Damage vs Time Issue
February 24, 2016 5:54PM
edited February 2016
TL;DR: The damage of basic attacks vs skill damage vs skill cooldowns vs action speed is not in balance for many characters here. There should be a trade-off between them, not all high across the board.
This certainly isn't the first thread to address the concept, but I want to hit it directly. There are a lot of variables that go into how much damage a well balanced character should to over time, like how hard it is to kill and additional utility it provides. Damage over a set time period varies, and in most games with a wide variety of characters (think back to a MOBA of your choice) some characters front load damage while others do high sustained damage. Some characters hit rapidly for low amounts, some hit once every blue moon but they hit really hard.
One of the problems SWGoH is running in to is the damage spread is off. Its not just a relative weight of damage vs defense, while that is a problem it's for another topic. The damage of basic attacks vs skills vs cooldowns vs speed is not in balance for many characters here. By that I mean, in general, the faster a character acts the lower its damage should be per action, and the harder a special skill hits, the longer its cooldown should be. Also, generally characters with very strong special attacks would have weaker basic attacks. Back to the MOBA analogy think dps carry vs burst caster.
Currently, many of the "top tier" characters in SWGoH are ones that act quickly and hit hard on both basics and specials, and their specials are on short cooldowns. Of course you would use these characters, they are excelling in every offensive stat. You aren't trading damage for speed, or burst damage for sustained damage, you just get everything.
The game would have a much larger layer of strategy both in planning a squad and in action if cannon characters were varied in execution. If some characters had tremendously powerful long cooldown specials but weak basics, or some characters had blazing speed and strong on hit effects but per attack were relatively weak. There's a set of variation to play with to also really separate AGI from INT characters, characters going for that opening volley punch vs characters going for consistent damage per turn.
Cementing a real place for Tank, Bruiser, Support, Caster and DPS is a similar theme but a different conversation. Here I'd like to specifically address "Damage" based characters as they are the current problem child of the group as far as effective variety and balance goes. Thoughts?
This certainly isn't the first thread to address the concept, but I want to hit it directly. There are a lot of variables that go into how much damage a well balanced character should to over time, like how hard it is to kill and additional utility it provides. Damage over a set time period varies, and in most games with a wide variety of characters (think back to a MOBA of your choice) some characters front load damage while others do high sustained damage. Some characters hit rapidly for low amounts, some hit once every blue moon but they hit really hard.
One of the problems SWGoH is running in to is the damage spread is off. Its not just a relative weight of damage vs defense, while that is a problem it's for another topic. The damage of basic attacks vs skills vs cooldowns vs speed is not in balance for many characters here. By that I mean, in general, the faster a character acts the lower its damage should be per action, and the harder a special skill hits, the longer its cooldown should be. Also, generally characters with very strong special attacks would have weaker basic attacks. Back to the MOBA analogy think dps carry vs burst caster.
Currently, many of the "top tier" characters in SWGoH are ones that act quickly and hit hard on both basics and specials, and their specials are on short cooldowns. Of course you would use these characters, they are excelling in every offensive stat. You aren't trading damage for speed, or burst damage for sustained damage, you just get everything.
The game would have a much larger layer of strategy both in planning a squad and in action if cannon characters were varied in execution. If some characters had tremendously powerful long cooldown specials but weak basics, or some characters had blazing speed and strong on hit effects but per attack were relatively weak. There's a set of variation to play with to also really separate AGI from INT characters, characters going for that opening volley punch vs characters going for consistent damage per turn.
Cementing a real place for Tank, Bruiser, Support, Caster and DPS is a similar theme but a different conversation. Here I'd like to specifically address "Damage" based characters as they are the current problem child of the group as far as effective variety and balance goes. Thoughts?
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Such damage should not be able to be done so up front without proper setup. Characters like Kylo Ren and Darth Vader on the other hand are very well designed in my opinion. Kylo can do good damage but only under a certain condition (<50% hp). Vader needs to have his target with a bunch of debuffs.
Basically, I'm okay with crazy one-shot killing damage as long as it requires certain setup/synergy to perform, has counters or can be played around, and not just a brain-dead "I-win" button right from the get go.
