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QoL Request: Clear up the "math" tooltips, either the wording or documentation
praxi5
Member Posts: 1,562 Arc User
It's very confusing the way things are worded in the game regarding +X and +X%.
Damage is a great example of this.
The Nukara Offense Trait gives +5% damage, but that +5% is way more than the +10% from the Sustained Radiant Field (Iconian Rep) console.
It has to do with "categories" of buffs. Players have determined that there's Cat 1-3 (4, maybe?) buffs, with Cat 1 being the lowest. Some things buff base damage, whereas some things boost the damage after skills and such have been applied.
It's nearly impossible to figure what type of buff something is without actually applying the buff (in most cases, spending the money to get the item/skill/trait) for new players (hell, even Open Beta veterans like myself).
Please clear up either the wording on this, add a descriptor of it's "Cat Level" to the tooltip, or provide some sort of documentation in game so we can figure out just what exactly something is.
Damage is a great example of this.
The Nukara Offense Trait gives +5% damage, but that +5% is way more than the +10% from the Sustained Radiant Field (Iconian Rep) console.
It has to do with "categories" of buffs. Players have determined that there's Cat 1-3 (4, maybe?) buffs, with Cat 1 being the lowest. Some things buff base damage, whereas some things boost the damage after skills and such have been applied.
It's nearly impossible to figure what type of buff something is without actually applying the buff (in most cases, spending the money to get the item/skill/trait) for new players (hell, even Open Beta veterans like myself).
Please clear up either the wording on this, add a descriptor of it's "Cat Level" to the tooltip, or provide some sort of documentation in game so we can figure out just what exactly something is.
Post edited by praxi5 on
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Before Delta Rising I'd gotten a little too comfortable with All Damage being Bonus damage, but with the Hazari Destroyers Partners in Arms thing being confirmed as working as intended as a Strength boost instead of a Bonus boost along with various things here and there...it got downright confusing again.
So the SRF console's only doing Strength (er, Cat1) and not Bonus (er, Cat2), eh?
Oh well...meh. But yeah, it would be nifty if the tooltips there could be straightened up some so it was easier to keep things straight.
1. Tooltips that are confusingly worded or contrary to standard mathematical English. Here are two examples.
(a) Slipstream cooldown reduction:
(b) Crew loss: I'm not going to bother quoting the whole thing. Read the following posts:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=22264241&postcount=25
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=22265051&postcount=28
Note that the crew loss tooltip is no longer around to confuse people; it's been mysteriously removed.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showpost.php?p=22265131&postcount=29
2. Using the same words for different things or different words for the same thing.
(a) Slipstream again:
(b) Damage: Not consistently distinguishing between damage strength and damage bonus.
(c) Turn rate: Not distinguishing between bonuses that apply to base turn rate and bonuses that apply to base turn rate minus 3.
(d) Damage resistance:
(i) Not consistently distinguishing between standard damage resistance rating and bonus damage resistance rating.
(ii) Not distinguishing between standard damage resistance debuffs and "injury-like" damage resistance debuffs.
(iii) Not explaining that damage resistance debuffs are not simply negative damage resistance. The negative and positive numbers are not added together.
(iv) Not distinguishing between debuffs that apply to everyone shooting at the target and debuffs that apply only to the person who put the debuff on the target.
See the following thread for reference:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1128181
3. The formulas are too complicated for the average user to understand. Even if you fix 1 and 2 above, the average user probably still won't understand how much an item or power benefits his or her build. There probably isn't an easy solution to this, but I can think several things that might help.
(a) Fix 1 and 2 above so that mathematically-oriented users can understand and explaining it to other people.
(b) Release an "engineering manual" with the formulas. Again, the goal is to help mathematically-oriented users understand so that they can explain it to others.
(c) Create a simulator where a user can generate any item and reset his or her skills and specializations for free. The free items will disappear and the user's skills and specializations will reset once he or she exits the simulator. The goal is to allow people to test different builds before committing.
