Hello adventurers,
I noted im the producers letter @Joppa mention in I believe it was thr patch notes section, something about dominished returns and what it was basically. So if memory serves, it is when you use a certain say spell like fire... after a few times it will start to do less damage if used consistantly on a target, as if it builds some sort of resistance to it.
If this is the case I really do not understand why that is a thing. It is counter intuitive to how things really work..if I get burned and do so again, not only do I not get resistant to it, I get a sensitivity to it. I feel this is just an overlord control measure to force people to use other abilities and limit options by forcing you to ride the roller coasters rails.
We already have skill checks, random dice rolls, AC, and resistances to deal with but this is lame. I do love, how there are creatures whom are not only resistant/immune to but, also get powered up by certain skills, spells or damage types.
If Ive read how this works wrongly then disregard but if Im right, please do away with such a mundane and player controlling measure..its just domt make sense. At all.
/rant off
Diminishing Returns (DR) is a balancing feature that a lot of games use in order to prevent a single mechanic from being over-used. DR is usually applied to mechanics that drastically change functions of a game, like Hard Crowd Control (CC) and it is sometimes an alternative to implimenting long cool downs. It typically would not be applied to something like a fire spell that simply does damage, but if a fire spell caused it's target to flail about in flames and be unable to do anything else for say 30 seconds (Hard CC), then if applied to the same target again a second time within a given period, the "Returns" on the skill's ability to maintain hard CC for 30 seconds would be "Diminished" and it would only last for say 20 seconds... and then 10 seconds, and then maybe 1 second if all done within say 90 seconds.
This forces players to synergize, strategize and be creative in how they work together so that they can keep a target controlled... or not. :)
With that siad - I would like to emphasize that everything will not have DR, and even some Hard CC will not have DR. I am 'assuming' that DR will be for classes that aren't primarily supposed to be "Support Role" classes - like how we saw in one stream where the rogue was able to permanently keep multiple NPCs out of combat. This is not what the rogue is intended to do, so they may implement DR on that ability so that a Rogue may be able to perform it indefinitely, but NPCs will only be affected by it X number of times within X seconds.
Add: When Blizzard introduced DR to WoW, it became a very interesting game of balancing and utilizing stuns, fears, charms and knowing which abilities incremented your target's DR timer before they became immune, and which abilities had no DR, but were instead on long cooldowns... so with a Warlock for instance, you could Seduce twice, death coil, then seduce again in between casting some spells, and by the time their DR hit immunity they were dead... good rogues could stun and gougue, then break combat and sap and start the DR timer over again. DR really made for some fun and inventful/creative gameplay.
I heard Joppa talking about this in the last stream and the way he described it I took it to mean all spells including direct damage fire spells. I do not recall any talk of non-spell attacks like punches etc.
I am inclined to wait until I can try them before I say it can’t work but I am sure not excited about the idea. I have never liked it in any game that has done it like Darch’s examples. I guess I just like my difficulty to be from the mob and its abilities not by mine diminishing.
If it only affecting casters that would be a bit unfair and with limited action sets it seems cruel as well. This is not to say it can not work or that in some cases I would not like it. This is more of a general rule I have not liked it in the past and I am apprehensive of it in Pantheon.
Some quick notes I like true CC like we had in EQ and I like trusting ones abilities to work.
IMO:
As long as it's not DR on loot, I don't care as much. DR on loot is a non-starter for me.
DR is also called duty cycle in other frameworks. It means, for example, that the player can never be CC'd more than $_value_ of time, as a percentage.
So, you can be mez'd for 6 seconds out of 10, but might be immune for a minute. Or for the rest of the encounter. It means that you limit the feeling of helplessness the player is forced to endure, which is a VERY negative experience.
Happily, it's a tuneable value, and it should be tuned in favor of the players. Overly punitive DR or duty cycle, in favor of mobs? That makes for angry customers. Don't do it.
