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Percentages vs plusses, DISCUSS

dukeofwhales

Cipher
Joined
Nov 13, 2013
Messages
423
If I could convince JES of just one thing, it would be "percentages aren't fun. Dice rolls are fun"

Maybe it's just because I was never into loot slot machine-type games, but getting +2.8% to my DPS is just not what I want from itemisation, and just makes the next piece of loot - even if it is a meaningful upgrade - be another part of the grind.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
Staff Member
Sawyerite
Joined
May 29, 2010
Messages
35,653
If I could convince JES of just one thing, it would be "percentages aren't fun. Dice rolls are fun"

Maybe it's just because I was never into loot slot machine-type games, but getting +2.8% to my DPS is just not what I want from itemisation, and just makes the next piece of loot - even if it is a meaningful upgrade - be another part of the grind.

So what you're really getting mad at is the presentation because a +1 in D&D is really just 5%.

I imagine Josh would tell you that since they're not making an adaptation of a tabletop game with dice, using dice descriptions is unnecessary and likely confusing (a lot of goons got confused by all the xdx stuff in the IE games)
 

l3loodAngel

Proud INTJ
Patron
Edgy
Joined
Nov 19, 2010
Messages
1,452
If I could convince JES of just one thing, it would be "percentages aren't fun. Dice rolls are fun"

Maybe it's just because I was never into loot slot machine-type games, but getting +2.8% to my DPS is just not what I want from itemisation, and just makes the next piece of loot - even if it is a meaningful upgrade - be another part of the grind.

So what you're really getting mad at is the presentation because a +1 in D&D is really just 5%.

+1 in DnD is 100 % to 17% (in 1d6). Get the point?
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
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Messages
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Terra da Garoa
Presentation is very important.

In PoE a +15% blade is just a boring increment from the +10% one, while in D&D a +3 weapon is already a mighty blade, the highest tier in BG, that can bypass many protections and wound magical creatures like Stone Golems.

Similarly, PoE limit itself and removes all the uniqueness of items by categorizing all the characteristics of items. It leads to shit like this:

T33Uqmn.jpg


The Blade of the Endless Path isn't an epic item with exotic abilities, it's just a Superb Blade with Speed & Marking. Just like my home-made Estoc is a Superb Blade with Corrosive Lash and Kith Slaying. The King of Balance couldn't even bother to give the epic blade a higher base damage output, for that would actually make it unique and ruin balance.
 

Jimmious

Arcane
Patron
Joined
May 18, 2015
Messages
5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I never understood this argument. Why shouldn't a sword that requires you to actually murder a dragon in order to craft not be equally good as one of the pre-existing "epic" items of the game?? It's not like you can make more than one Superb Estoc...
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
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I never understood this argument. Why shouldn't a sword that requires you to actually murder a dragon in order to craft not be equally good as one of the pre-existing "epic" items of the game?? It's not like you can make more than one Superb Estoc...
Truth is, the long lost legendary blade of the 15-level dungeon I had to collect fragments and reforge is actually worst than one I made myself. It doesn't even use all 12 enchantment slots.

But the real problem is not that - is how it's just a slightly stronger blade, with no gameplay changes whatsoever. I can only make one Superb weapon to surpass it, but even an well-thought Exceptional blade would be pretty similar to it.

Compare that with this legendary artifact here:

cromfaeyr.jpg


That's a lot more than a Superb Warhammer with a few bonuses. And having that on your inventory allows for some cool changes, like turning a weak cleric into a fighting fortress, that slays giants with one hit and can surpass almost every magical barrier in the game.
 

Jimmious

Arcane
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Joined
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Messages
5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I do agree that the legendary items of PoE could have more unique and strong abilities but forging a Superb weapon in PoE means you have to kill a dragon which is by far the hardest battle in the whole game
unless you spam paralysis scrolls
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
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Terra da Garoa
The Adra Scale is for Armors, for Weapons you need the Sky Dragon's Eye.

And again, what's the real difference between an Exceptional and a Superb weapon? You go from "+8 Accuracy and x1.3 damage" to "+12 Accuracy and x1.45 damage". There are no other bonuses, like enemies only vunerable to Superb weapons.

So, 4 accuracy and +15% damage, much legend, very epic, wow. That's what you get from slaying a fucking dragon bro, nothing but a few +%.
 

Jimmious

Arcane
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Messages
5,132
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Good point. Sky Dragon was extremely weak in comparison too.

