universal damage reduction as a class trait is lazy

[bacon]

ogryn:
100 shields and 300 health
20% damage reduction as a trait

why not just give him 120 shields and 360 health. basically the same thing.

for a damage reduction trait, give him ranged barkskin, which is more customized:

taking ranged damage activates 30% reduced ranged damage for 3 seconds. so he doesnt get chewed up so badly by guardsman spam.

[Rinny]

Originally posted by bacon:

whether it's 120 or 125, 360 or 375, the point stands that universal multiplicative damage reduction is a waste of space in character design. youre just moving total damage absorption from one bucket to another, and acting like that somehow distinguishes the character as "tanky."

if they gave him something else, like ranged barksin, or something like oblivious to pain (slayer), that would be more interesting. but just a general multiplicative damage reducer is boring and could achieve the same effect by boosting shields and health.

the only thing that would make it interesting is if it stacked additively with other sources, like the 25% per downed teammate, which would be 95% total with 3 downs. but i highly doubt it stacks additively, as V2 didnt.

You're clearly trolling
"Damage reduction is bad design so instead he should get ranged damage reduction"
Like hello?

[Al Capwn]

Originally posted by Aedwynn:

Originally posted by Salz:

Math and everything is spot on. One criticism though, the person you're replying to is not the OP and isn't the person calling it lazy game design.

My bad. @Al Capwn sorry on that.

No worries, to err is human

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by bacon:

ogryn:
100 shields and 300 health
20% damage reduction as a trait
why not just give him 120 shields and 360 health. basically the same thing.

It isn't, though. Effective health from damage resistance isn't a direct translation of resistance to health buffs.

EHP = HP/(1 - R)

In the case of 20% resistance, EHP for shields would be 100/(1 - 0.2) = 100/0.8 = 125. EHP for health would be 300/(1 - 0.2) = 300/0.8 = 375.

Effective health as a function of damage resistance is not linear. Every 1% of damage resistance does not equal 1% of bonus effective health. You gain massive increasing returns on damage resistance the closer you get to 100%.

The reason you typically go with damage resistance rather than bonus health is the way multiple resistance bonuses stack with each other. Getting 20% damage resistance from perks, items or buffs is worth a LOT more if you already have 20% damage resistance to begin with.

There's a reason that most modern games (Warframe, Remnant: From the Ashes, Monster Hunter: Rise, etc.) use an "armour" system to mitigate the increasing returns from direct damage resistance. If anything, giving players direct access to resistance is almost always a bad call, because it creates a "feast or famine" situation which is exceedingly difficult to balance.

[Level10Cybermancer]

Originally posted by Karl:

Originally posted by bacon:

ogryn:
100 shields and 300 health
20% damage reduction as a trait

why not just give him 120 shields and 360 health. basically the same thing.

for a damage reduction trait, give him ranged barkskin, which is more customized:

taking ranged damage activates 30% reduced ranged damage for 3 seconds. so he doesnt get chewed up so badly by guardsman spam.

20% damage reduction and 120 shields/360 health are not basically he same thing. Damage reduction matters more for big damaging attacks.

This is incorrect. The damage reduction is a percentage value i.e. multiplicative, and as the distributive property would tell us, 30 * 0.8 is the same as 10 * 0.8 + 10 * 0.8 + 10 * 0.8 is the same as 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8.

So regardless of how large the hit is, % damage reduction provides the same value.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Level10Cybermancer:

This is incorrect. The damage reduction is a percentage value i.e. multiplicative, and as the distributive property would tell us, 30 * 0.8 is the same as 10 * 0.8 + 10 * 0.8 + 10 * 0.8 is the same as 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8.

OK, I've seen multiple people make this mistake, so let's go through the full derivation of the effects of damage resistance.

Hypothetically, let's say I have 100 health and 20% damage resistance. How much damage would I need to take in order to lose 100 health? Well, I resist 20% damage, meaning I take 80% of all damage (i.e. 1 - resistance, or 1 - 0.2 = 0.8 in this case). So how much damage, when reduced to 80% of its value, can I take before I die if I have 100 health? Well, let's call that X and see:

x*(1 - 0.2) = 100 <=> x*0.8 = 100 <=> x = 100/0.8 = 125

OK, now let's back up a step. I'm going to rebrand "the amount of damage after resistance that I can take" as "Effective Health" and list it as EHP. I'm also going to list health as HP and Resistance as R. Repeating the above steps, this gives us:

EHP = HP/(1 - R)

For a fixed amount health, effective health is a rational function of resistance. That simply means it's a ratio. The way rational functions work is they trend towards infinity with increasing returns. You can see a simple graph here[www.desmos.com]. For every 1% resistance (or 0.01 in that graph), you get more than 0.01 effective health back.



