Change the way respen works

[whitelion]

visage recently made what I think is a very good point in one of the general discussion threads.

To be honest, I've yet to see a game with the concept of "resistance penetration" or "resistance reduction" where it did not turn into the primary offensive stat, and in my mind that means that the game's entire concept of $DAMAGE_TYPE resistance is broken.

It's particularly broken in ToME where you can run into enemies with 100%+ Resist All, and where you can accumulate enough res-pen that the defender's resistances are nearly or completely negated. Once enemies have very high Resist All, the individual resistances that should be making their defenses distinctive are irrelevant; similarly, once you're running around with 70+% resistance penetration in your chosen damage type you no longer care about what the enemy resistances are. The whole system exists to make itself irrelevant outside of focusing a character on a single damage type. ...and that's actually kind of boring.

Given that enemies can have very high resistance penetration/reduction, any player build focused on building up resistances is playing towards optimizing the average case... while leaving you totally vulnerable to dangerous damage spikes.

I'm quite fond of ToME overall, but this is one of the places where I think the design is poor.

Right now, respen does basically nothing against enemies with low resistances, and is hugely powerful against enemies with high resistances, often to the point where their resistances are mostly irrelevant. This seems a bit backwards to me. Respen should let me blow through enemies with a little bit of resistance as if they had none and help moderately with high resistance enemies, but not to the point where I don't feel some effect from their resistance. At the same time, for this to work at all we can't have every randboss on the higher difficulties having huge amounts of resist all. Rather, enemies should have distinct strengths and weaknesses so that damage types matter.

There is no easy and obvious fix, and at this point the game is in so deep on the current way resistance and respen work that it might break a bunch of other stuff to try to rework it.

Still maybe something like:

-damage type resistances work as is but don't get added to resist all
-respen opposes damage resistance additively to calculate effective resistance. For example, an enemies effective fire resistance against my char with fire respen is max{0, enemy fire res - my res pen}. Damage is then reduced by % effective resistance.
-resist all is capped much lower, say 25%, for everyone, including enemies (with the exception of invulnerable monsters)
-resist all cannot be penetrated
-resist all only applies when it would be higher than effective resistance. It's guaranteed to work, but also the last line of defense, and of limited effectiveness, so there is still incentive to build specific resistances
-high respen should be rare on enemies so that player can still benefit against most enemies by building moderate levels of resistance

Under this model, respen is still very useful against enemies with the corresponding resistance, but no longer such a universal offensive stat since you no longer have every relevant monster on insane running around with 40%+ resist all. The tradeoff between building +damage% and respen is more interesting since high respen is wasted on monsters who don't have a particular resist but +damage% suffers against those who do. Of course, again this depends on making it so that monsters actually have distinct strengths and weaknesses in their resistances rather than the current model.

[visage]

Thanks for the signal boost and the thoughts!

If I were to design ToME's resistance system from scratch, I'd do it very differently than as it currently exists; I have some strong pet peeves on the topic...

However, thinking about how one might make improvements without throwing everything away and starting over, I think I'd favor something along the lines of removing Resist All entirely. Any effects that currently give a character Resist All instead provide some renamed percentage damage reduction that is:

• Not subject to Resistance Penetration or Reduction.
• Non-stacking, capped at something like 40%, or both.
• Temporary (with the possible exception of Tarrasca, which ideally would use this effect).

...and then reduce the amount of Resistance Reduction or Penetration that egos and abilities provide. Quite possibly, res-pen should be made non-stacking as well, or capped at some limit.

That would mean that enemies with different resistances would feel different to encounter, and that utilizing a wide variety of damage types would be an alternative to stacking res-pen. It also would mean that players accumulating resistance wouldn't be completely wasted in the face of an enemy with good res-pen.

If you wanted to incorporate whitelion's ideal of "resistance penetration has a noticeable effect even against comparatively weak resistances", you could add in their suggestion to make res-pen subtractive instead of multiplicative, in which case their proposal of a resistance floor of 0 would in my mind be mandatory. (Admittedly, I wish that there already was a resistance floor of 0...)

[HousePet]

However, there already is a stat that allows you to "blow through enemies with a little bit of resistance as if they had none and help moderately with high resistance enemies".
Its called Increased Damage.
Why do we need to duplicate that?

[whitelion]

However, there already is a stat that allows you to "blow through enemies with a little bit of resistance as if they had none and help moderately with high resistance enemies".
Its called Increased Damage.
Why do we need to duplicate that?

That's a good point, why have respen at all? It could be eliminated entirely if enemies were designed with sensible levels of resistance.

Under the current meta where all the insane+ are running around with 40%+ all res respen is just duplicating +damage.

[Zeyphor]

what if something like, the effectiveness of respen is multiplicatively reduced by a percentage equal to 70% of the opposing resistance
so 100% respen vs. 70% resistance would effectively reduce the overall resistance to 35.7%, but 100% respen vs. 30% resistance would effectively reduce the overall resistance to 5.7%

...and what if corruptors and reavers couldn't kill WtWs and sun paladins couldn't kill luminous horrors? I'd rather that it stay unchanged

[whitelion]

Certainly changing/eliminating respen needs to also be accompanied by some changes to the ways enemies generate with resistance.

But I think the goal should be to have a system where
-damage type is relevant and using multiple types of damage is a viable strategy to overcome enemy resistance
-enemies have resistances that make them feel more different from each other
-there is some opportunity cost to stacking respen, unlike in the current system where you should just always do it on higher difficulties.

