This is a little fun discussion to see what's other players' opinion about what is the scales of numbers in terms of damage, HP, etc in Pantheon at max Level.
I am a huge DAoC fan. I played it several years and I think it did so many things right.
One thing I really like, is the damage numbers in the game, and how they released expansions without increasing max levels and keeping the power increase within manageable margins.
To give an idea of the scale of numbers, at max level, a melee DPS character (dual wielding) would hit a low armor class (mage) for around 300-500 damages per round (without critical strike. A crit would add a random increase between +10% up to +50% of the base damage).
If someone would use a slow 2handed weapon, you could hit for about 1000 damage WITH a critical strike (pretty much the max you could realistically hope for).
Hit points would be around 1800 hit points for a caster and 2400 hit for a melee.
I really enjoy those kind of numbers, instead of some other game going in the hundred of thousands, millions or even billions. To me big numbers are fun but when they reach a point, they lose all meaning it's too ridiculous.
The several hundreds up to a thousand is really nice I find. Especially when breaking into the one thousand is rare and special.
There is a bigger impact between rarely hitting for 1000 instead of the usual 700 instead of rarely hitting for 30,000,000 instead of the usual 15,000,000. Although the numerical difference is bigger in % in the second example.
So what's your scale and what would you like to see in a Pantheon's expansion if there are no level cap increase.
My 2cp:
- I really dislike inflation of numbers when a new expansion hits.
The most important part in order to prevent this, is keeping previous-expansion raid gear (or any type of high-end top-tier guild, could be mastercrafted as well) valid for at least the initial parts of the next expansion. Too many times have I seen end-game raid gear being made obsolete by the first few solo quest rewards in the next expansion. Say there is a level cap increase from 50 to 60. Well, a character with top-tier lvl 50 gear should be able to do the entry-level 60 stuff without too many issues. After a while, while progressing further into the lvl 60 content, gear can then slowly be upgraded. This counts even more so for expansions without level cap increases.
Too many times have I seen myself return to an MMO after a break, only to see casters having 10x my hitpoints as a tank, just because their gear is an expansion ahead of mine.
- It looks like Pantheon will take this into account, given that Joppa and others have stated multiple times they want to make stats matter, and given that the stats start out as 1 (one) on character creation. That should prevent single gear pieces giving +5,000 STR a few expansions later.
- Personally I don't care about "big numbers". My self-esteem and confidence don't rely on seeing massive damage numbers on screen. In fact, I prefer to turn off damage numbers in the UI settings unless they serve a purpose that's related to my role as tank (or healer).
Imagine how a newly starting player, with 100 hp, a few expansions in must feel when they hear raid mobs have 750 billion hitpoints... Sure, there should be a sense of progression and that also translates into stats, but at some point things start to get, as you rightfully say, ridiculous.
A discussion about the 'size' of the number is irrelevant because it will be relative in the end anyways. But if I were to argue I would go for a mixture. While I prefer smallest numbers possible, I imagine, the bigger the number the easier it is to balance.
As for scaling, I actually am against any type of beneficial ability that adds based on a percentage. I know Pantheon is heavily using percentage-based increases, and I think it’s a mistake, but there’s nothing I can do about it.
I think having percentage-based increases does nothing but add to the power mudflation and runaway scaling issues that happen with MMO’s later in life. I get it that 5% is not much at launch, but 5% is a lot later on when players have better of everything, and even moreso when the ability needs to scale to 10% then 15%, etc as it increases.
I think having abilities that add a flat number, or range, would make scaling and balancing, long term, much more manageable and healthy for the game. I just don’t see any advantage at all to percentage-based increases.
Now, when it comes to percentage based decreases, especially when there are level caps on the level they can affect a mob, I think that’s OK. Say a level 25 Shaman has a spell that reduces a mobs attack speed by 30%, with a cap of level 40. That’s totally fine because negative scaling with percentages always has a basement, where positive scaling increases do not have a ceiling. Thus, the compounding and excessive power creep.
I hope @Joppa has considered this.
bigdogchris said:A discussion about the 'size' of the number is irrelevant [...].