Examples? Using specific spells or abilities rather than categories. This means things like, oh, you were mez'd for 6 seconds, so we can't use mez for another minute, but now we'll use Daze for another 6 seconds. Then blind for 6 seconds. Then stifled for 6 seconds, then charmed for 6 seconds, then stunned for 3 seconds, then made prone/knockdown for 3 seconds, then hypnotized, dazzled, bewitched, fascinated, scared, feared, terrified, confused, and now we're definitely back to mez. :)
Solution? For effects on players, use categories. For effects on mobs, track & use specific spells. So, a player can only be mentally, visually, or physically CC'd for 30% of any amount of time, enforced with immunity by category. Mez me for 3 seconds? I'm immune to all mental for 30. Daze me for 6 seconds, I'm immune to all mental CC for a minute. Knock me down for 3 seconds, I'm immune to all physical CC for 30 seconds, and so on.
Repeatedly and punitively making your paying customers helpless will not make them happy.
As far as class design goes, yes, this type of thing will create the emergent behavior of CC having vastly less value, so you'll have one design goal working directly against another. (encounter design requiring CC, but CC being ineffective on very long encounters). The emergent behavior will then be split pulls and/or singles will be more valuable than CC'ing, and DPS is more desired than CC, in general, for 'normal' content consumption in the combat loop.
It would be thematically INconsistent to apply this to negative status effects that aren't CC. It's not like mobs become dynamically immune to bleeding, or being on fire, or being chilled, poisoned, or diseased, within an encounter, just because they've been exposed to those status effects once or twice.
Same goes for movement rate adjustments like root or snare, and enforcing fleeing rules. Forcing all non-undead mobs to run at low health, but then at the same time punitively escalating DR to the point where you can't snare or root a mob.. that's not ideal, logically.
If you limit status exploitation in this fashion, that would be poor design followed by poor implementation.
And you know what else would be punitive? Forcing ALL players to consume 1, 2, 3 or 4 slots from their active 8 specifically and exclusively for clearing negative status effects, by category. Don't do it. It's a bad idea.
I think that DR for CC abilities is a good thing as it can prevent abusive combat loops. However, I am on the fence when it comes to DR affecting damage or damage type. I think that DR affecting damage could make sense in certain fights that have special mechanics, but for the most part, I don't think DR should affect damage in the general sense. I feel like classes should be fundamentally designed to the point where you can't always rely on one or two spells. There should be some sense of ability weaving present in all classes to the point where a rotation isn't one to three buttons.
I'm totally fine with DR beeing in place. Especially when watching streams where the Enchanter is constantly mezzing 2, 3, 4 mobs, That kind of OP now. Its ok for now, as we only have the Enchanter online and the Rogue ofc, but with more classes online, there def should be DR in a good and balanced spot.
Vigilante13 alrdy said that we have resist, partial resist etc. in place but i like the thinking of how DR can balance the game. 100% (minus resist) CC hitrate on 1. mob, 90% (minus resist) CC hitrate on 2. mob.... Thats still pretty good, but PPL need to set up tactics for multiple mobs, instead of relying on the Enchanter. If not so, the Enchanter could become a must-have-class in every setup. For now, even with the new AI in place, fights are really repetetive. Fight 1 mob, mezz others.
vigilantee13 said: Love all the feedback and have learned alot, but again I stick to original sentiment. We already have resists and random dice rolls, no need to over think the game and add stuff like this. Even for CC, resists and partial resists, randomly shortened lengths of spell effects, like a 5 second stun that occasionally only last 3 or 1, but a set of skills, spells or what not that diminish if used often just makes zero sense to me. Also if/when the formula is figured out, then it can and will be overcome by yet a other set of calculated moves. Lets just make a fun game and not over control or over think it. MY 2CP
Then you end up with having to make mobs/bosses entirely immune to certain things, which reduces the usefulness of many abilities to zero in the cases where players generally want to use them the most. Just having higher resist rates across the board for this kind of thing really hamstrings encounters as these (stuns/CC) are abilities that when you need them you need to know they will hit, if you can't rely on them then you often may as well either spam on CD or not use the resources/LAS slots on them at all.
