What is the reason behind the current resistance system

[calinsmeu]

While i generally enjoy LE gameplay (even though i find it's visuals - aka animations, items, skills to be generally horrific atm), there is a central part of the game that i just don't get, and i'm quite opened to hear arguments about it. The resistance system. Now i played ARPG's and looter games since the days of D2 (yeah i'm that old), and in every damn game i played every point of resistance basically mitigated damage in some form - be it direct percentage, or some retarded area calculated system like the one in wolcen. The idea behind defenses is that if you want to become a tank, you just add as much as possible into damage reduction stuff - and resistances are one of the main stat in that regard in pretty much all arpg's, and every % of resistance basically reduces that much damage you take. Yet for some reason the devs decided that it would be a brilliant idea to add a - from my point of view - totally dumb system that basically constantly negate your defense upgrade. As you level up, each level you gain basically adds 1% additional resistance negation to your enemies. So if at level 1 your enemy does 100 damage, at level 2 it does 101 damage and so one, if you stay with a zero value on said defense, up to level 75 where the enemy basically does 175 if you have 0 defense value. So at the end of the day, if you cap your defense to 75, you don't reduce said 100 damage by 75%, you just counter a system that seeks to artificially increase difficulty or something. Imo it just feels like a cheap ♥♥♥♥♥♥ system that makes resistances useless as a system. You can just have no resistances and have the enemy do 100 damage. It basically changes nothing, if i cap my resistance so i get 100 damage, or if there is no resistance and no ♥♥♥♥♥♥ system behind the screen where i still get 100 damage.
So yeah - pls give me arguments why you would find this system to be good. And stuff like - thats how they balanced this game is not an actual argument - it's just a lame fanboy excuse excuse.

[Ardenian]

When I first saw that note about resistance penetration in the loading screens, I was quite surprised myself. It feels odd in the first moment to add resistances as a means to reduce incoming damage to then just have it fly away as you fight stronger enemies.

Just speculating here, but it could be related to how they want scaling to work in Last Epoch. Higher levels means that you will face stronger enemies and most games solve this by having higher numbers on enemies, more HP, more damage, more everything. This usually requires the player to upgrade their gear to be able to do higher level content properly, where they will face even stronger enemies, requiring better gear and so on, creating a loop.

With the resistance system in Last Epoch, it feels like they have a lot more control over this, a natural limit, so to say, Let's say that an enemy is ten levels higher, due to the resistance penetration, that enemy deals 10% more damage (not actual numbers, just rolling around in the mind). This means that whatever HP and DMG that enemy has, he will also be 10% stronger in addition to that or something? I am not sure where I am going with this, made more sense in my head before writing this down. I just feel like the resistance penetration serves as an additional measure to keep the difficulty challenging and to avoid the mistake of many ARPGs to basically go "max res or die", although we have this in Last Epoch as well, so I don't know...

If you really want to know their reasons behind this, consider joining their Discord, they have a very active and responsive #ask-the-devs channel there.

[Stormsong]

Resistances are less a defense and more a tax. Pay some slots toward their upkeep or die.

When you went on to explain they could just do away with them and the damage would come out the same, that doesn't mention opportunity cost. You'd now have several slots on several gear pieces that can be used for other things.

Now whether that's good or bad to you, well that's for you to decide, but it's a balancing act for affix availability.

EDIT: Oh, just saw this lmao

Originally posted by calinsmeu:

And stuff like - thats how they balanced this game is not an actual argument - it's just a lame fanboy excuse excuse.

Guess the above is a fanboy excuse, ah well. Take it or leave it.

[Subak]

I cared enough to respond with more, but decided I don't, actually.

But OP is wrong about D2 and probably all the other loads of games they've played too.

D2 resists had similar caps. Even the nightmare/hell resist reduction which is not really that much different in practice from 1% per level, just in two big jumps instead of a bunch of 1% increments.

They aren't wrong about how LE works, afaik. But I think it's probably more like "oh that's how games do it" and getting that confused with "that's how LE did it".

[ling.speed]

You answered the question for yourself :)

Originally posted by calinsmeu:

every % of resistance basically reduces that much damage you take

That is exactly how it works in LE! (it's the other games like D2 where this is not the case)

I just feel like the resistance penetration serves as an additional measure to keep the difficulty challenging

It actually is the opposite! The point of doing resistance pen per level is to reduce the impact of having not maxed resistances on character. So you can spend affix slots on more important defence factors. Also with this system having resistance buffs on cooldown would not be a death sentence when you get hit.

This reminds me of "survivor bias" where armoring whatever was hit on a vehicle returned from battle sounds like a good idea but in reality it's the worst you can do. Similar with this damage system, it looks bad for tanking, but it actually makes defences more reliable/stronger overall. It's all about looking at the big picture.

