Damage Standardisation and Damage Protection

Today's suggestion features a proposal for an expansion and standardisation to the current mechanics used in Survivability. The three main mechanics in place today is Resistance, Defence and Protection, which is absolutely fine and all, but I do see some logical errors involved in some powers.

So what I recommend is this;

• Powers that give the ability to reduce the amount of pain and injuries one suffers, but does not nullify pain or injury, will be given as Resistance. This mechanic isn't problematic as every power that fits is already applied. But the intention that no matter how high your Resistance is (to the cap), every single attack will hurt to some degree. You'd expect a Willpower Defence user to take less pain through honing their ability, but not an Invulnerable Defence user who's special ability is to NOT be harmed.

• Powers that grant the character the ability to evade or deflect attacks with skill will use Defence. This is the one that needs most standardisation as Defence should be the measure of skill to avoid damage, not because you're made of rock and somehow your body can deflect attacks without any after-effect.
  
  Defence is suited towards Super-Reflexes and Shield Defence sets which cause the character to react or act skillfully to save them from harm. Much like Reflexes to swerve out of the way, or moving your shield to block a blow.
  
  Furthermore, to rid of all typed defence and convert it all into positional defences. If defence is all about the character's skill, it shouldn't matter if it's physical, temperature-related, psionic or anything. Melee, Ranged and AoE are sensible categories to avoid damage, as one character might be a brawler skilled in close combat, while a shield user might be good at blocking ranged blows, or a reflexes nimbly dashing between [Rain of Fire] drops.

• And for Protection, to inplement Damage-protection much like Resistance is to Status duration. Damage protection is a fixed amount of damage reduction that works in the same way as magnitude does. If a character has 15 damage protection to Smashing, dealing 16 damage will only inflict 1 point of damage with the attack. But if the Smashing attack is 15 or lower than it will have no effect.
  
  And before you go on about 'abuse/unbalance' issues, much in the way of status magnitude, if Damage over time powers are involved, Damage protection will stack in the same way. An attack that deals 20 damage over 20 seconds will start seeing the protected character taking damage after 15 seconds have passed. And also if the devs did take it on, I'm pretty sure they'd know the right values to use for the powers.
  
  An easy example for Damage protection would be like Invulnerability, if you can take bullets to the chest and be smashed through buildings, why would a regular punch to the chest have any effect? Resistance cannot do that as even 99% RES will deal 'some' damage as a result. And there's no skill involved to being invincible as I would guess most of it is automatic. If the Invul character can nullify the most weakest attacks whilst taking less damage on more powerful attacks, it would make it a lot better than simply taking less damage from anything you're supposedly 'Invulnerable' to.

First of all, you can't just get rid of typed damage.

Psionic Damage isn't physical at all, for one, and while you can avoid other types, it makes sense that some types would hurt more than others.

So... no on that.

I chopped off some bits of your post that I wasn't going to reply to.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oneirohero Powers that give the ability to reduce the amount of pain and injuries one suffers, but does not nullify pain or injury, will be given as Resistance. This mechanic isn't problematic as every power that fits is already applied. But the intention that no matter how high your Resistance is (to the cap), every single attack will hurt to some degree. You'd expect a Willpower Defence user to take less pain through honing their ability, but not an Invulnerable Defence user who's special ability is to NOT be harmed.

The reason Invulnerability users still take damage is game balance. If the enemy is at a level where it's supposed to pose any kind of threat to you, it has to be able to hurt you. This is why Damage Resistance has a cap in the first place.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oneirohero Powers that grant the character the ability to evade or deflect attacks with skill will use Defence. This is the one that needs most standardisation as Defence should be the measure of skill to avoid damage, not because you're made of rock and somehow your body can deflect attacks without any after-effect. Defence is suited towards Super-Reflexes and Shield Defence sets which cause the character to react or act skillfully to save them from harm. Much like Reflexes to swerve out of the way, or moving your shield to block a blow. Furthermore, to rid of all typed defence and convert it all into positional defences. If defence is all about the character's skill, it shouldn't matter if it's physical, temperature-related, psionic or anything. Melee, Ranged and AoE are sensible categories to avoid damage, as one character might be a brawler skilled in close combat, while a shield user might be good at blocking ranged blows, or a reflexes nimbly dashing between [Rain of Fire] drops.