Agree~
Oh I'm certianly not saying speed is the only issue, it's just the one I'm choosing to address here. And it's not really "speed" per se, but more of the overall concept of dps, burst damage "caster", combo based characters, and ramping damage characters rather than simply having some characters do everything.
Like @Heisen mentioned, some character with high spike damage have setup required and that's great, but even with characters that do big damage off the bat, its ok as long as those characters are much weaker for a few turns while they wait on cooldowns. That's what I'm talking about with burst casters that have weak basics, or combo characters that require setup for big damage. There's no real choice between damage dealers and styles at the moment, all good damage dealers just do huge damage every turn regardless of if they are using a special or basic, and act quickly anyways.
Yes that's part of the equation but its not really what I'm trying to address here. Its not the actual damage but how that damage is dealt, and the drawbacks of certain character archetypes. There should be clearer distinctions between characters, special based characters, fast bsic attackers, slow heavy hitters etc. Currently the best characters are all good at everything, there's no tradeoffs to consider.
Lets just take geobug for example. He's not the strongest in the game but hes up there and he makes a simple case study. He is super fast, has high damage basics, has a high damage special, his special is very low cooldown, and his damage ramps up with free offense up as he goes. Each character should pick 2 or so of these, not all of them.
That is as it should be though, there should always be characters that are skilled in everything, I don't know about the noname bug specifically, but people like Rey, it is fully understandable she is usable in every department (except health of course). Another character that is more devastating than GS is QGJ anyways, but once again, they all have the problem with low health - back to my previous post, I said it will balance out in the end, and looking at GS' max health, it will be 15k, which will fairly horrible once the endgame is released.
At the same time, there are still some widely used characters that do exhibit some of those traits, for example fives.
Why should any single attacker be good at everything? Isn't it healthier (and more fun) to have characters specialized in certain roles? I understand lore-wise Rey is a natural and likely our hero for the next 4 years but this is a game, and you are playing on a holotable within the game. Why not have strengths and weaknesses to play around rather than just picking characters with all strengths?
Medetec you are preaching to the choir. I agree with what you are saying, my point is with the state of the game EA obviously does not care.
No toon should be allowed to be so fast and potentially 1-shoot any other toon in game. That's the biggest mistake in my opinion.
If it's a high damage toon, should be slow.
If it's a high Speed toon, shouldn't hit that hard.
If it's a slow and low damage toon, he should have a TON of Health to compensate.
RG was a good implementation, that indicates they do listen and they are starting to introduce little changes to balance this game.
Very good points OP, I hope devs read your post.
I think that his point is that there needs to be more defined rules of the characters and their abilities and damage should be online with that role. Just reread the op and you'll see what I mean. Even though GS damage increases only moderately compared to his health, he should still not be high damage on all attacks, boost his damage more with free buff, have short cooldowns, and his speed is insane. Everyone he crits he gains like 30% turn meter.
So 1000 (full turn meter) - 300 (his 30% turn meter gain) = 700
700/149 = 4.69 ( this means out only takes him 4.69 turns before he goes again)
For some perspective, Dooku I'd the fastest in the game. For Dooku to get a full turn meter it takes 1000/161 = 6.2 turns
This works out to Dooku having 3 turns to GS having 4 turns.
Combine that with his damage, free offense up buff, and short cooldowns. He has the role of "I'm a beast, use me bc there is no reason to choose someone with trade offs for their strong abilities".
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There should never be a character that is great at everything. They can be average at everything or great at a couple things while being below average at others. This is what balances a game and makes having many characters to choose from worth it.
I've tried to makes whole threads trying to explain this to everyone but I didn't do a good job of explaining it.
@medetec had done a great job of pouring the main issue with this game in perspective. Now, if people can get over not wanting their all in one killing machines changed up for a more balanced and better game with many more possible team archetypes, things may get better.
