monsters caps DR and DB

This topic of high levels and DB/DR gets raised every few months. Here's my tuppence on it:

It is down to Druid and Shantara in the final call, to create the balance they want. It's their server. Any expressions I vent are my personal feelings only

Surviving/winning as a high player is too dependent upon having a piercing weapon or not. If you want figures check the "monster damage" to "player damage" ratios above: 3 with piercing, 25 without. So 8 times as bad just because you haven't got a piercing weapon. That doesn't feel a well balanced game to me

Part of this is the piercing is too powerful. If it was +0% instead of +30% I would be a lot happier with it. The piercing effect is what high levels really need

However, piercing weapons are not uniformly useful. AMs are most likely to have a piercing, and Medics/engineers without resupply are much more restricted in the benefit they can get from one

A while back, I knocked up the minimum damage done by a RPGweapon from 1 damage to 15%. Perhaps this is too low, and perhaps 30% would be better?

Having piercing +0% and others weapons minimum 30% damage will change the 3 against 25 comparison to be 4 against 13, only a factor of 3 different instead of 8

At the moment, there is a positive benefit for high levels in keeping low levels alive. Some high levels (e.g. Ton80) always help low levels regardless. Some high levels rarely help low levels and for example will always take a double damage instead of leaving it for a low level. Now I have no intention of stating that everyone must play the same way, or try to introduce rules of etiquette. No way. But I am not sure that I approve of changes that would make it more difficult for low levels to survive.

However, over time the average level of players is increasing, and perhaps the game needs to adapt to compensate. This game needs to be fun for all, and if it is impossible it is not fun. If it is very difficult, but possible - that depends upon the player - some like the challenge, but some just want to kill. And again, I don't want to say it has to be a certain way.

So, there are a number of options available:

Do nothing

Do the piercing +0% change and the non-piercing minimum 30% change

We could cap the DB/DR at some abitrary limit e.g. equivalent to a level 300 player

We could change it so that monsters do not just buy DB/DR. We could max DB/DR at much lower levels (e.g. 160 DB 100 DR), and then give them things like health regen and vampire. But still max their level at say 300.

If I have a level 33 monster on, should a level 5 killing it get the same xp and score that a level 300 gets? It is the same monster true, but it is a lot more difficult for the level 5. Likewise a level 33 titan from wave 16 is more difficult than a level 13 titan from wave 6. So like in the PvP where the level difference is taken into account, should the same apply to invasion? This would be a big overhaul of the scoring, but the principal would be that a high level monster scores more than a low level monster, and a low level player scores more than a high level for killing the same monster.

Allow high level players to buy an additional ability to make it easier for them. This could be an ability which effectively caps the monster level for them (since the monster level gets calculated every shot). This would give them something to spend their points on.

If we went for the above two options - different scoring and a monster cap ability, then high levels using the ability would only get the points for the capped monster, and not the true monster level. Fair?

A side effect would of course be that the high levels have a choice - "live long and score slowly" or "score high but die quick". Those of course that can "score high but not die quick" will be at the top of the high scores

I thought I read somewhere that the server didn't intend for player levels to be so high.
If this is the case then maybe the player caps should be raised.

Another idea would be to make a SuperEnhancedDamageBonus/Reduction only available to players higher than level 300.

How about a survival skill ability that can detect if the player is the last player, and boost his abilities.

One of the previous threads discussing this sort of stuff, that didn't come to any conclusion. Here

Szlat wrote:

If I have a level 33 monster on, should a level 5 killing it get the same xp and score that a level 300 gets? It is the same monster true, but it is a lot more difficult for the level 5. Likewise a level 33 titan from wave 16 is more difficult than a level 13 titan from wave 6. So like in the PvP where the level difference is taken into account, should the same apply to invasion? This would be a big overhaul of the scoring, but the principal would be that a high level monster scores more than a low level monster, and a low level player scores more than a high level for killing the same monster.

Perhaps just have xp based on the difference in levels, rather than the score?

As a totally separate thought - why do we have the monster level increasing according to the lowest player alive. Why not fixed in the range 2-32 (wave number times 2)?

EDIT: Ok, next thought. Every time two monsters or players shoot each other, NetDamage calculates the level of each monster involved. This currently uses the lowest player alive in the calculation. Rather than letting this monster level go too high, and hence letting DB/DR get too high, we could fix the monster levels, rather than having them adapting on the lowest player.

