Harm penalties (Full Version)

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Andlu -> Harm penalties (3/9/2024 8:38:37)

In AQ, we are expected to be hitting for the better element in every battle, which, in standard, is 130%, meaning we're dealing 1.3 damage. Despite that, harm, which is an element that MOST monsters have a 100% resistance to, also has a 10% damage penalty, for being always useful. But this makes little sense considering we're 'meant' to hit for 130% damage in every battle, when harm gets a penalty, making it hit 90%

I personally feel like the "always useful" penalty makes no sense when the standard accomadates for you hitting over the % harm can actually do. I'm not saying harm should be dealing 130% damage to every opponent no matter what, as it can be considered a 'lazy' element, meaning you don't need to switch, but the always useful penalty is overkill for what it actually is meant to do.



Sapphire -> RE: Harm penalties (3/9/2024 20:00:45)

I think it's fine to have that as a penalty. On the surface without context, one could argue it's not always useful. However, in the bigger picture when you add the context of what types of monsters that harm is actually beneficial to use on, and then consider how harm's power scales as mob element scales more and more towards zero, a penalty is warranted.

Let's say we have the 8 standard elements, and harm. (yeah yeah there's more ) Most monsters have at least 1 element to 100%+, making harm element the worst option vs using the monster's weakest element. But there's more to this picture than that. Monster's elements range from even into the negatives all the way to a cap of 200%.

So if we drop all monsters that have anything above 90%, what's left are monsters that are 90% or lower to everything.

From here, as you scale downwards towards zero, the power of harm grows and grows and grows and grows and grows.

In other words, using harm vs a monster with 80% resist is a 12.5% boost compared to whatever element is 80%. If the monster has all 50's, using harm is a 80% boost compared to using the element the 50% is to. . And it grows and grows the lower monster resists move towards zero. As a result, the types of monsters that you'd use harm on kind of become trivial, and become more and more trivial the further towards zero their resists go..just because you carry harm. So really, what's the point in making a monster with all 10% when the player can bypass it with a single harm item, or even worse, an item that can toggle to harm mode? Harm is more powerful than what people wish to give it credit for, despite it being the worse choice vs a standard model monster.

I think the penalty then, is warranted. Monster design space by lower and lower resists is just negated via harm unless they actually make harm element not be 100%...

I believe this is a classic case of allowing the name of the penalty to distract from actual real life gameplay implications. The brain says "wait a minute, it's not actually always useful" and "so that penalty must go away" It's a bad name for the penalty, is all.

It's more akin to being a compression penalty, in that you don't need to cover all of your elements if you so choose not to and it will be worse vs some monsters but good vs others. Again, calling it always useful is bogus. But the penalty is warranted.



CH4OT1C! -> RE: Harm penalties (3/9/2024 20:37:00)

Practically, this penalty may be quite difficult to remove if it's applied to each item individually, rather than from a central file.

With that said, this penalty serves no purpose.

quote:

However, in the bigger picture when you add the context of what types of monsters that harm is actually beneficial to use on, and then consider how harm's power scales as mob element scales more and more towards zero, a penalty is warranted.

This criticism is inherently flawed as it undermines the very concept of harm to begin with. If harm at 100% is too strong, why apply a completely arbitrary penalty instead of... just making harm resistance something other than 100%? This could theoretically be done on a case-by-case basis or systematically depending on preference. Moreover, why is 90% considered an acceptable reduction on 100%? The numbers provided fail to mitigate either of these key problems.

Strictly speaking, I agree with @Andlu that this penalty serves no purpose when applied to harm. The element is already considerably weaker than what the player is assumed to deal and, if that's still too much, the simple solution is to change harm resistance rather than apply an arbitrarily valued penalty. However, to reiterate, it may be impossible to retroactively implement this change.



CarrionSpike -> RE: Harm penalties (3/10/2024 0:41:55)

I agree that changing the penalty now doesn't make much as logistically since there are so many Harm items/effects in the game at this point. Furthermore, even if retroactive changes were easy you'd then have to discuss potentially removing the always-useful penalty that is applied to Healing items/effects as this is the same penalty that is applied to Harm items/effects*, and anything relating to healing is another can of worms entirely.

*Note: This is because Harm and Healing are both non-standard elements that are modified by an assumed 100% resistance.



CH4OT1C! -> RE: Harm penalties (3/10/2024 7:53:15)

@CarrionSpike: You're absolutely right to raise that this does call into question the always useful penalty as applied to healing for the same reasons as apply to harm - if it's too strong, just change the resistance. Of course, healing player HP and dealing damage are two different things, but they do at least have this basic characteristic in common.



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