But that's a lot of calculus. Let's look at a few examples. Let's go back to 100 health. Let's say I can get just 5% resistance from somewhere, and I'm looking at two cases. In one case, I have no resistance. In the other, I already have 90% damage resistance.

Case 1: 100 health at 0% damage resistance is 100 effective health - no change. 100 health at 5% damage resistance is 100/(1 - 0.05) = 100/0.95 ~ 105.26. We've gained a bit over 5 HP and seen an increase of a bit more than 5%. So far so good.

Case 2: 100 health at 90% damage resistance is 100/(1 - 0.9) = 100/0.1 = 1000. That's a tenfold increase, but let's add the last 5%. At 100 health and 95% damage resistance, that's 100/(1 - 0.95) = 100/0.05 = 2000. That same 5% damage resistance has given us an extra 1000 hit points and doubled out health. That's a lot more than a 5% increase.

The reason for this is simple. Going from 90% to 95% damage resistance has halved the damage we take - from 10% to 5%. Hence, our effective health doubled. Again - 5% damage resistance gives us a different amount of effective health / toughness / durability / etc.

The effect of damage resistance is not linear.

[bacon]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

Originally posted by Level10Cybermancer:

This is incorrect. The damage reduction is a percentage value i.e. multiplicative, and as the distributive property would tell us, 30 * 0.8 is the same as 10 * 0.8 + 10 * 0.8 + 10 * 0.8 is the same as 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8.

OK, I've seen multiple people make this mistake, so let's go through the full derivation of the effects of damage resistance.

Hypothetically, let's say I have 100 health and 20% damage resistance. How much damage would I need to take in order to lose 100 health? Well, I resist 20% damage, meaning I take 80% of all damage (i.e. 1 - resistance, or 1 - 0.2 = 0.8 in this case). So how much damage, when reduced to 80% of its value, can I take before I die if I have 100 health? Well, let's call that X and see:

x*(1 - 0.2) = 100 <=> x*0.8 = 100 <=> x = 100/0.8 = 125

OK, now let's back up a step. I'm going to rebrand "the amount of damage after resistance that I can take" as "Effective Health" and list it as EHP. I'm also going to list health as HP and Resistance as R. Repeating the above steps, this gives us:

EHP = HP/(1 - R)

For a fixed amount health, effective health is a rational function of resistance. That simply means it's a ratio. The way rational functions work is they trend towards infinity with increasing returns. You can see a simple graph here[www.desmos.com]. For every 1% resistance (or 0.01 in that graph), you get more than 0.01 effective health back.



But that's a lot of calculus. Let's look at a few examples. Let's go back to 100 health. Let's say I can get just 5% resistance from somewhere, and I'm looking at two cases. In one case, I have no resistance. In the other, I already have 90% damage resistance.

Case 1: 100 health at 0% damage resistance is 100 effective health - no change. 100 health at 5% damage resistance is 100/(1 - 0.05) = 100/0.95 ~ 105.26. We've gained a bit over 5 HP and seen an increase of a bit more than 5%. So far so good.

Case 2: 100 health at 90% damage resistance is 100/(1 - 0.9) = 100/0.1 = 1000. That's a tenfold increase, but let's add the last 5%. At 100 health and 95% damage resistance, that's 100/(1 - 0.95) = 100/0.05 = 2000. That same 5% damage resistance has given us an extra 1000 hit points and doubled out health. That's a lot more than a 5% increase.

The reason for this is simple. Going from 90% to 95% damage resistance has halved the damage we take - from 10% to 5%. Hence, our effective health doubled. Again - 5% damage resistance gives us a different amount of effective health / toughness / durability / etc.

The effect of damage resistance is not linear.

damage reduction stacks have never been additive in vermintide, no reason to expect it here. multiplicative stacks are the same as bonus health and shields, effectively.