Without DR you'd have groups of players chain stunning/knockdown/etc mobs to the point that they are effectively completely locked up and unable to do anything at all. Currently mobs aren't locked in any way either, so you could powerlevel people by chain stunning while a lower level beats down a mob.
Using the Monk reveal as an example, and consideing diminishing returns, I took that to mean: you have those 5 gates- chi. One must not disrupt the flow of chi- wait, thats feng shui (moves bureau)- anyways you have a low ability punch that you use to charge up those 5 slots in chi. Once its charged, then you can bust out the five deadly venoms ability: centipede which has alot of repeated small damage with a chance to stun. You could charge up the chi again to get centipede, but your punches wont do as much damage and the centipede move may not stun- but it will still do damage. However, if you decide to charge up the other chi with low level kick, to get scorpion- that does a ton of instant damage and a chance for small AE shiruken attack.
Knowing or observing diminishing returns, I would be inclined to use other abilities because once I switch, I know the punch chi will have more oomph because I used something else. Or, as Joppa pointed out, there may be abother ability on a cool down related to punch that depends on punches landing that is high damage but also contributes to charging up the chi, so even if I stick with punch which has less impact I can use the centipede snap that is on a timer which damage has not been diminished yet, to do more damage but is dependent on a previous punch, but still contributes to charging up the punch chi. even though the charged punch chi will do gradually less damage. And then I can switch to kicks, or baffle the mob completely by going slo-mo in tai-chi- ooh, there's your rare monk CC ability- locks both player and targeted NPC-monk charges up chi and executes tai-chi and both player and NPC go into slo-mo mode for x amount of seconds, neither can be hit, or healed but the battle rages slowly- monk can do one move but has ot wait for first to finish like time lapse- lol- other group players can proceed as normal in real time.
So initially it will sort of balance but I see it as then deciding what other abilities to choose from, or to even sacrifice a charged chi for something else. Maybe the ae shiruken bonus on the scorpion kick is not a good idea in that particular scenario.
I'm not an expert on this, but I feel that diminished returns, if implemented, should be done very cautiously, and only when absolutely necessary to keep an ability from becoming overpowered. If an ability like mez has no cooldown and an instant cast time, and the devs feel it becomes too easy to control a fight by using it, I can see some limited DR being helpful. But I wouldn't want to see it used just to "keep things interesting" in combat, because I feel it would likely have the opposite effect, pushing CC into a more pedantic, rotation-based style of gameplay (which is something I believe VR has said they want to avoid). Also, I hope to never, ever see damage spells and abilities have any sort of DR attached to them. That seems completely unnecessary, and again, painfully rotational.
TaskenDart said:I'm totally fine with DR beeing in place. Especially when watching streams where the Enchanter is constantly mezzing 2, 3, 4 mobs, That kind of OP now. Its ok for now, as we only have the Enchanter online and the Rogue ofc, but with more classes online, there def should be DR in a good and balanced spot.
I VERY much disagree with this. Being able to chain-mez is not OP, it is the enchanter's JOB!
Note the significant difference between a mez and stun: In the case of mez, the effect is broken immediately when the mob takes damage. For stun that is not the case! A stun might indeed require DR to not be OP (but only if it has a short cooldown).
I'd generally prefer if DR were used rarely, and optimally only when an ability is found to be too strong, not pro-actively. And even then, IMO rather the ability should be tuned better with a longer cooldown or shorter effect instead of applying DR.
Sarim said:Note the significant difference between a mez and stun: In the case of mez, the effect is broken immediately when the mob takes damage. For stun that is not the case! A stun might indeed require DR to not be OP (but only if it has a short cooldown).
I'd generally prefer if DR were used rarely, and optimally only when an ability is found to be too strong, not pro-actively. And even then, IMO rather the ability should be tuned better with a longer cooldown or shorter effect instead of applying DR.
