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Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2356
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Posted - 2013.08.05 19:35:00 -
[1] - Quote
I'm going to try to keep this edition of the 'Perfecting the Roles' series as brief as possible because it's honestly not as in depth as some of my previous posts.
That doesn't make it any less important however and honestly I feel that this edition is the most important article I've written to date and I'm actually very intrigued to see what CCP Wolfman and Remnant have to say about it.
This all started as a rumor I heard among my corporation that Mass Drivers did full damage no matter what range as long as it was within the splash radius. Essentially what this meant is that one meter away or five meters away, it was still going to do the full amount of damage.
Well, to that end I have some good news and some bad news.
The good news is that this myth isn't true - there is an escalation toward damage as the round lands closer and closer to the target.
The bad news, and this is very important, is that splash damage completely ignores the rules of damage application to shields and armor. That being said, the damage application peak is pretty steep. From our testing we've found that at the very edge of it's splash radius it will do very little damage but it shoots straight up to it's full damage potential at around half of it's splash radius.
So let's talk a little more about the damage application toward tanking style and why this is important.
According to the laws of Weapon Efficiency vs Shield/Armor that the game sets forth, a standard Mass Driver with no skills (I.E, me) will do 242 direct damage and 116 splash damage at it's base. Now, being as it is an explosive weapon it's supposed to do less damage to shields and more damage to armor.
This is where we run into our first problem.
- The efficiency of the weapon isn't the same as is listed on the dev blog: https://web.ccpgamescdn.com/dust/news.control/64862/1/damageprofiles.jpg
As we can see here, the listed damage is -20% to shields and +20% to armor. It's actually something like -30% on shields and we're not sure what the efficiency is on armor because we weren't brave enough to go that far.
Now the second (and most important) problem.
- Splash damage is not affected by the reduced efficiency and will do normal damage.
We conducted the test by setting up a Nanohive as our staging point and having the target (in this case a Proto Heavy) stand 4m away. All skills considered on my end, the maximum splash radius on the Mass Driver is 4.2m. At approximately 2m, the weapon starts to dish out full splash damage. In this range we found a running average of 115.6 damage - right about what it's supposed to do without reduced efficiency.
Direct damage does have the application of reduced damage to shields, however, with direct rounds landing 170 damage consistently (reduced from 242, according to basic mathematics it's supposed to do 169.4, so this is right around what it's supposed to). Headshots are consistent as well, so the only discrepancy is the splash damage not being affected by these numbers.
That being said we tried some other weapons out to see how they were affected and whether or not this was localized just to the Mass Driver.
What we discovered is that there is definitely something odd going on with the weapons as the Forge Gun did a whopping 300 damage (splash damage for the militia is 231) and the Plasma Cannon did 323 (with my skills it was supposed to do 302 - though this is consistent with increased damage to shields). Unfortunately the testing site at this point was being harassed by other players who refused to acknowledge that we were testing for the sake of easy(ier?) kills.
So, what we do know is that there is some outside interference with Splash Damage. Something is occurring with it to increase the amount of damage beyond what is being listed on 'Show Info'. We don't know what it is yet but you can bet that we're going to be conducted further tests until we figure out exactly what it is.
If anyone has more information regarding this phenomenon, please inform us so that we may press for more accurate results.
CCP, if you're reading this, I'm sure we would all love a bit of investigation into what is happening! |
Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2357
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Posted - 2013.08.05 19:51:00 -
[2] - Quote
Leovarian L Lavitz wrote:
Probably a bug. Before 1.3 I was dealing reduced damage to shields with splash, I haven't run a non-grenade weapon with splash after the update. My grenades appear to be having their damage reduced appropriately against shield players.
We tested Grenades sparsely, we're going to test those rather extensively later on once we have a more thorough understanding of what is actually happening and whether or not it applies with all weapons. Once we have that down, we'll tackle Locus and Flux grenades. |
Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2358
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Posted - 2013.08.05 20:28:00 -
[3] - Quote
Added video in middle of post. |
Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2363
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Posted - 2013.08.06 05:24:00 -
[4] - Quote
Iron Wolf Saber wrote:Thank for your work, CPM Hans got it forwarded.
Awesome.
I'm actually wondering how the Flaylock thing would have gone down had this been applied correctly in the past o_o;;; |
Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2364
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Posted - 2013.08.06 05:57:00 -
[5] - Quote
D legendary hero wrote:hey can you do a perfecting the roles on ARs next? it would be interesting
AR's are a finicky subject but I can see what I can do. They are my weapon of choice as well so there will definitely be some inevitable bias but I will do my best to keep a level head about it. |
Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2366
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Posted - 2013.08.06 06:30:00 -
[6] - Quote
RINON114 wrote:The efficiency of the sniper rifle is off too. It has 90% on shields.