Well of course it is irrelevant, in the first sentence I mention it's for fun (like most post on the forums anyway because nobody knows much about the game) :D
stellarmind said:i find damage numbers pretty distracting. [...].
I agree. DAoC would only display damage in combat logs. Sometimes I was like damn he dropped fast what happened. Checking log, ok I go Berserker Rage, my weapon procs a resistance debuff, ... Ha ok I hit him for 1200 damage he got 2 shot, ...nice!
Logs sometimes give good information on what's happening and help understand/improve your gameplay.
ElysianAngel2347 said:- I really dislike inflation of numbers when a new expansion hits. [...].
Me too, DAoC did it fairly well by adding skills or better loots that wouldn't necessarily increase the maximum damage you would do but by giving more options, or making it easier to reach the stat cap without necessarily increasing it.
After a while they still had some powercreep but it was a magnitude of +10~15% extra HP or damage.
Just like inflation in a real world economy is actually very healthy, 'inflation' when it comes to PC/NPC power is also very good for the long term health of the game. If it wasn't important, then why not just have 1 level for the entire game with just 1 set of armor and weapons you get once and never change? Woul dyou really play a game, for years, where you get to a certain point, power wise, and never ever see any change after that?
What we don't want is unchecked power growth. EQ1 fell into the trap, almost right out of the gate with the release of Kunark, that set the precedence for PC/NPC growth for every expansion. VR has spoken at length since 2014 about 'horizonal progression' but it remains to be seen just how that is presented.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: VR needs to set an expectation for the lifespan of the game, be that 10 years, 12 years and determine where they want PC/NPC power to be at that point then backfill to the release such that growth is predicted, predictable and manageable. By knowing where you want PC/NPC power to be in X years you are in a better position to ensure that growth does not get away from you.
Dungeon Master: You hit the dragon. Roll a D50,000,000 +1,555,000 for damage.
I hate huge numbers and find them ridiculous. Limiting damage to 3, possibly 4 digits would be my strong preference. I also would prefer to not see HP increase very much at all since it really doesn't make any sense that a max level character is actually that much better at not dying from being stabbed. It's the gear and the skills that make someone tougher, not their actual body becoming 10,000 times more stab resistant.
There are ways that mudflation can be avoided. Stats can be level-scaled, so that attack rolls and damage done vs higher levels is scaled down and vs lower levels is scaled up (with a cap to prevent ridiculous scaling). This will prevent the need to have the base stats themselves scale up nearly as much (if at all).
Counterfleche said:Dungeon Master: You hit the dragon. Roll a D50,000,000 +1,555,000 for damage.
I hate huge numbers and find them ridiculous. Limiting damage to 3, possibly 4 digits would be my strong preference. I also would prefer to not see HP increase very much at all since it really doesn't make any sense that a max level character is actually that much better at not dying from being stabbed. It's the gear and the skills that make someone tougher, not their actual body becoming 10,000 times more stab resistant.
There are ways that mudflation can be avoided. Stats can be level-scaled, so that attack rolls and damage done vs higher levels is scaled down and vs lower levels is scaled up (with a cap to prevent ridiculous scaling). This will prevent the need to have the base stats themselves scale up nearly as much (if at all).
Lol I like the D50,000,000 concept. That would be a biiiiig die.
The comparison to Dungeons and Dragons is interesting and I have never done the maths and stats to work out how that works and some games seem to need such huge numbers.
In D&D though there were issues.
You mention the weirdity of a characters being "much better at not dying from being stabbed" at high level, hehe, yeah it was a 'thing' in D&D even, but then it was explained as hit points not just representing physical damage taking, but incorporating dodging and mitigating and luck and whatnot.
As a DM, I used to give characters a 'base' number of hit points that were 'physical' and, if, say, a character were unconscious and a goblin stuck a sword in them, the damage came straight off those 'physical' hit points and might kill even a high level character.
Still not realistic and a bit unweildy maybe, but we liked it.
I hope Pantheon can control the numbers so it doesn't get ridiculous, at least.