Yeah I think the major issue is the representation, telling you +15% is kinda boring and lame. Too Diablo-ish
 

baturinsky

Arcane
Joined
Apr 21, 2013
Messages
5,526
Location
Russia
I like percentages and other numbers that do not require special knowledge to understand.
 

felipepepe

Codex's Heretic
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Terra da Garoa
Also noteworthy is how retarded the crafting recipes are. You, level 1 shitty adventurer already know that Superb armors are made with Adra Dragon Scales.

How? The one we kill is supposed to be the only one to ever exist, and no one knows of it. So, are other superb armors like the Gwisk Glas also made with Adra Scales? And how will we make more Superb armor in the expansions and sequels?

Such well-thought game... this is one more reason why reducing all weapons & armors to 4 qualities is dumb as fuck.
 

l3loodAngel

Proud INTJ
Patron
Edgy
Joined
Nov 19, 2010
Messages
1,452
Presentation is very important.

In PoE a +15% blade is just a boring increment from the +10% one, while in D&D a +3 weapon is already a mighty blade, the highest tier in BG, that can bypass many protections and wound magical creatures like Stone Golems.

Similarly, PoE limit itself and removes all the uniqueness of items by categorizing all the characteristics of items. It leads to shit like this:

...snip...

The Blade of the Endless Path isn't an epic item with exotic abilities, it's just a Superb Blade with Speed & Marking. Just like my home-made Estoc is a Superb Blade with Corrosive Lash and Kith Slaying. The King of Balance couldn't even bother to give the epic blade a higher base damage output, for that would actually make it unique and ruin balance.

Let's be honest the itemization is a continuation of character system, which should have been scrapped in the add-on. The blade of endless paths is also gratification to those who only have crafting, but could not finish the dungeon.
 
Self-Ejected

Excidium II

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jun 21, 2015
Messages
1,866,227
Location
Third World
Character development based on small incremental upgrades is shit
It can be done (see any game based on Chaosium's BRP/d100 system) the trouble with PoE is that it was just done so blandly.
Only one I know is CoC, in that game it isn't a big deal as the PCs already start very competent in their occupations, I wish more games were like that

good job on the thread split

truly it was absolutely necessary
I also wish there was a way to know who is responsible for splitting/moving threads
 

Azarkon

Arcane
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
Messages
2,989
Presentation is very important.

To expand on this a bit.

+3 swords are also boring. But they're elegantly presented: it's a +3 sword, dude. They're rare.

Estoc is, by contrast, a page of stat spam. How am I to evaluate this item at a first glance? Is it high-level? Is it rare? Is it omgwtfbbq awesomesauce? I don't fucking know. I have to actually sit down, examine the stats, contrast with other weapons' stats in the game, etc. in order to arrive at the conclusion that, aha! It is a decent weapon after all.

This isn't just a 'not a statfag' complaint. This is a matter of window dressing, of appealing to base instincts. You know why WoW color codes their items? Because the brain finds it easy to associate a color, eg 'purple', with 'pleasure', while it has a hard time associating a page of stat spam with 'pleasure.' The brain needs an easy way to distinguish between "awesome" and "mediocre" and "bad" to properly release those chemicals that make you feel great. Thus:

hammer +5 = pleasure.

"5 DR bypass; +12 accuracy; 1.45x dmg; 25% corrode; +5 accuracy vs. Human, 1.25x dmg vs. Human; +5 accuracy vs. Dwarf, 1.25x dmg vs. Dwarf ... ... ..." = ???

Sure, it's not all that different in the end, and sooner/later you do learn to read PoE stats the way you do "hammer +5," but first impressions are important, and it's there that PoE's presentation system failed.

Of course, there are all sorts of other problems with the itemization system in PoE besides presentation, the biggest one being the mediocrity of modifiers, but those have already been discussed.
 
Last edited:

Loriac

Arcane
Joined
Jan 20, 2007
Messages
2,375
The PoE system is essentially grounded in the MMO paradigm, where things like an incremental 0.5% dps output is often the gating mechanism for defeating high-level bosses.

Anyone who grew up with RPGs from the IE era is going to find the MMO conventions ridiculous, but I guess we're not the audience that Josh is aiming at.

Its a bit strange to become the old guy yelling at the kids to get off his lawn, but its the way of the world I guess.