Railguns, by design, do less damage to shields and more damage to armor - so this actually makes sense. |
Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2368
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Posted - 2013.08.06 07:11:00 -
[7] - Quote
SponkSponkSponk wrote:Aeon Amadi wrote:We tested Grenades sparsely, we're going to test those rather extensively later on once we have a more thorough understanding of what is actually happening and whether or not it applies with all weapons. Once we have that down, we'll tackle Locus and Flux grenades. We did some testing of grenades. Locus grenades appear to be +/-30% instead of +/- 20%. Would like to see whether your results concur.
They do. All explosive weapons - including the Flaylock - do +/-30%
I assume this is an error on CCP's part of whoever made the chart. |
Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2368
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Posted - 2013.08.06 07:12:00 -
[8] - Quote
FLAYLOCK Steve wrote:So nerf the mass driver again until it doesn't work? Well I guess so.
This would be a buff by anyone's rights. You need to lose the opinionated ideals and see past the red line at what's really going on, because if the damage isn't being reduced against shields than it's not being buffed against armor.
Now, please, don't jump to conclusions. |
Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2369
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Posted - 2013.08.06 07:30:00 -
[9] - Quote
FLAYLOCK Steve wrote:Aeon Amadi wrote:FLAYLOCK Steve wrote:So nerf the mass driver again until it doesn't work? Well I guess so. This would be a buff by anyone's rights. You need to lose the opinionated ideals and see past the red line at what's really going on, because if the damage isn't being reduced against shields than it's not being buffed against armor. Now, please, don't jump to conclusions. Ah I see. Sorry , just been on the defensive lately. People are getting on my nerves on forums lately crying about every damn weapon in the game.
Understandable, this isn't about that though - the Perfecting the Roles series is about approaching things without bias for the health of the game  |
Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2383
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Posted - 2013.08.06 16:51:00 -
[10] - Quote
matsumoto yuichi san wrote:who wants to bet the splash damage is being applied in such a way it picks up as a headshot since part of it has a vector to the head, no matter where the explosion comes from so it gets a boost from that ? not that all the damage counts as HS but some of it ?
119-122 damage would kind of make sense but I think it's entirely circumstantial...
116*1.04=120.64
So... Kinda makes sense but that's sort of a reach. Think it's just a sick coincidence. |
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Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2383
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Posted - 2013.08.06 18:15:00 -
[11] - Quote
Terry Webber wrote:Good work, Aeon. Hope CCP sees this.
To my knowledge it's been passed on via the CPM  |
Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2383
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Posted - 2013.08.06 18:34:00 -
[12] - Quote
Terry Webber wrote:Aeon Amadi wrote:Terry Webber wrote:Good work, Aeon. Hope CCP sees this. To my knowledge it's been passed on via the CPM Yeah, I saw that. I just hope CCP will consider your suggestions.
If they consider any I would definitely like them to fix the 'rounding' of PG/CPU resource costs on modules as they can eat up a few PG unnecessarily.
Alternatively, I would like them to give the Scouts some much needed love since they're going to become extinct in 1.4
nb4 respec for scouts |
Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2387
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Posted - 2013.08.06 22:54:00 -
[13] - Quote
Updating this thread with some more information and a video to show my results.
Corp-mate asked me to test the effects of splash damage in regards to friendly fire - basically how much damage is done to the player firing the round.
Test consisted of the use of a Standard Mass Driver (splash radius: 4.2m) and a Standard Nanohive (Effective Range: 4.0m). Standing on one end of the nanohive's radius (2.0m) I fire at the other end of the Nanohive's range and close the distance until I start taking damage.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1GX8x9bOjE&feature=youtu.be
So, with this test I discovered three very important things:
A.) Splash radius on the user is halved. The normal splash radius on the Standard Mass Driver (with my skills) is 4.2m and as you can see in the video, I was only receiving splash damage at a 2m distance or less.
B.) Splash damage on the user retains it's normal damage without taking into account resistances, as indicated in my original post. This isn't something that is limited to enemy targets, but includes the user as well.
C.) Found by complete accident - and you can probably see my confused behavior in the video - a bug in which aiming directly at the ground and firing will cause you to instantly turn 180 degrees. Might be advantageous for those who are feeling brave and don't want to waste time turning around. Will need further testing to see if this applies to all suits, however.