[bacon]

Originally posted by Rinny:

Originally posted by bacon:

whether it's 120 or 125, 360 or 375, the point stands that universal multiplicative damage reduction is a waste of space in character design. youre just moving total damage absorption from one bucket to another, and acting like that somehow distinguishes the character as "tanky."

if they gave him something else, like ranged barksin, or something like oblivious to pain (slayer), that would be more interesting. but just a general multiplicative damage reducer is boring and could achieve the same effect by boosting shields and health.

the only thing that would make it interesting is if it stacked additively with other sources, like the 25% per downed teammate, which would be 95% total with 3 downs. but i highly doubt it stacks additively, as V2 didnt.

You're clearly trolling
"Damage reduction is bad design so instead he should get ranged damage reduction"
Like hello?

hello, 100 health with 50% damage reduction is the same as 200 health with zero damage reduction.

adding multiplicative universal damage reduction doesnt do anything that bonus health and shields wouldnt do.

[Al Capwn]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

snip

As someone who made that mistake I thank you for taking the time to lay this out so thoroughly.

[Salz]

Originally posted by bacon:

Originally posted by Malidictus:

OK, I've seen multiple people make this mistake, so let's go through the full derivation of the effects of damage resistance.

Hypothetically, let's say I have 100 health and 20% damage resistance. How much damage would I need to take in order to lose 100 health? Well, I resist 20% damage, meaning I take 80% of all damage (i.e. 1 - resistance, or 1 - 0.2 = 0.8 in this case). So how much damage, when reduced to 80% of its value, can I take before I die if I have 100 health? Well, let's call that X and see:

x*(1 - 0.2) = 100 <=> x*0.8 = 100 <=> x = 100/0.8 = 125

OK, now let's back up a step. I'm going to rebrand "the amount of damage after resistance that I can take" as "Effective Health" and list it as EHP. I'm also going to list health as HP and Resistance as R. Repeating the above steps, this gives us:

EHP = HP/(1 - R)

For a fixed amount health, effective health is a rational function of resistance. That simply means it's a ratio. The way rational functions work is they trend towards infinity with increasing returns. You can see a simple graph here[www.desmos.com]. For every 1% resistance (or 0.01 in that graph), you get more than 0.01 effective health back.



But that's a lot of calculus. Let's look at a few examples. Let's go back to 100 health. Let's say I can get just 5% resistance from somewhere, and I'm looking at two cases. In one case, I have no resistance. In the other, I already have 90% damage resistance.

Case 1: 100 health at 0% damage resistance is 100 effective health - no change. 100 health at 5% damage resistance is 100/(1 - 0.05) = 100/0.95 ~ 105.26. We've gained a bit over 5 HP and seen an increase of a bit more than 5%. So far so good.

Case 2: 100 health at 90% damage resistance is 100/(1 - 0.9) = 100/0.1 = 1000. That's a tenfold increase, but let's add the last 5%. At 100 health and 95% damage resistance, that's 100/(1 - 0.95) = 100/0.05 = 2000. That same 5% damage resistance has given us an extra 1000 hit points and doubled out health. That's a lot more than a 5% increase.

The reason for this is simple. Going from 90% to 95% damage resistance has halved the damage we take - from 10% to 5%. Hence, our effective health doubled. Again - 5% damage resistance gives us a different amount of effective health / toughness / durability / etc.

The effect of damage resistance is not linear.

damage reduction stacks have never been additive in vermintide, no reason to expect it here. multiplicative stacks are the same as bonus health and shields, effectively.

If you wanna get real pedantic, just adding HP instead of there being a calculation for damage reduction that results in the same effective HP is 'lazy game design'

[220g Protein]

Remember that all the things effecting toughness regen are going to pay dividends when incoming damage is % reduced.

20 toughness restored on a heavy attack kill is worth a lot more with % incoming damage, so there would be a ton more variables to buff if you removed it.

In short, OP is complaining about a non-issue

[Level10Cybermancer]

Originally posted by Malidictus:

Originally posted by Level10Cybermancer:

This is incorrect. The damage reduction is a percentage value i.e. multiplicative, and as the distributive property would tell us, 30 * 0.8 is the same as 10 * 0.8 + 10 * 0.8 + 10 * 0.8 is the same as 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8 + 5 * 0.8.

OK, I've seen multiple people make this mistake, so let's go through the full derivation of the effects of damage resistance.