Personal pet peeve: Remove the line "Values do not reflect skills or other modifiers". It appears on almost every item. When I first started playing this game, I thought the line referred to the EC value of an item---you know, the number next to the word "Value". Later, I realized that it referred to the item's stats. Even later, I realized that the line was largely meaningless. What it really means is "Values reflect some skills and modifiers but not others, and we can't be bothered to tell you which is which." If you want to see just how silly that line is, search for a ground weapon on the Exchange and toggle "Aim" on and off.
STO' math is a lot like Star Trek's science. A mess of letters and numbers that by the power of the great space bird works.
The skill system is arcane - even if you know what powers the skills affect(at least now, all affected powers are listed), you have no idea ahow much of an effect, and what specifically.
But changing that would probably actually require a skill revamp. (Something Geko alluded to as a future objective.)
Why don't I just say "10 electricity" for both 10 volts and 10 amps? I'm sure people will be able to figure it out from context. I'm joking, but that's how some of the tooltips are in this game.
This is what I refer to as an "ad hoc" formula---a formula that's not based on any underlying principle, but which they just made up to make the numbers fit. The problem with ad hoc formulas is that they don't generalize very well to new items and abilities. I think the worst ad hoc formula is the one for damage resistance. Take a look at rbaker82's thread and you'll see what I mean:
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=1128181
If they do a skill revamp, they should try to get rid of the ad hoc formulas. Of course, that might unbalance many things in the game. I don't know how they could redo the damage resistance formula while maintaining the same balance. Ideally, all their formulas should be derivable from very simple rules. Think of it as establishing the fundamental laws of physics or the axioms of a mathematical system. Things can get complicated very quickly once you start combining different rules, so the rules you start with should be as simple as possible. If you start with complicated rules, then there's no hope of creating a comprehensible system. They should resist the temptation to create ad hoc formulas to make the numbers fit. More importantly, they should resist the temptation to violate their own laws to create "cool" new abilities. If you add too many exceptions to a system, then it becomes incomprehensible.
Their current categorization is not very consistent. I would have put all passive boosts to damage in one category and all active boosts in another category. Weapon power can stay in its own category. That's close to what they have now, but you can actually explain to someone what the categories represent.
Like maybe the Sustained Radiant Field boost is applied to your base dmg before buffs and the Nukara trait is applied after all other buffs.
I assumed the order/hierarchy of how the dmg bonuses are applied affected the total dmg you get.
That said, I'm still confused about how it's calculated, so I really have no idea.
Pretty sure anyone reading a manual explaining STO math would have to do so in a mirror while wearing smoked glasses to keep from going insane.
Douglas MacArthur - Quote on the dedication plaque of the U.S.S. Ranger NCC-97332-A Armitage class Fleet Heavy Strike Wing Escort.
Generally speaking, the buffs are a mix of additive and multiplicate. Several different categories are multiplied to others. If you have a buff of one category, it adds to all other buffs of that category, is than multiplied with the next category.
So a 15 % buff might be awesome, or might not, depending on how high the bonuses of that category already are.
1.15 * 1.15 is bigger than 1.3 * 1.0.
think for weapons specifically, the category with the biggest "number" of already existing buff is the damage bonus dependent on mark and rarity, since over 14 marks, a lot is adding up there. So another 10 % adding there is marginal in effect, while a category where the final value isn't that big yet, a 10 % might be very notable.
I remember that the distinction was generally made between Damage Strength and Damage Bonus as two categories, but it may be there are actually more. Virusdancer probably cna still link to some spot where it is analyzed or explained in more details.
If I remember correctly, weapon abilities such as BFaW, BO, CRF, CSV, THY, and TS were another category. Speaking of which, what does Cryptic call this category internally? I remember that adjudicatorhawk had no idea what we were talking about when we called them weapon abilities. It would be nice to know Cryptic's internal name for these things; otherwise we'll keep making up our own names. I think "Category 1" and "Category 2" came from a thread where we were trying to figure out what to call the categories. For some reason, those two names stuck, even after we learned Cryptic's internal names.
So, here is the accumulated list on the STO reddit, kudos for all who contributed and Vel' (I presume) for editing it: http://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/wiki/math/damage_categories