While not shown in the video, Plasma Cannons and Forge Guns retain the halved splash radius to damage the user as well.
That being said the video I'm providing is irrefutable proof that the distance at which the person using the weapon begins to take damage is effectively half of what it normally is against another player. This is something that I feel needs to be fixed to encourage more responsible use of the weapons in question.
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Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2391
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Posted - 2013.08.07 09:04:00 -
[14] - Quote
I'm only going to test the AR if I feel that there's something wrong with it and considering that it's my main weapon I haven't found anything wrong with it to date.
The whole reason I've done the 'Perfecting the Roles' series was because each individual section of it covers a topic that has something inherently wrong with it, in this case it was over a myth that Mass Drivers did full splash damage no matter what the range in their splash radius. In disproving this, I found a degree of other things.
That being said the only issue I see with AR's is the Breach Assault Rifle due to it's low performance but I don't have to test it to tell you that it's under-powered, it's under-powered on paper.
As far as the weapon trees, I don't see anything wrong with them because they're there because the racial variants aren't in-game right now and taking them out is just hurting players who invested the time/SP into them for the sake of that versatility. If you remove the weapon trees from AR's, you have to remove the weapon tree from Scrambler Rifles, small as it may be. I don't think anyone would like that idea.
Honestly, considering that the Assault Rifle is so accurate, it puts more emphasis on the player's skill. A submachine is a 'spray and pray' weapon and while it does rely on a lot of player skill when aiming down the sights, it's not so much when firing from the hip. Considering that the Assault Rifle has no splash damage and is slightly more effective against shields than armor (but not so much to be discombobulating to the player) it's the most well-balanced skill intensive weapon we currently have in the game.
I'm against taking things away once they've been introduced because it's more of a drastic change than simply fine-tuning and tweaking. It's the difference between balancing the Tactical Rifle and outright removing the Marauder Tanks. Anytime you remove something from the game - for whatever reason - you're hurting the players who used that particular item, more so than if you had just nerfed it.
What I feel the Assault Rifle -does- need in the game, however, is for specialist weapons to actually achieve their roles. Laser Rifles are a big issue in that they're just too impractical to use. ADS settings for it were built for precision but given that it's effective range puts it into a situation where it can't aim fast enough to hit a moving target at the range it was built for, well, I'm sure you see where this is going. I'll have to write an article about it later.
So, yes, I feel that the Assault Rifle is in a good place - but the other weapons are not.
.... but if you can convince me that there's something wrong beyond the skill tree, I might be more willing. |
Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2392
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Posted - 2013.08.07 09:35:00 -
[15] - Quote
Absolute Idiom II wrote:This is a good thread Aeon. I hope these issues get raised as defects - especially the reduced splash damage range for friendly fire to oneself. At the very least I'd expect this thread to be highlighted in the 'bugs discussed this week' to at least determine if this is 'by design' or not.
Lol, by design...
This is why explosives weaponry in real life often have a system in play that prevents them from exploding too close to the user - rather than magical rainbow physics that causes the radius to be reduced to the person with the weapon in hand. |
Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2394
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Posted - 2013.08.07 10:09:00 -
[16] - Quote
Mobius Kaethis wrote:Out of interest did you find that explosive weapon shots that were direct hits did both the direct hit damage and splash damage to the target? I have had a hunch this is happening but have no testing/data to confirm or debunk the theory.
No, they don't and you can see from my video that they do not. This is a myth that spawned from Flaylock pistols doing large amounts damage but as I explain in another thread it's entirely possible to get that sort of damage with extreme fittings.
All (flaylock) skills level 5, damage mods and headshot damage could easily exceed the value that you would get with direct + splash damage. |
Aeon Amadi
A.N.O.N.Y.M.O.U.S.
2408
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Posted - 2013.08.09 06:05:00 -
[17] - Quote
I'd like to bring another aspect to the table in this edition of Perfecting the Roles
Unfortunately it's going to require some extensive testing when I have more time (exhausted from studying right now).
This time I want to see the effects of the 'camera shake' from a Mass Driver round as opposed to other things as this seems to be rather unique to weapons that have splash damage. I feel this is adding to their adverse conditioning as a truly balanced weapon as it seems a bit difficult to fire back when your camera is jerking around unnecessarily simply because of one weapon - whereas weapons like Laser Rifles, HMGs and Assault Rifles do not do this. |
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