I take it from the "made of rock" bit that you're opposed to Stone Armor being based on Defense. Right, look, it's like this; with Stone Armor, you're not made of rock, you're protected by it. If an attack hits the stones, it is deflected without harming you in any way, but if an attack forces its way through that slab of rock, or else finds a gap in your protection, there's nothing to reduce the damage dealt to your tender flesh. Or not so tender, since you've been stomping around with all those rocks on you, but whatever. That is also why there is typed Defense, some things block extreme tempuratures better than others, or are more impact-resistant, so stones that leave you unaffected by heat or cold may shatter under a sledgehammer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oneirohero And for Protection, to inplement Damage-protection much like Resistance is to Status duration. Damage protection is a fixed amount of damage reduction that works in the same way as magnitude does. If a character has 15 damage protection to Smashing, dealing 16 damage will only inflict 1 point of damage with the attack. But if the Smashing attack is 15 or lower than it will have no effect. And before you go on about 'abuse/unbalance' issues, much in the way of status magnitude, if Damage over time powers are involved, Damage protection will stack in the same way. An attack that deals 20 damage over 20 seconds will start seeing the protected character taking damage after 15 seconds have passed. And also if the devs did take it on, I'm pretty sure they'd know the right values to use for the powers. An easy example for Damage protection would be like Invulnerability, if you can take bullets to the chest and be smashed through buildings, why would a regular punch to the chest have any effect? Resistance cannot do that as even 99% RES will deal 'some' damage as a result. And there's no skill involved to being invincible as I would guess most of it is automatic. If the Invul character can nullify the most weakest attacks whilst taking less damage on more powerful attacks, it would make it a lot better than simply taking less damage from anything you're supposedly 'Invulnerable' to.

All attacks that hit have to deal some damage. Otherwise, you have characters who can only be defeated under certain circumstances, and who can, by avoiding those circumstances, gain all the rewards of fighting enemies without any risk. Such a situation would, naturally, be horribly unbalanced, Damage Over Time notwithstanding.

The only way to balance this Damage Protection would be to put a cap on it, not in terms of Hit Points, but a percentage of the damage dealt. And once you've done that, Damage Protection becomes redundant with Damage Resistance, and that's why Invulnerability is Damage Resistance already.

I like this idea you have come up with and I have thought about something like this myself, but the others are right Damage Protection would be overpowered.

I would still like to see some changes like this of course they will just need a little bit of tweaking.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Your post does not include any discussion of WHAT PROBLEM exists that you think makes these changes necessary, and HOW these changes address that problem.

And this is also not the sort of change made 5+ years in the game's lifespan.

IMO, it's no so much that your idea is bad but it's just ill thought out and doesn't take into consideration everything within the game's engine.

First of all, pain prevention/threshold in the game and within classic PnP RPGs is covered by HP. And it makes sense. If you have more HP, you can withstand more punishment. Resistance works similarly but on a different level and can stack with Max HP improvement. It's the general logic of why Tankers are just more durable.

Secondly, regeneration. Everyone has it but to different extents. Just because that invulnerable man took a tiny bit of damage from a bullet doesn't mean he's less invulnerable, especially because that bullet took 2.5sec to shoot and did 22dmg yet the invulnerable man regenerates 15HP every second. Also, because regeneration is % based, the more pain you can withstand and the more hardy/healthy you are, the quicker you'll recover from injury. Your suggestion doesn't do that.

Thirdly, defense is *not* only skill based just like resistance isn't just durability based:
-defense can be a deflection from an ill aimed attack or one that just isn't effective (Stone Armor and Invulnerability)
-defense can also be based on a particular shield or barrier to ward off certain attacks (Energy Aura def, Willpower's specific psy defense)
-defense can also be an attack was taken but the damage was completely nullified right after (Regeneration's Moment of Glory)
-resistance can be 'rolling with the punches', i.e. you take the punch but you let your body move in such a way that it doesn't take the full momentum of the attack (Super Reflex's resist passives)

So you really have a lot more ground to cover if you want to make a *full* suggestion regarding protection across powersets. And that idea for 'protection', while intriguing seems rather difficult to balance. Either an endless mass of minions will be unable to do any damage to you or your protection would do practically nothing vs a boss.

Replying to each bullet point separately.