Hypothetically, let's say I have 100 health and 20% damage resistance. How much damage would I need to take in order to lose 100 health? Well, I resist 20% damage, meaning I take 80% of all damage (i.e. 1 - resistance, or 1 - 0.2 = 0.8 in this case). So how much damage, when reduced to 80% of its value, can I take before I die if I have 100 health? Well, let's call that X and see:

x*(1 - 0.2) = 100 <=> x*0.8 = 100 <=> x = 100/0.8 = 125

OK, now let's back up a step. I'm going to rebrand "the amount of damage after resistance that I can take" as "Effective Health" and list it as EHP. I'm also going to list health as HP and Resistance as R. Repeating the above steps, this gives us:

EHP = HP/(1 - R)

For a fixed amount health, effective health is a rational function of resistance. That simply means it's a ratio. The way rational functions work is they trend towards infinity with increasing returns. You can see a simple graph here[www.desmos.com]. For every 1% resistance (or 0.01 in that graph), you get more than 0.01 effective health back.



But that's a lot of calculus. Let's look at a few examples. Let's go back to 100 health. Let's say I can get just 5% resistance from somewhere, and I'm looking at two cases. In one case, I have no resistance. In the other, I already have 90% damage resistance.

Case 1: 100 health at 0% damage resistance is 100 effective health - no change. 100 health at 5% damage resistance is 100/(1 - 0.05) = 100/0.95 ~ 105.26. We've gained a bit over 5 HP and seen an increase of a bit more than 5%. So far so good.

Case 2: 100 health at 90% damage resistance is 100/(1 - 0.9) = 100/0.1 = 1000. That's a tenfold increase, but let's add the last 5%. At 100 health and 95% damage resistance, that's 100/(1 - 0.95) = 100/0.05 = 2000. That same 5% damage resistance has given us an extra 1000 hit points and doubled out health. That's a lot more than a 5% increase.

The reason for this is simple. Going from 90% to 95% damage resistance has halved the damage we take - from 10% to 5%. Hence, our effective health doubled. Again - 5% damage resistance gives us a different amount of effective health / toughness / durability / etc.

The effect of damage resistance is not linear.

We're talking about different things. I'm not disputing the point about EHP. The person I was quoting was claiming that % damage reduction is more effective against larger hits than smaller ones, which is not true.

With 20% damage reduction, whether you take 30 damage in a single big hit or in ten 3 damage hits, you still ultimately take 24 damage, reduced by a total of 6. That's just how the distributive property works.

[Moffin Bovin]

Originally posted by bacon:

adding multiplicative universal damage reduction doesnt do anything that bonus health and shields wouldnt do.

you are forgetting about toughness and healing. have to increase toughness and healing gains by the same amount.

if your hp is +25% more then the amount of toughness you get when you kill an enemy also has to be increased by +25% to remain relative.

at this point you'd be arguing "why have 20% damage reduction when you can have +25% hp, +25% toughness, +25% toughness replenishment and +25% healing (so that the speed that you heal from a placed medpack remains the same).

sure, both of those things are identical, but one requires that you change 4 things and the other means you have to change only one, the rate that you take damage.

its a case of six to one and half a dozen to the other, except one is more succinct and the other is just messy for no reason.

basically, my point is...

this thread is pretty stupid. Its a complaint about nothing.

[bacon]

Originally posted by Moffin Bovin:

Originally posted by bacon:

adding multiplicative universal damage reduction doesnt do anything that bonus health and shields wouldnt do.

you are forgetting about toughness and healing. have to increase toughness and healing gains by the same amount.

if your hp is +25% more then the amount of toughness you get when you kill an enemy also has to be increased by +25% to remain relative.

at this point you'd be arguing "why have 20% damage reduction when you can have +25% hp, +25% toughness, +25% toughness replenishment and +25% healing (so that the speed that you heal from a placed medpack remains the same).

sure, both of those things are identical, but one requires that you change 4 things and the other means you have to change only one, the rate that you take damage.

its a case of six to one and half a dozen to the other, except one is more succinct and the other is just messy for no reason.

basically, my point is...

this thread is pretty stupid. Its a complaint about nothing.

the point is that the ogryn basically only has 2 traits, because one of the 3 traits is superfluous if moved into the shield and health pool.

these observations about the rate at which you heal from a medkit are specious, pretty much any time a med kit is deployed, the whole team will heal. if they wanted to account for ogryn health, theyd just give him increased healing rate from med kits to compensate. and health stations always heal for full.

there was a little more of a point in V2 since healing was a more comment event, including merc shout, health potions, temp health gain, all of which were flat bonuses. but in this game, there is hardly a difference. so, give the ogryn a real third trait instead of pretending that universal multiplicative damage reduction is some kind of meaningful differentiation, as opposed to adjusting his shield and health pool.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by bacon:

adding multiplicative universal damage reduction doesnt do anything that bonus health and shields wouldnt do.

