Action games

TL;DR:

The current damage system doesn't allow Arrowhead to balance individual weapons quickly without accounting for too many factors (whack-a-mole). Things get missed, and players get angry due to a lack of clear and available information.

Explanation:

I'll start by briefly summarizing how the damage calculation works, then I'll describe each element as far as I understand them, and lastly I'll describe the problem I see with balancing the game in it's current form.

Damage Calculation:

Weapons do damage, and enemies have health. When you shoot an enemy, several calculations are done to determine how much health is removed.

First, an armour check is performed.

• If your weapon armour penetration value is GREATER than the enemy's armour value, you deal 100% damage.

• If your weapon armour penetration value is EQUAL to the enemy's armour value, you deal 50% damage.

• If your weapon armour penetration value is LESS than the enemy's armour value, you deal 0% damage.

Second, the durable damage calculation is performed to determine what percentage of the damage you deal is actually dealt to the enemy.

• Each weapon has a second damage stat that it invisible to the player, this is the damage it deals to durable targets.

• Each target has a percentage of durability. This represents how much of the damage they receive is calculated from the durable damage of the target

• For example, the Liberator Penetrator has a damage stat of 45, but a hidden durable damage stat of only 15. When firing at a target that has 0% durability, it does 45 damage. When firing at a target with 100% durability, it deals 15 damage. If the durability statistic is somewhere in the middle, it splits the damage. Here's the formula and an example table using the Liberator Penetrator for clarity:

Damage Dealt = [(1 - durability %) * damage] + [(durability %) * durable damage]

Examples of low durability targets are: Bile/Nursing spewer heads, Devastators, Berserkers, Hulk head, most small enemies

Examples of high durability targets are: Bile/Nursing spewer sacs, Charger butts, Tanks

Third, the damage is applied to the part of the enemy that was hit.

• The enemy has a "Main Health" value, when this reaches zero the enemy dies.

• Enemy bodies are broken into destructible components, usually the head, body/torso, and arms/legs, although there are clearly exceptions. Each component has its own health pool. When it reaches zero, some kind of event happens (bleedout, limb removed, armor stripped, etc).

• Some components are marked as "fatal". If these components are destroyed, the enemy dies. (Heads or weak points)

• Each component also has a percentage of the damage it receives that it transmitted to the enemy's "Main Health" value, usually ranging from 35%-100%.

• Some components are marked as "explosion immune". If I'm understanding this correctly, these parts do not take damage from explosions, which in my opinion explains the silly behaviour around enemies surviving massive explosions. (I believe this was added to avoid "double dipping" from explosive weapons that were previously 1-shotting enemies by hitting all of their limbs at once, but I don't know the full history of it so this is all speculation)

The Problem:

Let's say we want to rebalance something that feels lackluster. Like the Arc Thrower. What levers do we pull? Let's examine the issues.

The Arc Thrower deals 250 damage, and only 50 durable damage. It has an armour penetration value of 7 (!) meaning that it can ignore almost all armour.

The 'face' of a Brood Commander has 200 health, and 2 armor, so it feels like this weapon should penetrate the medium armour and deal more than enough damage to kill the enemy. However the head has 60% durability, meaning that it actually only receives 130 damage from a direct headshot despite the armor being fully penetrated. Keeping the durability system as it currently is, if we wanted to reduce the weapon's breakpoint to a single shot we would need to increase damage to 425, almost double the current damage.

(Before you complain about that being overpowered, keep in mind the Adjudicator currently pops Brood Commander heads in 5 rounds full-auto which is significantly faster than charging the Arc Thrower, also with higher range)

Buffing the Arc Thrower this way would create other problems though. it would be one-tapping other enemies that it might not have been designed to one-tap. For example nursing spewers heads, or Hulk heads (if you can land the shot).

If we give the nursing spewer head 50% durability to counteract this, the Liberator Penetrator goes from dealing 45 damage per hit to 30 damage per hit, requiring 50% more rounds to kill with perfect accuracy. The Adjudicator is hit harder, going from 80 to 48, requiring almost twice the rounds. Balancing around durability creates an endless game of whack-a-mole where any weapons that get missed feel like garbage.