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Originally Posted by Oneirohero Powers that give the ability to reduce the amount of pain and injuries one suffers, but does not nullify pain or injury, will be given as Resistance. This mechanic isn't problematic as every power that fits is already applied. But the intention that no matter how high your Resistance is (to the cap), every single attack will hurt to some degree. You'd expect a Willpower Defence user to take less pain through honing their ability, but not an Invulnerable Defence user who's special ability is to NOT be harmed.

I'm not certain exactly what you're trying to say here, but what I gather from "every power that fits is already applied" that you're just trying to formalize something that already exists.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oneirohero Powers that grant the character the ability to evade or deflect attacks with skill will use Defence. This is the one that needs most standardisation as Defence should be the measure of skill to avoid damage, not because you're made of rock and somehow your body can deflect attacks without any after-effect. Defence is suited towards Super-Reflexes and Shield Defence sets which cause the character to react or act skillfully to save them from harm. Much like Reflexes to swerve out of the way, or moving your shield to block a blow. Furthermore, to rid of all typed defence and convert it all into positional defences. If defence is all about the character's skill, it shouldn't matter if it's physical, temperature-related, psionic or anything. Melee, Ranged and AoE are sensible categories to avoid damage, as one character might be a brawler skilled in close combat, while a shield user might be good at blocking ranged blows, or a reflexes nimbly dashing between [Rain of Fire] drops.

Defense has nothing to do with skill. Defense is avoiding the damage and the effects of an attack, thogh whatever means you like. This is reflected by the multiple combat floaters that occur due to avoiding an attack by your Defense value: "Dodged", "Deflected", "Absorbed", etc.

While it may sound reasonable to say that only melee/ranged/aoe defenses are needed, it particularly falls apart with respect to Psionic abilities. How, exactly, do you dodge a [Mental Blast]? Doing flips or raising your shield is not going to help with that.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oneirohero And for Protection, to inplement Damage-protection much like Resistance is to Status duration. Damage protection is a fixed amount of damage reduction that works in the same way as magnitude does. If a character has 15 damage protection to Smashing, dealing 16 damage will only inflict 1 point of damage with the attack. But if the Smashing attack is 15 or lower than it will have no effect. And before you go on about 'abuse/unbalance' issues, much in the way of status magnitude, if Damage over time powers are involved, Damage protection will stack in the same way. An attack that deals 20 damage over 20 seconds will start seeing the protected character taking damage after 15 seconds have passed. And also if the devs did take it on, I'm pretty sure they'd know the right values to use for the powers. An easy example for Damage protection would be like Invulnerability, if you can take bullets to the chest and be smashed through buildings, why would a regular punch to the chest have any effect? Resistance cannot do that as even 99% RES will deal 'some' damage as a result. And there's no skill involved to being invincible as I would guess most of it is automatic. If the Invul character can nullify the most weakest attacks whilst taking less damage on more powerful attacks, it would make it a lot better than simply taking less damage from anything you're supposedly 'Invulnerable' to.

Again, defense has nothing to do with skill or agility. It is simply a game mechanic to cover completely avoiding an attack. In addition to defense, this suggestion is covered by the Purple Patch - if you're a level 50 hero who has save the world for the Nth time, a level 5 Hellion not only is going to have trouble hitting you, but won't even make your heath bar move if they do hit you (5% of the time)

Actually, the logical issues that you mentioned are true. I believe that few people will agree with you though, coz the game mechanics are quite deeply engraved into our mind. As some posts already mentioned, it's too late to change even things does not really make sense.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oneirohero Powers that give the ability to reduce the amount of pain and injuries one suffers, but does not nullify pain or injury, will be given as Resistance. This mechanic isn't problematic as every power that fits is already applied. But the intention that no matter how high your Resistance is (to the cap), every single attack will hurt to some degree. You'd expect a Willpower Defence user to take less pain through honing their ability, but not an Invulnerable Defence user who's special ability is to NOT be harmed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Oneirohero And for Protection, to inplement Damage-protection much like Resistance is to Status duration. Damage protection is a fixed amount of damage reduction that works in the same way as magnitude does. If a character has 15 damage protection to Smashing, dealing 16 damage will only inflict 1 point of damage with the attack. But if the Smashing attack is 15 or lower than it will have no effect. And before you go on about 'abuse/unbalance' issues, much in the way of status magnitude, if Damage over time powers are involved, Damage protection will stack in the same way. An attack that deals 20 damage over 20 seconds will start seeing the protected character taking damage after 15 seconds have passed. And also if the devs did take it on, I'm pretty sure they'd know the right values to use for the powers. An easy example for Damage protection would be like Invulnerability, if you can take a bullets to the chest and be smashed through buildings, why would a regular punch to the chest have any effect? Resistance cannot do that as even 99% RES will deal 'some' damage as a result. And there's no skill involved to being invincible as I would guess most of it is automatic. If the Invul character can nullify the most weakest attacks whilst taking less damage on more powerful attacks, it would make it a lot better than simply taking less damage from anything you're supposedly 'Invulnerable' to.