[RodHull]

I am indifferent to the current system, it has its good and bad points. But it should be noted that it has changed since early beta, Resistances and blocking/mitigation used to function differently so this is their second iteration. It used to be a little more unique (and also a bit nonsensical) so they reverted to this as its more in line with how most ARPGs do it.

[Crimzon]

I don't get your issue they still reduce the damage you take. You explained it. If you have zero resists at 75 you take 75% increased damage. So getting resist does still reduce your damage taken. Armor while providing full reduction to physical also provides some decrease to non-physical. Its helps balance the classes too as each class has its own helm/body/boots specific gear with higher or lower armor values are depending on class. Some classes/masteries also make better use of other defense tools like glancing blow, dodge, ward, block and endurance.

[calinsmeu]

Originally posted by Feardemon:

I don't get your issue they still reduce the damage you take. You explained it. If you have zero resists at 75 you take 75% increased damage. So getting resist does still reduce your damage taken. Armor while providing full reduction to physical also provides some decrease to non-physical. Its helps balance the classes too as each class has its own helm/body/boots specific gear with higher or lower armor values are depending on class. Some classes/masteries also make better use of other defense tools like glancing blow, dodge, ward, block and endurance.

No it doesn't. Let's do math again. If you take 100 damage with no resistance, with 75% resistance you should take 25 damage no matter what level. With the resistance penetration in LE if the enemy does 100 damage and has a penetration of say 40 at level 40 and you have your resistance capped at 75 lets say than you actually have a resistance of 35%. So the enemy does 140 - 35% of it which is 49, which means you take 91 damage. That is not a 75% damage reduction, because tehnically the enemy still does 100 damage, but has a penetration backend damage.
Now to be fair, i really don't remember how defenses work in D2 as i played it about 15 years ago, but every arpg i played since then has actual resistances - i dunno where people that answered get their data. Let's see - Grim Dawn (which atm is probably my fav) - every % of defense reduces said percent in damage - sure each difficulty reduces your resistance value but you simply get higher values on items and counter the reduction. At the end of the day you 80% resistance still reduces 80% of incoming damage. Diablo 3 - same thing - every % of resistance reduces damage by that %. Torchlight - same. PoE - same. While it's not entirely an Arpg - it still a sort of looter rpg - the Dragon Age series - resistances work as they say. And so on.
My point is that in the character sheet you look at the resistance values and it says 75%. But no where does it say that the game has a backend system that basically increases enemy resistance penetration up to 75%, which basically means that if you have your resistance capped at 75% and you are level 75, you simply have ZERO resistance. It's a stat that is just not actually true and is not transparent towards the player - especially a new player who's gonna look at his resistances, see a fire resistance of 75 and wonder why he gets hit by an orbital railgun everytime a fire projectile hits him. Anyway thanks for the answers i guess.

[Echt]

How do you know that this system is implemented in the game..based on what inormations??Sorry, I am beginer in LE...lev.35 and my frist character.... So I do not know enough about game.

[Echt]

Originally posted by wespe___o=/:*:

Originally posted by Echt:

How do you know that this system is implemented in the game..based on what inormations??Sorry, I am beginer in LE...lev.35 and my frist character.... So I do not know enough about game.

Yes, ingame it´s a bit hidden.. need to hover over the respective resistance to see :D:
Added it to the guide (-> Stats+Resistances)
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2506053121

Oh :) , thanks for clarifications and you made a nice Guide . I did not notice additional table in resistance stats . Quite interesting . I am curious about the more final form of this resistance system after the release of the game and in MP.

[Subak]

Originally posted by calinsmeu:

No it doesn't. Let's do math again.

So you say.

I'm a bit skeptical till I see a level 75 with 0 resists taking the same hits as with 75 resist to that element.

[ling.speed]

Originally posted by calinsmeu:

My point is that in the character sheet you look at the resistance values and it says 75%. But no where does it say that the game has a backend system that basically increases enemy resistance penetration up to 75%

And nowhere on the stats screens of other games you have information on their damage as well.

Issue here is: older systems are "easy" to do the math on but play not great, LE plays better but math is confusing (or not, depending how you look). Thats because in practice every game is balanced around capped resistances. This means by the time you reach end game in normal arpg mobs have effectively quad damage enabled to counter your 75% resistance. And if you loose for example 25% of that res, you are hit TWICE as hard. Even worse if you are naked in hell in D2 and gain 25% res, then you take 17% less damage. Thats not intuitive nor consistant.

While in LE if you loose 10% resistance you take around 10% more damage. And instead of taking exponentially more damage the lower your resistance, the damage increases less the lower the res.