By "multiplicative universal damage reduction", I assume you mean running damage through each instance of resistance separately, as opposed to adding all resistance together and running damage through it once. Intuitively, I'm not convinced so let's see if this pans out.

[/b]Let's experiment[/b]

Let's say we have 100 health and two instances of 20% damage resistance, calculated sequentially. Our EHP after the first round is 100/(1 - 0.2) = 125. Our EHP after the second round is 156.25. The first round gives us 25 extra EHP, the second round gives us 31.25 - a 6.25 difference. But that's absolute difference.

Relatively, the first instance of resistance increases our EHP by 25% (125/100 - 1). The second instance of resistance increases our EHP by 156.25/100 = 1.25 - 1 = 25, or 25%. So you are correct in theory - both instances of 20% damage resistance increase our EHP by 25%

Incidentally, a single instance of 40% damage resistance would give us 100/(1 - 0.4) ~ 166.67 EHP, meaning that a single instance of 40% resistance grants more protection than two instances of 20% resistance under the system we're discussing. So word to the wise - pick fewer, larger resistance buffs if you can. But that's besides the point.

Solutions

So what avenues do we do here? We could try to give the player an absolute health buff equal to what 20% resistance would do. The problem with this approach is that there exists no such amount. One instance of 20% resistance offers 25 extra HP over a 100 HP base, but a second instance offers 31.25. No such number exists because - even when multiplicative - the effects of damage resistance are not linear.

Alternately - and I suspect this is what you're proposing - we just give the player a "% of max health" buff equivalent to the effect of damage resistance. If 20% resistance adds 25% of EHP before the next round of resistance is calculated, then this is indeed indistinguishable from just adding 25% health and skipping a round of resistance. With this, however, you walk into a few additional problems:

Additional issues

Additive % bonuses suffer relative diminishing returns. Let's go back to our 100 HP example. We give the player a 25% extra HP buff, which gives them 125 HP. So far so good. Now let's say they grab another 25 HP from a trait or a buff. Their health increases to 150, but it does not increase by 25%. It increases by 150/125 - 1 = 20%. So the player is missing part of their bonus health.

Raw healing suffers, as well. A 50-point heal would previously have healed the player for 50% of their total health. With the innate 25% bonus health, that only heals for 50/125 = 0.4, or 40%. If that player had 100 health and 20% damage resistance, they would heal more for the same amount of EHP. In other words, damage resistance affects the value of raw healing in ways that extra health does not.

In conclusion

You are not INcorrect in the math presented. In isolation, the damage resistance model you're proposing does make instances of damage resistance interchangeable with instances of bonus health. However, this only holds true for percentage-based bonus health and only if said bonus health is itself similarly multiplicative. I don't know how it works in Darktide, but bonus health buffs were very much additive in Vermintide. You kind of have to do it this way, because multiplicative health bonuses balloon VERY quickly.

Best case scenario, you're replacing one complex system with another. Worst case scenario, you create unintended and potentially undesirable knock-on effects. I don't really see resistance being so much of an issue as to take that risk, assuming Fatshark have already achieved some form of balance.

[Malidictus]

Originally posted by Level10Cybermancer:

With 20% damage reduction, whether you take 30 damage in a single big hit or in ten 3 damage hits, you still ultimately take 24 damage, reduced by a total of 6. That's just how the distributive property works.

Putting this in a separate post because the previous one got WAAAY too big, but:

That is correct. My apologies, I misunderstood your intent there. Damage granularity has absolutely no effect on percentage damage resistance. That only comes into play with absolute damage resistance, such as reducing every instance of damage by 20, say. That would heavily penalise autoguns but be weak against spike damage.

I don't know if Darktide has this, but Payday 2 does. The Anarchist perk deck can build up absolute damage resistance by killing enemies, which can make the player almost immune to enemies with SMGs and rifles, but entirely vulnerable to shotgunners and melee. This also COMPLETELY breaks down in higher difficulty settings where enemy damage grows multiplicatively and renders the fairly minor absolute resistance bonus irrelevant.

But yes - resistance in both the additive and multiplicative variants does not care for how how many hits the player takes.