I believe the speed accumulation was changed, it is now just the fastest character goes first. I don't know how the 30% turn meter affects it though. Also, you have to look at it like this: In a PVP match, you aren't going to use GS' basic attack first, you will use the assist, so for that attack alone, he will not have any offence up, therefore he does 50% damage of his potential. With this damage alone, he can rarely kill a character with over 11k HP unless the assist is very powerful (he leaves it for the rest of the team).
As for the classification of specific roles, it is a good idea in theory, but that is already done in many cases. A good example being FOTP, he is slow, yet damages hard.
But if we take the 3 classes: Rick Ross, Nuker, and Sonic, we should always have at least 2 of the 3 for characters - or just 1 in extreme cases (fives, FOTP, Rey), and this, to the best of my knowledge is followed for most of the characters. In GS' case, he is only slightly tanky, but, once again, I mention the fact that he will not be tanky once endgame stats are released.
I think once the game is done that it will be a little more balanced but some characters will still need to be fine tuned. We just haven't gotten to that point yet and people are forgetting that there are still parts of the game being worked on I.e. Ships and alliances. Those things are taking a back seat while the devs have to fix two or three characters an update because of people complaining over an unfinished product. It's not like they have 600 devs creating this game like they would for a project like destiny. If we give it some time and realize that being obnoxious won't get us to the end game faster we could have a much better game to be played.
I'm well aware this is basically "early access" which is why its important to get out ahead of the curve and make sure your core mechanics are solid before you layer more complexity on to it. Part of the reason to play early access games is to help give the devs feedback on what works and what doesn't work well for the player base.
I'm not calling for specific character nerfs here, I just want to get a voice out there calling for more diverse character archetypes. "Damage" is much less interesting (and less strategically challenging) than a variety of damage based archetypes described in this thread. Strengths and weaknesses.
I'm actually not talking about damage being too high. I like some characters having spike damage. But it should be spikes, not every turn or every other turn. I'm talking about differentiating sustained damge casters who hits reasonably hard each turn, burst casters who hit really hard every few turns but weak hits between cooldowns, speed characters who have weak to average hits but good effects on there basics and hit very often, and more. There are variations you can make that are better suited for different situations. Say for example a very fast character that dealt 10% of the enemies max hp as bonus damage per hit and maybe had a chance to multistrike would be strong against tank teams in an attrition battle, but a "caster" type that fired off a huge special round one but then had weak attacks would be better and removing an enemy glass cannon.
Right now every damage character is just pure damage every turn, and some are just better than others. Each character should have at least one strength and weakness.
I'm talking about between "damage" characters. They are all pretty squishy. I want to differentiate between the large number of squishy characters by having some do big damage upfront and some do more damage over 4time. Right now with the current skillsets, some characters are fast, high damage, high damage special attack, and low cooldown special attack. Say you have someone with a huuuuge damage special, their basic attack should hit like Barriss, and the special should have a respectable cooldown. Assuming some day armor becomes a thing you could have attackers specialized in armor shred or pen, but you would be better taking someone else if the enemy team doesn't have high armor. That kind of thing.
Yes, you are right that as hp goes up, assuming damage doesn't follow at an equal rate, certain other archetypes like Ahsoka and Asajj's attrition based sets may be playable, but regardless of what happens with actual damage vs health total, there's currently no real separation between INT and AGI characters, burst, sustain, and utility attackers in the low to mid hp bracket. The only real differences come in on the side of glass attacker (ie Rey, GS, QGJ etc.) vs bruisers (ie Kylo, Vader and the like). A lot of glow hp attackers (not bruisers) are functionally identical, where some should be burst, some should be sustained, and some should be special case / utility.
I mean, I 7 starred GS and QGJ and I'm working on Rey. Just because you add character specializations doesn't mean they are bad, it just means they aren't the best at everything, and I'm OK with this. They should each get a role they are very good at, so its not like you lose the character as a useful member of your squad, it just encourages diversity as well.
Well having characters that can 1 shot (or thereabout) other squishy characters is an actual archetype, as long as the skill that does it has a long cooldown and their basic attacks are weak. The problem right now is those big burst damage characters also have high meter gain and high damage outside of the specials, and low cd specials.