I agree with you. Realistically, there are two limits. One is what you already said, if a person can take bullets, why does the person take damage for a regular punch. That means an attack has to do more than certain damage in order to hurt the person.

The other limit is that an resistance armor should have a maximum damage that it can resist. If a person wears a bullet-proof vest that can resist 99% of the damage from a bullet, does it mean that the person can also resist 99% of the damage when a bulldozer hits him?

In my opinion, these two extreme cases illustrate that the current implementation of resistance does not really make physical sense. But on the other hand, good luck trying to convince any people to stand on your side.

Regarding your suggested "protection," it has been discussed a really long time ago when Statesman was still here. I don't remember what the dev said so long ago. I only remember that it is a no.

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Originally Posted by Oneirohero Powers that grant the character the ability to evade or deflect attacks with skill will use Defence. This is the one that needs most standardisation as Defence should be the measure of skill to avoid damage, not because you're made of rock and somehow your body can deflect attacks without any after-effect. Defence is suited towards Super-Reflexes and Shield Defence sets which cause the character to react or act skillfully to save them from harm. Much like Reflexes to swerve out of the way, or moving your shield to block a blow. Furthermore, to rid of all typed defence and convert it all into positional defences. If defence is all about the character's skill, it shouldn't matter if it's physical, temperature-related, psionic or anything. Melee, Ranged and AoE are sensible categories to avoid damage, as one character might be a brawler skilled in close combat, while a shield user might be good at blocking ranged blows, or a reflexes nimbly dashing between [Rain of Fire] drops.

I think it's probably clearer to have defense just for dodging attacks and another attribute called deflection. It is a little confusing to call them positional defense and typed defense. I think the idea of deflection is probably ok as other people explained.

There are a few problems here. First of all, damage in this game does not scale well enough to implement a flat damage number protection. For such a thing to be meaningful against high-damage targets, it has to be pretty high, but because of the chasm of damage between different enemy groups, this would render the damage done by many of the them trivial. This is actually how Torchlight handles it, and the result is just that - a select few bosses can threaten you, everything else deals glancing blows. Percent damage resistance scales a lot better, which is why we use that.

Also, Invulnerability is only a name. This doesn't mean that the Invulnerable character specialises in not being hurt. Even the Juggernaut gets hurt, just not very much. In fact, the Statesman (character in the Top Cow comic book) said something along the lines of "I don't care what they say about invulnerability. That. Hurt!" Basically, an Invulnerable character has two lines of defence. One is puffing up his chest and deflecting bullets. The other, when these bullets don't ricochet but deliver their full force, is that he isn't as hurt by it. He actually has a third level of protection, as well - just being one tough ******* who can take a ton of punishment. Far as I'm concerned, especially against physical damage, Invulnerability lives up to its name the best of all powersets.

Finally, "defence" has nothing to do with skill. Defence is the other side of the coin from damage resistance - you simply don't get hit. That said, defence usually comes in two forms: avoidance and deflection. Some degree of care has been put forward to make sure that most defensive powers could pass for skill- or luck-based, such as covered in stone... Only partly. But, at the end of the day, hitting someone through deflection defence is not a question of accuracy, but rather a question of penetration. We don't have penetration as a factor in the game.

Think about it this way, though - if someone is covered in stone, then small arms fire is going to be less effective, but a high-velocity, armour-piercing round could just make it through. A flaming fist on a slab of rock probably won't be very effective, but a flaming sword would focus the force and pierce. In other words, certain powers could have better penetration than others. And, really, some defence can only be circumvented by penetration. Forcefields, for instance, cannot be gotten around, because they're a complete globe around the target. You have to punch THROUGH the forcefield if you want to have any hope of hitting the person inside, and with how it's shaped, chances are your bullets will bounce and your sword will slide off to the side.

