Power, HP, and Weapon Damage for each piece of content. For instance, "80k power is the max for Tiamat". Your power wouldn't be scaled, it would just be set to the cap if it's higher than the cap.

Then such manipulation would outright not work and the system would be much simpler to explain and understand.

They would have to do both points, but also they have to balance it with the player's ability to feel like they have progressed, which is a major part of why there was such a huge backlash to scaling in M16. I'm personally okay with hard caps in older content, however I suspect much of the community would be up in arms about it.

To prevent players from abusing the system, I would suggest that all players below a certain item level or have missing gear are set to minimum stats for each particular dungeon.

micky1p00

I'm one of those who will be in arms if there will be hard caps per zone, at least if the cap is low and always in effect. IMO it is a bad design, it breaks the positive side of power creep where people who struggle in content for various reasons can upgrade their gear if it's by buying or doing other content until the gear gap allows them to return to previous content and complete it. Maintaining their pace.

There are solutions to the issue, like a diminishing returns function (e.g X^(1/a) for a > 1)
(or my posts here)
Or a simple solution is a target number and some linear / bi-linear reduction or just value table. (if you are 200% of the target it translates into 50% addition and so on)

I can see the point that someone can move spare stats into HP and Power, I wonder how much of an issue it is compared to the current issues. Considering that even with doing so, it will be still diminished. Perhaps even a combination including some hard cap but one that allows what I've described above, people who need the gear gap to play comfortably able to obtain it.

I wonder if the whole investment for several mods now worth it over the risks of not touching the capped stats and just handle the power, weapon damage, and hp.

zimxero

micky1p00 said:

I'm one of those who will be in arms if there will be hard caps per zone, at least if the cap is low and always in effect. IMO it is a bad design, it breaks the positive side of power creep where people who struggle in content for various reasons can upgrade their gear if it's by buying or doing other content until the gear gap allows them to return to previous content and complete it. Maintaining their pace.

There are solutions to the issue, like a diminishing returns function (e.g X^(1/a) for a > 1)
(or my posts here)
Or a simple solution is a target number and some linear / bi-linear reduction or just value table. (if you are 200% of the target it translates into 50% addition and so on)

I can see the point that someone can move spare stats into HP and Power, I wonder how much of an issue it is compared to the current issues. Considering that even with doing so, it will be still diminished. Perhaps even a combination including some hard cap but one that allows what I've described above, people who need the gear gap to play comfortably able to obtain it.

I wonder if the whole investment for several mods now worth it over the risks of not touching the capped stats and just handle the power, weapon damage, and hp.

I agree with this assessment. Getting to a consistent formula and then fixing any outlier exploits should be a priority. Having stats and mechanics float around every mod might be exciting, but at the same time, it ruins the sense of progression that players have and erodes trust in the system which results in players not trying as hard or paying as much.

Right now, we have the stripping re-allocation occuring with players who want to 'scale' better. I am guessing this exploit was not forseen. Now, its a bunch more work to rework the new scaling system. I do think that we are in a better place now, than where we were... so hopefully its not necessary to start from scratch again.

I struggle with the way in which we scale by stat amounts in some cases, but we scale by IL level in other cases. This inconsistency gives the scaling very irrational behavior. Compare a 1200 IL item that gives +5,000 armor penetration with another 1200 IL item that gives +5% damage. The scaling between the two just doesn't make sense. If we went with stat-scaling only.. thats fine.. then players can judge and compare bonus values against that. I'm not a fan of downscaling the benefits gained from each piece of equipment. Overall scaling based on totals is easier to program, simpler for players to understand, and has more transparency for troubleshooting.