So, one option would always be to have monster levels in the range 2-32.
Or we could set it to 10-40 just to make it a bit more difficult.
Or we could adjust it based upon the number of players - as I think greg11 suggested - perhaps if you have 1 player and 3 bots then 2-32, if you have 16 players, then 20-50.

But setting to 20-50 could be a bit unfair on the level 5 who happens to be playing. So rather than having the monster a fixed level, we could dynamically adjust it according to who the monster is fighting. So if a level 5, then 2-32. If a level 300+, then 20-50. And of course alter the score/xp/adrenaline bonus based on the monster level adjustment. So it wouldn't matter if the low level died or not. (Why should the high level have to protect the low level in order to play? - I am still unsure on that topic). Obviously, for high levels we do not want to take the fun out of the game. So it would be best to keep the monster DB/DR not excessive - high levels would have to have input as to what level would still give a fun game.

Perhaps set the monster level to (wave*2) + (number of players alive) + (0-10 depending on player level)?

So forget all the arguments about piercing and min damage, just set the monster levels to a different formula.

Szlat wrote:

Perhaps set the monster level to (wave*2) + (number of players alive) + (0-10 depending on player level)?

This formula would make monsters slightly harder for higher levels than low levels (max +35 DB/DR). But since higher levels will have more than +35 DB/DR on low levels, it shouldn't be too bad.

However, an alternative would be to keep the monsters the same difficulty for everyone. But still have them more difficult the more players that are alive
So have
(wave*2) + (number of players alive) + (0-30 depending on average player level)
which will put the monsters between level 3-33 for a solo level 5, to level 33-62 for a 300+ player.

We would have to treat all 300+ players as being level 300.

Szlat wrote:

We would have to treat all 300+ players as being level 300.

i do belive this... all 300+ players should be treat as 300 ..

what about a Kit, that spawn random ( likish the DD or shield) and that kit can only be use for high levels ( or low level) depends... that helps,, so a solo high level can have a chance without p weap

also i belive P weapons a quite powerful since they do a loooot of damage.. they + damage bonus should be less..

now i have a though, what about make P weapon random, lets say insted of a permanent piercing efect lets make a chance lets say a +6 p flak do 80% of the shots p damage ( with the +30% damage as is now)
and a +1 p flak has a 20% chance of p damage...

or we can follow another path just decrease p+ ... or decrease the % in damage.

Okay after reading through the whole thread... this idea is getting way much more complicated than it really needs to be. The problem is high levels not having a chance when all low levels die, but still leaving it challenging as to not take out all the fun in the game. So why not just leave the Damage reduction exactly the way it is, but change the damage bonus on the monsters so it never increases. Think about it Desert Wrath at his level would barely stand a chance against a poison pupae and say a warlord unless of course if he runs. First the poison will finish most of his health and the warlord will just kill him like in 1 shot... or perhaps for the rest of us a single red skaarj can easily kill us with one shot after passing lvl 300 or so

So just change the damage bonus not the reduction as to leave some challenge

...thats my say

I agree with Elite. A total overhaul to the system is not needed. As the problem cannot be stated better by Elite himself:

"The problem is high levels not having a chance when all low levels die, but still leaving it challenging as to not take out all the fun in the game."

Greg's idea seems to be right on the money.

"How about a survival skill ability that can detect if the player is the last player, and boost his abilities."

Perhaps not increase the players abilities but REDUCE that damage factor of monsters done to players from 8 to somewhat more manageable number like 4 or 5? and increase damage of non-piercing weapons. All these activated ONLY when last player alive is a high level player. As to what level a player is considered a high level is up to debate. All other modifications imho are not needed.

One thing I was thinking of for the survival skill was to increase the players wep speed. The issue of capping the wep speed was mainly for bandwidth reasons, it shouldn't be an issue if there is only one player playing though. Once another player joins or the next wave starts, the wep speed and other boosted abilities go back to normal.

Elite wrote:

.....So just change the [monster] damage bonus not the reduction as to leave some challenge ...thats my say

At the moment, there is an artifical "cap" on monsters DR by making RPGWeapons do at least 15% damage. This effectively limits their DR to 250.

For a level 300 player, the monster level wave 16 is (300/4 + 32) = 107, giving a DB of 374. This means the monster will do 1 + (374-50)/200 = 2.6 times damage.

So, is the recommendation that I cap monster DB at 374, and DR at 250?

" 2.6 times damage" is better than 4 at level 600 and "374 DR" is much better than 637 DB at level 600.

I'd say this looks promising.