You see this issue in most mmos but most considerably WoW. In the Shadowlands expansion the combat number scaling has gotten way out of had they had to rollback to more of a managable number range. As a player, that is kind of immersion breaking and just doesn't have good fluidity with it.
There are many variables and directions to determine how this works.
Do abilities scale and level up with you? Do they have to be leveled up by how you use them? (See EQ). Or do they only increase via gear or items? Those are some of the questions to be considered.
In my own designs, I like that abilities can be scaled as you level but the efficiency of that is based on how you use them, like EQ. I have set up a specific number range per level. Here is an example.
Level 1 damage range = 25-75 damage. Every level it scales up by 65-125 damage depending on role. Just an example, not actual numbers. So if max level is 50, then without any additional modifiers abilities will hit between 3250-6250 damage.
My personal perference is that I don't like too small of numbers or to large of numbers. At max level I'm a big fan of dealing damage anywhere between 5-10k. I don't think damage should ever reach over 50k. I believe there are other creative ways to mitigate the mass scaling in expansions while leveling up.
I think if there is a hard cap in the future that Joppa wants to establish for max damage/healing output that would be a great idea.
disposalist said:The comparison to Dungeons and Dragons is interesting and I have never done the maths and stats to work out how that works and some games seem to need such huge numbers.
In D&D though there were issues.
You mention the weirdity of a characters being "much better at not dying from being stabbed" at high level, hehe, yeah it was a 'thing' in D&D even, but then it was explained as hit points not just representing physical damage taking, but incorporating dodging and mitigating and luck and whatnot.
Increasing level cap and is an easy time sink and a stat check for new dungeons to avoid players simply raiding the latest dungeons right as the expansion is released. (You can find some solutions to that with questlines you have to do in order to unlock dungeons one after the other etc.)
DAoC couldn't do a level increase because of the RvR (PvP but divided by faction Realm) focus of the game.
They couldn't simply make players with the expansion with +10 level being impossible to be beaten by anyone without the expansion. So they had to find solutions and maybe not all were perfect, they still had great ideas and even for a PvE focused game I'd rather see that approach rather than the easy: Get your +10 Level, all your gear you've spent month to acquire trivialised in 5 seconds etc.
Counterfleche said:
[...] Much of it is intentional game design done to sell expansions [...].
Well yeah, I don't think anyone implied it wasn't the Designer's intentions and that it happened by mistake.
And a complete lateral progression, I don't think would be enough, I still think you'd need to give some power increase but with a much smaller magnitude that what we have seen in most MMOs.
And yes you need to make your content appealing but you don't need to multiply someone's power by 5 every expansions to make it appealing. Most players really care about the new spells/Abilities and possibilities given to their class. The numbers don't really need to be modified all that much.
If every 2 years you get an expansion with a +10% power increase (5~10% in numbers only, the actual power actually increase more with the addition of new spells etc.) Then even in 10 years you haven't even doubled the number value (unlike some games multipling them by 3~5 every expansions).
How about all classes get an extra specialisation line that would be fun! Not everyone but I think most players would be eager to try it out. Giving more diversity to all classes.
I really hope we don't see hundreds/thousand(s) in damage, beyond spells. I really hope we see things much closer to EQ in this respect, where melee are doing maybe 1-40ish per hit for 1h at max and spells are in the hundreds maybe the highest level reaching around a 1k nuke.
As for HP, again I hope they keep things on the low end with geared tanks ending around 1.5k HP tops.
stellarmind said: [...] It can be extended or revamped at a later date. technology changes and evolves making older systems obsolete. [...]
Completely agree on that although I think it would mainly happend when the game exceed his original scope or life expectancy.
The WoW example reverting everything back to level 60 is a good example of that, and again I am not a WoW fan but WoW does things well in certain aspect.
For me, it really depends on how the rest of the game is balance. As long as numbers are balanced in relation to the rest of the game, I'm fine with whatever.
With that being said, personally, I do prefer smaller numbers. I think that smaller numbers are more meaningful to power progression, provide less screen clutter, and are more valuable to the overall player experience.