One thing I will say though, is that the % mechanisms used in PoE are not streamlined or straightforward because of the way that the odd thing is multiplicative whilst most things are additive. This makes it very difficult to work out the impact in some cases. Classic examples here are dexterity is essentially multiplicative, and so will become unbalanced at higher levels; and reloading time which appears to be affected multiplicatively by modifiers.

Even starting with a blank sheet and the ability to create a streamlined set of mechanics, it seems Josh couldn't help but put in the odd non-standard mechanic purely for the sake of it. Really bad design, ironically from a self-proclaimed design genius.
 
Self-Ejected

vivec

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 20, 2014
Messages
1,149
Aye. Percentages are objectively worse. In what sense? In the sense of clear, well-delivered output to the reader and in terms of balance. A fighter with 100 melee damage benefits much more from 10% bonus than a wizard with 10 melee damage. Thus, percentages obfuscate.

That said, hard number additions are better when the overall stats themselves are numbers not more by one order of magnitude. i.e. adding a 2 to strength when strength is 200 is idiotic.

PE faults with both of these.
 

Loriac

Arcane
Joined
Jan 20, 2007
Messages
2,375
Thus:

hammer +5 = pleasure.

"5 DR bypass; +12 accuracy; 1.45x dmg; 25% corrode; +5 accuracy vs. Human, 1.25x dmg vs. Human; +5 accuracy vs. Dwarf, 1.25x dmg vs. Dwarf ... ... ..." = ???

Sure, it's not all that different in the end, and sooner/later you do learn to read PoE stats the way you do "hammer +5," but first impressions are important, and it's there that PoE's presentation system failed.

Its even worse than that though; in the example given, the 1.25x damage vs. various mob types seems straightforward, right? Except its not.

A chanter with no damage modifications benefits much more from that weapon than a high-dps rogue with damage from flanking, backstab, and whatever other talents he may have.

Because 1.25x damage actually means 'add 25% to the total damage modifier that will be applied to base damage of the weapon used'. For a chanter with 10 might and no damage mods, he'll see 1.25x his pathetic base damage. For a rogue, who might be running at 2.5x base damage after factoring in might and the other modifiers, the 0.25 is an overall increase of just 10%. And thats before you account for the DR calculation, modified of course by the minimum damage of 20% of calculated damage. Its like everything and the kitchen sink was thrown in, just because it was possible to do that, and you end up with a system that is extremely unintuitive.

The system is a complete mess in fact, unless you read and analyse a breakdown of the combat mechanics calculations so that you know what affects what. There are analyses that have been done by various PoE players, so its at least possible to read up on this stuff, but it makes you wonder what the point is in moving from an established rule set if you just end up with a different set of rules of thumb that you have to learn to optimise your characters.

Edit: another fun, and counterintuitive aspect: the higher you get your damage mod, the less you care about grazes and crits. Because grazes and crits are -/+ 50% to the total additive damage mod respectively. So a rogue running with a 2.5x damage mod on standard hits will still see 2x on grazes and 3x on crits; which have far less mechanical impact than for the aforementioned chanter who will see crits that do 3x the damage his grazes will, and where grazes will almost certainly be eaten up by DR.
 

roshan

Arcane
Joined
Apr 7, 2004
Messages
2,426
The greatest irony of POE is that despite all the dumbing down, it just ended up with mechanics, statistics and systems completely unintuitive and obtuse. This is what happens when a hardcore Excel sperg decides to make a dumbed down game so he can look cool in front of his forum friends... :lol: POE's system is at the same time needlessly complex, totally pointless and absolutely boring.

The interesting thing about DND (particularly 3rd edition, but also 2nd to a large extent) was that it was designed to be played, managed and computed by real people, hence, at it's core, it is a very friendly and intuitive system. You don't need an Excel spreadsheet, calculator or to dig into game files to find out how many frames each animation has. In DND, you know that a round lasts 6 seconds. If your character has 2 attacks per round, he attacks every 3 seconds. Damage is based on addition of whole numbers, so again, just based on the parameters, such as your STR stat, weapon and any other modifiers, you can compute exactly how much damage you can do. And you can also figure out your chance to hit an enemy just based on your AB and the enemy's AC. And you can figure this all out intuitively, without ever having to bust out a calculator. There was so much elegance in the simplicity of DND.
 