These thoughts occurred to me too, but I was too lazy to type them out above. :P But I do agree with this. If it's possible to chain stun an enemy and burn it down while it can't react, something is wrong, but a spell like mez that is broken by any damage is a different beast entirely. And I would also think that longer cooldowns and cast times can go a long way toward making an ability less powerful before DR even needs to be considered. Again, maybe there is some facet of this I'm not aware of that makes DR more necessary than I realize, but this is how it looks to me from an outside perspective.
DR is a one size fits all band-aid to try and deal with effective gameplay trivializing content. Except it doesn't stop or counter power gaming as power gamers will just fold the new system into their arsenal. It does, however, always severely hamper player agency, a games mechanic integrity, and a games immersion.
Diminishing returns also incorrectly assumes that repetitive behavior is somehow bad or boring. That effeciency is overpowered. That succeeding is overpowered.
Doing something over and over again is not bad or boring. Effeciency is the goal. Succeeding is the point. I am so tired of the "hey that works exactly how its supposed to, time to nerf it!" attitude in game design.
I really don't mind questing and adventuring for years to gain knowledge and power and character growth. But nothing will disilusion me quicker than a bunch of nanny mechanics and constant buff nerf cycles to take that power away after I have worked so hard to acquire it.
Sarim said:I VERY much disagree with this. Being able to chain-mez is not OP, it is the enchanter's JOB!
Note the significant difference between a mez and stun: In the case of mez, the effect is broken immediately when the mob takes damage. For stun that is not the case! A stun might indeed require DR to not be OP (but only if it has a short cooldown).
I'd generally prefer if DR were used rarely, and optimally only when an ability is found to be too strong, not pro-actively. And even then, IMO rather the ability should be tuned better with a longer cooldown or shorter effect instead of applying DR.
Agree and disagree here :). Part of the Enchanters Job is crowdcontrol which includes mezz ofc. Chain-mezzing is fine for me. Beeing able to mezz 3-4 mobs at one time, without struggeling, is not ok for me. As seen on Cohh Stream where the grp wiped, except the enchanter, and kept mezzing 3/4 mobs constantly. Way to OP for my opinion.
I've played a lot of MMOs but my hardcore playtime belonged to Vanguard, where you had more or less only one CC class really. The Psi could only mezz 1 mob at time. Sure he had "clone" and "charm". Can't really remember if the Psi could mezz 2 mobs at time later in game after level increase to 55 or with the epic in place. Anyway, endgame he was able to mezz 2 mobs only.
As its planned to have the Rogue flexing effectively to CC in game, and hopefully the Bards coming online as well, Pantheon alrdy would have 3 effective CC-kind-of-classes. I actually would restrict the mezz to 1 mob and have upgrades available in mastery book to 2 mobs or have it with DR in place. My thoughts were more like that the first mob is always without any DR penalty, doesnt matter if chain cast or not. DR comes in place only with the 2,3 or 4th mob. You still have a good chance to mezz all 4 mobs, but with an chance to resist and the mobs going after the enchanter. You actually have to think what you doing, instead of pressing "TAB-->Mezz", "TAB-->Mezz", "TAB-->Mezz", without any sense of failing and maybe wiping.
TaskenDart said:As its planned to have the Rogue flexing effectively to CC in game, and hopefully the Bards coming online as well, Pantheon alrdy would have 3 effective CC-kind-of-classes. I actually would restrict the mezz to 1 mob and have upgrades available in mastery book to 2 mobs or have it with DR in place. My thoughts were more like that the first mob is always without any DR penalty, doesnt matter if chain cast or not. DR comes in place only with the 2,3 or 4th mob. You still have a good chance to mezz all 4 mobs, but with an chance to resist and the mobs going after the enchanter. You actually have to think what you doing, instead of pressing "TAB-->Mezz", "TAB-->Mezz", "TAB-->Mezz", without any sense of failing and maybe wiping.