I don't actually have a good idea how to fit this into the defence formula, to be honest. It'd have to be done in such a way that penetration does NOT help you hit things without reflective defence better, and just raw accuracy doesn't help you pierce their armour, but I just don't know how to rig that.

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I must admit I was hasty on some details, I should really try to post suggestions during the day rather than 1am in the morning. I will try to respond to the points made so far.

I do agree that Damage-Protection would have some overpoweredness in high amounts, but generally it should be seen as a small damage standard. I do think Invulnerability would still require Resistance to scale well, but having unenhanceable Damage-protection to make them immune to the weakest attacks possible makes sense within their power. If you keep assuming something like this will have high values then of course it's going to be overpowered.

As for Defence not being entirely skill based, I also agree on this point. If an Stone-armoured character is partially covered in tough rock, it makes sense that there would be a chance that the opponent would hit something that doesn't actually damage the character itself. However in the case of Forcefield users, it 'usually' covers their entire body like a globe like someone mentioned before, weak attacks shouldn't be able to get through at all, but stronger attacks should begin to penetrate the forcefield as it's not strong enough to deal with all that force. So with this, perhaps Defence isn't entirely skill-based on the character's half, but a chance that the opponent will hit something that has no effect on the character.

Someone early on in the thread mentioned getting rid of typed damage, here I must clarify. I am not getting rid of ALL typed damage, it's still very relevant to survival factors like Resistance. What I was talking about was reducing the importance of typed damage of Defence in place of positional defence. It shouldn't matter if a ranged attack is bullets, fire, ice or whatever. If your character is adept at avoiding ranged shots then they should be able to dodge them all. Psionics is a difficult one to class, but since psi blasts seem to take their time reaching their targets like other projectiles, it wouldn't be silly to categorise them as something like ranged.

Damage-Protection is only overpowered if it's set high and enhanceable. What's wrong with being able to reduce damage by 5-10 points for certain types? If it was set as high as 50 or 100 points then I'd think it was overpowered, I would view Damage-protection as a minor supplement for Resistance and Defence, not an core mechanic.

My suggestion does not involve adding a block mechanic to the game. I tried 'that other Superhero MMO' and it made me so glad I play Co* instead.

Lastly, someone mentioned that this issue was discussed by the devs a long time ago, that the actual event was fuzzy to their memory but remembered it was a no. All I can say is, ah well, back to the drawing board.

Thank you for the feedback everyone, feel free to discuss more if you wish.

Here again you seem to be confusing what "Defense" means.

Mostly you appear to be viewing Defense as "I didn't get HIT".

Now, with some powersets (and/or concepts) that's the case. Like most Super Reflexes type characters (not all of them of course, but most SR toons tend to go with the "dodge-type" concept).

But, for other types of defense there's the "I didn't get HURT" idea. This is basically what Invulnerability (which gets as much of it's protection from defense as it does resistance) uses. The attack hit me, after all I didn't dodge out of the way, but it just didn't hurt me at all - hence the defense part counts as 100% Invulnerability to that attack.

Typed Defense really shows up in this light better than Positional. Take an Ice Tank for example, that bullet (smash attack) bounced right off of my ice armor (smashing defense roll), but that fire sword just melted through my armor (fire defense roll).

Basically, most everything you've asked for is ALREADY in the game, it's just a matter of viewing it in the right perspective.

Going by base stalker values (least health for melee) if we give them say 5% damage immunity (damage less then 5% of max health) then starting at level two up (if any stalker secondaries had this level 1 power would be hide) we see them immune to attacks as follows:

5.67
6.27
6.91
7.59
8.34
9.16
10.04
10.97
11.97
13.03
14.14
15.32
16.57
17.87
19.24
20.66
22.14
23.68
25.28
26.77
28.30
29.85
31.42
33.01
34.61
36.22
37.83
39.43
41.01
42.58
44.11
45.62
47.09
48.50
49.87
51.17
52.41
53.57
54.65
55.65
56.56
57.37
58.09
58.70
59.21
59.60
59.89
60.06
60.24

So at level 50 without a base HP boost attacks doing less then 60.24 have no effect. Neat little exercise...