Self-Ejected

CptMace

Self-Ejected
Joined
Jun 17, 2015
Messages
1,278
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Die große Nation
This isn't just a 'not a statfag' complaint. This is a matter of window dressing, of appealing to base instincts. You know why WoW color codes their items? Because the brain finds it easy to associate a color, eg 'purple', with 'pleasure', while it has a hard time associating a page of stat spam with 'pleasure.' The brain needs an easy way to distinguish between "awesome" and "mediocre" and "bad" to properly release those chemicals that make you feel great. Thus:

hammer +5 = pleasure.

"5 DR bypass; +12 accuracy; 1.45x dmg; 25% corrode; +5 accuracy vs. Human, 1.25x dmg vs. Human; +5 accuracy vs. Dwarf, 1.25x dmg vs. Dwarf ... ... ..." = ???

The PoE system is essentially grounded in the MMO paradigm, where things like an incremental 0.5% dps output is often the gating mechanism for defeating high-level bosses.

Anyone who grew up with RPGs from the IE era is going to find the MMO conventions ridiculous, but I guess we're not the audience that Josh is aiming at.

You guys don't seem to agree on why PoE's terrible, so is it too mmo-ish or not enough ?
 

Azarkon

Arcane
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
Messages
2,989
The greatest irony of POE is that despite all the dumbing down, it just ended up with mechanics, statistics and systems completely unintuitive and obtuse. This is what happens when a hardcore Excel sperg decides to make a dumbed down game so he can look cool in front of his forum friends... :lol: POE's system is at the same time needlessly complex, totally pointless and absolutely boring.

The interesting thing about DND (particularly 3rd edition, but also 2nd to a large extent) was that it was designed to be played, managed and computed by real people, hence, at it's core, it is a very friendly and intuitive system. You don't need an Excel spreadsheet, calculator or to dig into game files to find out how many frames each animation has. In DND, you know that a round lasts 6 seconds. If your character has 2 attacks per round, he attacks every 3 seconds. Damage is based on addition of whole numbers, so again, just based on the parameters, such as your STR stat, weapon and any other modifiers, you can compute exactly how much damage you can do. And you can also figure out your chance to hit an enemy just based on your AB and the enemy's AC. And you can figure this all out intuitively, without ever having to bust out a calculator. There was so much elegance in the simplicity of DND.

Indeed. D&D was designed for pen and paper math. PoE was designed for computer algorithms. The former had to be simple enough for combat rounds to resolve without your players constantly going "uh... are you sure 0.75*0.25*0.1*10+(1.05*15)^2-(0.5*9)^3 = 156?" Therefore, it had to utilize mechanics that were easy and intuitive.

But I want to observe that even when your system involves a complicated series of algorithms, there is a way to make it so that it's simple for the player. Consider World of Warcraft. None of the mechanics in WoW are designed for pen and paper, and none of it is capable of being efficiently calculated by humans for each combat round. There are tons of % stats in WoW, from armor to crit to talents. A lot of it follows the deflection vs. accuracy design in that there's no way to know your exact damage/defense % unless you knew the stats of your opponent. Therefore, there's no way to accurately show base damage, armor, etc.

So how does Blizzard deal with this issue? The answer is: color code the gear for *rarity* - orange>purple>blue>green>white>grey; put an item level on it for *scaling*; *reduce* the player's choice to a few modifiers and special effects. End result? The player doesn't need to give a damn about the mechanics. All he needs to know is: what color is my item, what item level is it, and are the modifiers/special effects what I want on my character?

Lesson?

When you design a system for computers, make sure only the computer needs to see it.
 
Last edited:

Azarkon

Arcane
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
Messages
2,989
This isn't just a 'not a statfag' complaint. This is a matter of window dressing, of appealing to base instincts. You know why WoW color codes their items? Because the brain finds it easy to associate a color, eg 'purple', with 'pleasure', while it has a hard time associating a page of stat spam with 'pleasure.' The brain needs an easy way to distinguish between "awesome" and "mediocre" and "bad" to properly release those chemicals that make you feel great. Thus:

hammer +5 = pleasure.

"5 DR bypass; +12 accuracy; 1.45x dmg; 25% corrode; +5 accuracy vs. Human, 1.25x dmg vs. Human; +5 accuracy vs. Dwarf, 1.25x dmg vs. Dwarf ... ... ..." = ???

The PoE system is essentially grounded in the MMO paradigm, where things like an incremental 0.5% dps output is often the gating mechanism for defeating high-level bosses.