This creates few gameplay improvements:
- more build variety: you are not forced to cap resistance so you can better pick gear/passives etc.
- smoother gear changes, skill respecs etc: you are not punished too hard for momentary significant lack of resistances.
- more usable buffs: you can use temporary buffs to get to the cap and not be one shot when it's on cooldown.
- more natural apporximation of worth of the stat: no math required, as long you are below cap the affix resistance value closely resembles it's impact on damage recived.
- smoother difficulty changes - as mobs level up or use resistance shredding abilities, you are not suddenly stripped of most of your defences, instead the damage ramps up gradually and you can have close calls indicating need for better gear without death.

I'm not gonna deny it's definitely confusing system for arpg veterans, but the pen per level of mobs is mentioned in few places (game guide, loading tips), and there are significant gameplay benefits for it, so it should be worthwile taking time understanding it.

[calinsmeu]

Originally posted by Jo Daddy:

Originally posted by calinsmeu:

No it doesn't. Let's do math again.

So you say.

I'm a bit skeptical till I see a level 75 with 0 resists taking the same hits as with 75 resist to that element.

You do realize being skeptical against a simple math calculus is kinda redundant. Here it goes:

Level 75 - we take creature X that does 100 fire damage. With the fire penetration it gets it actually does 175 damage. If you have 75% fire resistance, with the current system you get 100 dmage from it- read it in their damn resistance tooltip. If you actually had 75% fire resistance, and the enemy still did 175 damage, you would mitigate 131.25% of that damage (that's what 75% of 175 is), which means you would take 43.75 damage. It's as simple as that.

[calinsmeu]

Originally posted by ling.speed:

Originally posted by calinsmeu:

My point is that in the character sheet you look at the resistance values and it says 75%. But no where does it say that the game has a backend system that basically increases enemy resistance penetration up to 75%

And nowhere on the stats screens of other games you have information on their damage as well.

Issue here is: older systems are "easy" to do the math on but play not great, LE plays better but math is confusing (or not, depending how you look). Thats because in practice every game is balanced around capped resistances. This means by the time you reach end game in normal arpg mobs have effectively quad damage enabled to counter your 75% resistance. And if you loose for example 25% of that res, you are hit TWICE as hard. Even worse if you are naked in hell in D2 and gain 25% res, then you take 17% less damage. Thats not intuitive nor consistant.

While in LE if you loose 10% resistance you take around 10% more damage. And instead of taking exponentially more damage the lower your resistance, the damage increases less the lower the res.

This creates few gameplay improvements:
- more build variety: you are not forced to cap resistance so you can better pick gear/passives etc.
- smoother gear changes, skill respecs etc: you are not punished too hard for momentary significant lack of resistances.
- more usable buffs: you can use temporary buffs to get to the cap and not be one shot when it's on cooldown.
- more natural apporximation of worth of the stat: no math required, as long you are below cap the affix resistance value closely resembles it's impact on damage recived.
- smoother difficulty changes - as mobs level up or use resistance shredding abilities, you are not suddenly stripped of most of your defences, instead the damage ramps up gradually and you can have close calls indicating need for better gear without death.

I'm not gonna deny it's definitely confusing system for arpg veterans, but the pen per level of mobs is mentioned in few places (game guide, loading tips), and there are significant gameplay benefits for it, so it should be worthwile taking time understanding it.

Hmmm ... i suppose that makes sense overall, it just feels off knowing that even though i look at a character sheet where it says i have capped resistances, being level 75 i basically have zero resistance.

[^DreeMax^]

Do I miss something?
You have armor value and resistance value. Armor shows exact damage reduction and resistance give extra damage resolution to specific element.
Higher the level of area, higher the damage from enemies, which seems logical. What's the problem again?

[calinsmeu]

Originally posted by ^FuN^ DreeMax:

Do I miss something?
You have armor value and resistance value. Armor shows exact damage reduction and resistance give extra damage resolution to specific element.
Higher the level of area, higher the damage from enemies, which seems logical. What's the problem again?

The problem is not the increase in enemy damage but how it's shown. My point was that the current resistance system is a false visual as your % resistance is basically canceled by a backend system almost no one seems to know about which basically reduces your resistance by 1% with each level. So while at level 75 your character sheet shows you have 75% resistance to a specific damage if capped - you basically have 0 as at that level all enemies have 75 resistance penetration. And since apparently you didn;t take the time to read anything before coming with a smug useless comment - in short an enemy that does 100 fire damage at level 1 will still do 100 fire damage if his level matches your resistance level, even though according to your sheet, it should have a reduction. My point is not about the system itself but about it being wrongly implemented in the UI. When someone sees x% damage reduction he thinks that's how much he reduces said damage, which is not the case in LE. I've already shown the math difference between penetration and actual % reduction in a post earlier. You can see it there.