I'm a healer and I think that at max level I would like to see my normal direct heals healing for somewhere between 500-600 with the ability to do a large expensive heal that heals for about 1k (1.2k max). Iskar mentioned, in a post above that he hoped that tanks had no more than 1.5k HP at max level. I think that that number is fairly in alinement with what I'm imagining for healing capability.
As for DPS balancing, I would prefer numbers be balanced to the niche that each class is designed to fill. It's hard to give my exact opinion on this, but I think that at the max level a wizard shouldn't be able to nuke for any more than 1.2k with a single spell.
Ezrael said:Mudflation is a big problem and I hope there is a plan to control it through slower scaling and a greater use of horizontal progression.
Numbers like this in EQ2 become ridiculous (The image below shows lvl 95 gear vs lvl 100 gear!).
You are exactly right. Now add a +5% or +10% modifyer to that as I mentioned earlier and tell me that's healthy for the game and makes long-term balance and design better ... this demonstrates EXACTLY why we need specific number increases rather than percentages.
I dislike the insane inflation in stats and numbers we see in so many mmos and RPGs alike. I would be perfectly happy if a lvl 50 only did 4x the damage of a lvl 1, but I know I am in the minority for people feeling they need to become gods in the land pitying the lower levels. (It breaks the idea that a world could function, one murderhobo destroys the world because the devs set up a silly leveling system)
For patheon, we saw at lvl 20 they were doing damage in the 50s from what I remember. So I expect the inflation to continue to where max level has the damage in the 300+ range on attacks.
There are other ways to boost dps than through straight damage numbers. In EQ for example, melee classes would only hit once per combat round at low levels. But eventually, they would get the dual wield and double attack skills, allowing them to hit up to four times per round (even later, you got triple attack for yet another hit more per combat round). Then you had the support items and spells: at low level a melee class didn't have any haste item, but eventually you would have classes which could cast haste on you, and finally you might get a haste item.
The actual combat numbers however didn't rise that much. A lvl 50 warrior, dual wielding, would maybe hit 100ish for a single hit with a good weapon? But due to his dual wield and double attack skills, he could still do four times (or more) as much damage as a low level character wielding the same weapon.
I think that for at least some level range, Pantheon would be fine if it followed a similar way. The problems only start once you add levels, because at some point you cannot simply add more skills (triple attack, quad attack, ..?).
Sarim said:The actual combat numbers however didn't rise that much. A lvl 50 warrior, dual wielding, would maybe hit 100ish for a single hit with a good weapon? But due to his dual wield and double attack skills, he could still do four times (or more) as much damage as a low level character wielding the same weapon.
EQ, the table top inspired MMO actually playing like a tabletop game for years during its beloved years, until going all in on thousands of magical items per person and insanely high stats to be more like WoW. Totally unrelated to its fall I am sure.
I miss when a sword was a sword, be it lvl 1 or lvl 50.
Jobeson said:I miss when a sword was a sword, be it lvl 1 or lvl 50.
True, ... it would be interesting to reimagine looting closer to a PnP game.
I'm sure it'd have challenges but it's sounds interesting.
Sarim said:There are other ways to boost dps than through straight damage numbers. In EQ for example, melee classes would only hit once per combat round at low levels. But eventually, they would get the dual wield and double attack skills, allowing them to hit up to four times per round (even later, you got triple attack for yet another hit more per combat round). Then you had the support items and spells: at low level a melee class didn't have any haste item, but eventually you would have classes which could cast haste on you, and finally you might get a haste item.
The actual combat numbers however didn't rise that much. A lvl 50 warrior, dual wielding, would maybe hit 100ish for a single hit with a good weapon? But due to his dual wield and double attack skills, he could still do four times (or more) as much damage as a low level character wielding the same weapon.
This was by far the most enjoyable and best way I have seen it done in an MMO to date.
Don't forget EQ also had bonus damage added to melee starting at level 28 which granted 1 bonus damage every 3 levels to your main hand attack. So at level 50 you get 8 extra bonus damage. Then you would figure in STR bonus damage.
My dislike for massive numbers, especially from melee/auto attacks, is immense. EQ really did it best there, and you looked forward to getting/leveling things like dual wield/double attack/etc.