Anyone who grew up with RPGs from the IE era is going to find the MMO conventions ridiculous, but I guess we're not the audience that Josh is aiming at.

You guys don't seem to agree on why PoE's terrible, so is it too mmo-ish or not enough ?

It's both, and that's what's ridiculous.

Too MMO to be D&D, and not enough MMO to be WoW.
 

Loriac

Arcane
Joined
Jan 20, 2007
Messages
2,375
The greatest irony of POE is that despite all the dumbing down, it just ended up with mechanics, statistics and systems completely unintuitive and obtuse. This is what happens when a hardcore Excel sperg decides to make a dumbed down game so he can look cool in front of his forum friends... :lol: POE's system is at the same time needlessly complex, totally pointless and absolutely boring.

The interesting thing about DND (particularly 3rd edition, but also 2nd to a large extent) was that it was designed to be played, managed and computed by real people, hence, at it's core, it is a very friendly and intuitive system. You don't need an Excel spreadsheet, calculator or to dig into game files to find out how many frames each animation has. In DND, you know that a round lasts 6 seconds. If your character has 2 attacks per round, he attacks every 3 seconds. Damage is based on addition of whole numbers, so again, just based on the parameters, such as your STR stat, weapon and any other modifiers, you can compute exactly how much damage you can do. And you can also figure out your chance to hit an enemy just based on your AB and the enemy's AC. And you can figure this all out intuitively, without ever having to bust out a calculator. There was so much elegance in the simplicity of DND.

Indeed. D&D was designed for pen and paper math. PoE was designed for computer algorithms. The former had to be simple enough for combat rounds to resolve without your players constantly going "uh... are you sure 0.75*0.25*0.1*10+(1.05*15)^2-(0.5*9)^3 = 156?" Therefore, it had to utilize mechanics that were easy and intuitive.

But I want to observe that even when your system involves a complicated series of algorithms, there is a way to make it so that it's simple for the player. Consider World of Warcraft. None of the mechanics in WoW are designed for pen and paper, and none of it is capable of being efficiently calculated by humans for each combat round. There are tons of % stats in WoW, from armor to crit to talents. A lot of it follows the deflection vs. accuracy design in that there's no way to know your exact damage/defense % unless you knew the stats of your opponent. Therefore, there's no way to accurately present base damage, armor, etc.

So how does Blizzard deal with this issue? The answer is: color code the gear for *rarity* - orange>purple>blue>green>white>grey; put an item level on it for *scaling*; *reduce* the player's choice to a few modifiers and special effects. End result? The player doesn't need to give a damn about the mechanics. All he needs to know is: what color is my item, what item level is it, and are the modifiers/special effects what I want on my character?

Lesson?

When you design a system for computers, make sure only the computer needs to see it.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

My point being, if you're going to present the system as a colour coded moron-friendly simplification, why even bother with all the complicated stuff behind the scenes? if a player's actions can't directly affect / manipulate the mechanics, then you're simply playing a game of chance.

Obviously I can only speak for myself, but a big part of the fun of playing (computer) rpgs is understanding the mechanics, working out what works and what doesn't, and then using that knowledge to create optimised builds that use optimised tactics. Sure its a pure powergame-style approach, but then very few rpgs offer any meaningful 'role-playing' choices with real consequences. Certainly PoE doesn't.

PoE isn't so complicated though that its impossible to understand; rather, its systems can be extremely counter-intuitive unless you know what the mechanics are. And my suspicion is that some of the outcomes are essentially emergent, i.e. Josh doesn't know what his system will spit out until some players start 'abusing' it. For instance, there was a really amusing tactic outlined on the obsidian forums recently - iirc, it was something like 3 ciphers using ectoplasmic echo (I think thats what its called off the top of my head), all targeting a single rogue. You end up with a funnel of death as you teleport the rogue behind enemy lines, melting everything in between.

To me, that sounds like a hilarious tactic that you'd be pleased to discover, you'd mess around with it for a bit, and then you'd stop using it once you had your fun. But if the PoE team has seen that thread, I'll bet they'll be thinking, how can we nerf things so that that tactic can never be used again (they'll make the beam friend or foe of course, killing that particular power's usefulness entirely).

But once you start to clean up all the emergent possibilities, actively punishing players who find creative ways to break the game, you end up back at a pure-chance dice rolling game which is fun only for those mouth-breathing droolers that sit at fruit machines with eyes glazed over, pulling the lever like one of Pavlov's dogs.
 

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