You're right in that it should not be "simple" or "mindless". We didn't see things from the enchanter's perspective in that stream. But iirc there never was any resisted mez really. That should probably not happen vs. level-relevant content. A resisted mez (or other interruption) can easily lead to a cascade of broken mezes when trying to keep multiple mobs mezed.
And classes flexing into CC should have a harder time doing the same. I think the rogue shows how this can work: they can mez multiple mobs but have to pretty much give up all dps for that.
@TaskenDart I never played a PSI in vanguard and I never did end game content so this might not be relevant. Last disclaimer it has been a long time so memory might be off.
I played a bard as my main and I was able to CC multiple monsters for sure. The more I did the more that is what I had to focus on. I recall times not doing anything but CC just like the rouge in an earlier Pantheon stream. Are you confident the PSI was limited to 1 at a time? If so, how was it the main CC class?
Any ability that removes an enemy's ability to fight back needs a DR or counter. As they showed in previous videos where some mobs were able to break mezzes and stuns. Keeping a boss stun locked isn't going to happen. Even mez should over time get harder and harder to reapply. DR needs to be both player based, cool downs and resource management, and group based, mob resistance and immunity counters and timers. I played a enchanter in eq, by far the most OP group class, and few groups did difficult content without 1. While I do think CC is very important, I'm hoping that bard, thief, and monk utility roles are sufficient to not cause groups to fail because they can't find an enchanter.
@Silvermink so many of us have played EQ I think we forget people might now know how we expect things to work. (Read farther and you have played EQ call me confused) Stunning or mezzing a boss in EQ almost never worked. I really can not recall it ever working I just assume there must have been some instance where it did.
I am fine with many ways to make the game hard and having mob having abilities like the have demonstrated that can unmezz there friends is really cool and I love it. DR is a method to make a game hard, it is not the only method and definitely not my preferred method.
I also hope that the enchanter is not the one and only CC and based on the rouge stream it looks like the devs are in agreement.
DR is not about making the game harder... It's about preventing exploitive situations. If you can keep a target from doing any action and yet can continue to damage it until it's dead then this is an exploitive situation.
The only CC that needs DR are hard CC which do not break when you apply damage to the target. If the target is free'd from the CC as soon as you start damaging it, then there is no need to DR that type of CC. For example a Mez ability which breaks when you start attacking the target will not need DR as this does not become exploitable to kill targets without them fighting back. Stun on the other hand usually does not break early if you hit the target, which means that you could chain stun the target keeping them from fighting back while you kill them, so a Stun will need a DR to prevent this unfair tactic.
For those who don't understand why we use the terms 'Soft' or 'Hard' when we talk about Crowd Control, here is the difference:
Soft CC limits but does not prevent all action. Eg: Snare, Slow, Silence, Root, Blind, Cripple (prevent leaps/dashes/teleports), Disarm, Taunt.
All of these will limit the actions of the target but will not prevent them from fighting back at all.
Hard CC prevents all action. Eg: Stun, Fear, Mez, Charm, Knock-Down/Up/Back, Pull.
All of these will stop all action from the target and they cannot fight back.
So if any of these kinds of Hard CC are not Auto broken by doing dmg to the target, it will need some sort of DR to prevent exploitation.
This is not to say that Players shouldn't be able to do some types of lockdown strategies. If all of these types of CC caused DR to the other types of CC then it starts to limit too many options for the Players. So usually DR is type based... eg: So Stuns would DR with other Stuns but not with Fears.
This means that a team which can rotate their Hard CC might still be able to exploit this to keep an enemy locked down while killing it, but this should require a very specific set of skills and a very well timed and executed strategy. If any of it becomes too trivial for a team to successfully do then it falls into exploitive territory and likely DR types will need to be linked in some way to keep it from being exploitable.
Note: Root is often considered a Soft CC, but it can sometimes still be considered for DR if it's not normal for all enemies to have natural range attacks. If most enemies have some sort of Range attack they can use while Rooted then there may not be a need to DR them. But if most targets only have Melee attacks and Rooting them and hitting them from a distance prevents them from fighting back, it will need some sort of DR.