Comparison:

Let's examine a weapon that is widely accepted to be fun, powerful, and balanced. The Autocannon.

The Autocannon fires a projectile that deals 260 damage (260 durable damage) with an explosion that deals 150 damage (150 durable damage). The projectile has an armor penetration value of 4, the explosion having a value of 3.

The autocannon explodes Brood Commander heads in 1-shot because the damage isn't affected by durability (or rather, the durable damage is the same), but it still requires two shots to kill Nursing Spewers.

It is also able to take out Gunship thrusters in two shots. The Arc Thrower (if it could reach them, which I don't believe it can) would require... can you guess? 8 hits do do the same thing.

I argue that the reason the Autocannon feels so good and reliable to use is because it IGNORES durability, as a result of it having equal damage and durable damage.

Conclusion:

I'll stop here. The damage, armour, and durability system is complicated, which creates a completely invisible and unintuitive second and third layer of calculations that a player would need to do to understand why their equipment is performing the way that it does.

Additionally, I suspect that explosion immunity is causing a bunch of very strange combat behaviour that needs to be examined. Especially when the explosive damage from a weapon is being included in its displayed damage.

Suggestions:
These suggestions all stem from the core belief that a player should pick up a gun and be able to get a feel for how it works quickly, either based on in-game data, consistent performance, or (preferably) a combination of the two. Any inconsistency will result in players feeling bad and assuming there's something wrong with the weapon or with the game (which we want to AVOID, right?)

• Separate 'Projectile Damage' and 'Explosion Damage' on the screen. Maybe 'Fire Damage' too, honestly. Also provide a radius, perhaps even with a picture of what that radius size looks like relative to differently sized enemies. Show an inner radius that is full damage, and the outer radius that is half->0 damage. Most of these explosions are pitifully weak.

• Rely on the mantra of "Damage -> Armour -> Effect".

• Things that look armoured should have higher armour, things that look like weak points should not have armour, allowing primary weapons to hurt them. Enemies with rear facing weak points should have animations that leave them open to being attacked (See: Hulk, Tank turret - should overheat and open heat sink vents to cool, allowing them to be shot) (Also See: Charger - longer pause after charge before turning)

• Reduce the number of armour values (see below)

• ALL armor values should be either 0 (none), 1 (Light), 3 (Medium), or 5 (Heavy).

• Keep your current system of: Below = 0 damage, Equal = half, Above = full. This is simple and easy to understand from playing the game. This means that at a weapon will be able to easily fight an armor value, barely fight an armor value, or not fight an armor value, based on where it sits. This would be immediately evident in the game. White flash = full damage, red flash = half damage, shield icon = no damage.

• Remove 'Durability' altogether. Instead, simply balance health to emulate durability, or shift armor values to make things tougher to damage, or AP values to make weapons more effective.

• Some weapons would need to be reworked for this to make sense. The AMR, for instance, deals insane damage (450!) with only 135 durable damage which balances it against certain enemies at AP4. The AMR obviously shouldn't be 1-shotting Gunship engines, so removing durability would require the damage to be lowered. Likewise, lowering damage this way would require enemy health to be rebalanced.

Concession:

I'm not a game dev and I'm not an authority here, I'm just an enthusiast. The team seems to care and so do the majority of players. The reason that this is to Arrowhead's benefit is because it allows them to modify their game more rapidly without an endless series of whack-a-mole imbalances being created, and without players feeling distrust towards balance decisions.

I also concede that there are myriad ways to balance the game outside of damage. Fire rate, recoil, spread, range, drop-off (lol drama), etc. This is just one that I feel needs to be front and centre right now.

It is my opinion that balancing the game with the current system in place is wasting a lot of development energy that could be pointed towards optimizing fun, which is what it SOUNDS LIKE everyone wants. I know I sure do. So much so that I'm sitting on Reddit writing an essay about it.

If you got this far, thanks for attending my TED talk. Sorry it's so long.