[Nevuk]

A relatively quick improvement that wouldn't require massive rebalancing would be a damage pen cap, which should probably be part of the game. It's silly that you can't go past 70% resist without perfect gear or talents, but you CAN go past 70% damage pen relatively easily on some classes (let alone enemies who get a boost). Somewhere in the 60-70% range would probably be a good starting point.

Note that according to the tooltips damage pen is multiplicative - 100% Damage Pen will mean 500% resist all is effectively 0, while 95% would mean that it is effectively 25%.

(This means that low numbers are actually a lot better than they would initially appear vs high resistances, while low resistances are relatively unaffected until the pen gets high). This also means it's impossible to overcap - a common strategy in other games vs enemies that have high penetration values.

[starsapphire]

I am very happy about all those ideas of improving the resistance system, but it would be a rather hard work to make it really balanced.

Currently, the elemental system are rather flat. While those damage elements are designed to have their own unique flavors, in actual gameplay there just act identically, maybe except for the mind damage that nobody likes.
It would be rather a pity that a complex and unique elemental theme setting are having very limited effect in game.

However, all those flaws of elemental resistance system are based on some fundamantal contradiction inside the game:

• Player will take ALL 12 types of damage, but some classes, can only deal a few types of damage. Like, berserker can only do physical damage.
• Player should have better defensive options than monsters, despite with fewer HP.
• Player should be able to penetrate the defense of enemy.

All of those above factors are the center of currently game play.
For example, stacking enough resist all the is the key defensive option for all classes.
It is the most default way to give player some additional defense, without the need to introduce a fully new mechanism.

Talents getting single elemental defense is useless for players in late game, since the enemy types are so scattered, and you have no choice among them. While you may not being albe build defense for all the element, the all resistance is still like 12x more precious than elemental specific ones.
However, if the element is just the main damage type dealt by player, it will be very critical: Imaging facing luminous horror, wtws or some wyrms, with 0 respen, and you have invested a lot of talent point in that element, or your class have no much other options anyway.

Reduce the effectiveness of respen working on high resistance will be useful, but it may not change the whole system: Players mainly cares about "I need to deal damage to those tough enemies", like those bone giants or luminous horros, while enemies with low resistances are…just weak.

For example, following Zeyphor's forumula,
100% respen vs. 70% resistance would effectively reduce the overall resistance to 35.7%, thus increasing your damage by 114%.
100% respen vs. 30% resistance would effectively reduce the overall resistance to 5.7%, thus increasing your damage by…just 34%.
We can clearly see which would be more critical.

Rather than a design from the first version of the game, it may be better to see the existing respen mechanism as a product of game development marches on. It is not perfect from the start, but after years of development, it is a de facto standard that will successfully satisfy those 3 requirements, boring but effective.

I am not sure about what kind of result we want to see, but there are two main weak points:
- enemies should have resistances that make them feel more different, and we should use multiple damage types and choose the most effecient one to overcome enemy resistance
but many classes have no choice to change their own damage types, and it is expensive to invest in several completely indepedent damage talent groups, since many class is build with lots of cross talents combos that will only work with enough points sink into them.
- different damage type should be different, and we should act differently to counter them.
but repeatedly changing specific resitance equipment upon every encounter to counter that enemy will be tedious gameplay.

Currently, due to the way respen works, the elements are rather working in a cosmetical way, just a way show the 'flavor' of classes, not actively working in game, at least in later game.
But, reintroduce and strengthen this mechanism will force player to face those problems, which may not be easy to deal with.

[HousePet]

[*]Player will take ALL 12 types of damage, but some classes, can only deal a few types of damage. Like, berserker can only do physical damage.

Wait... So because we have Physical, Mental and Spell Saves that means we should be able to get Physical, Mental and Spell abilities for every class?
I don't follow the logic here.
You have suggested that each damage element should have different gameplay, but if we remove the way that all classes only have limited access to damage elements, then we are making each class play more the same.

[starsapphire]

[*]Player will take ALL 12 types of damage, but some classes, can only deal a few types of damage. Like, berserker can only do physical damage.

Wait... So because we have Physical, Mental and Spell Saves that means we should be able to get Physical, Mental and Spell abilities for every class?
I don't follow the logic here.
You have suggested that each damage element should have different gameplay, but if we remove the way that all classes only have limited access to damage elements, then we are making each class play more the same.

Yes... Maybe my expression is wrong, but my stance is not against it.
The list here is listing 'facts' that should be here in game, and we should embrace them.

Player SHOULD take all types damage, because there are so many different enemies in the world, and we want to make the encounters feel different.
However, while Archmage can get access to various elemental attacks, I don't expect classes like Berserker or Bulwark should act like this, because it's just... strange.

It is a fact about the game, but it implies an imbalance between player and NPC.
For player, they should get defense against all those elements, because if they don't do so, a centain enemy dealing with damage that this player is weak to will be fatal.
But for enemy, even if it only gain resistance for a single element, but the said element is just player's main damage element by chance, and the player is unable to penetrate it, you would be stuck, at least for that enemy. If the enemy is boss that you can't skip, it would be bad news for you.
It's just like Achilles' Heel, since it's a roguelike game. You will battle countless enemies, but if you fail once, you are die.

The other items on that list is also "facts" like that.

For example, facing multiple enemies is cool, and it's a roguelike so you can't always be 1v1 at all times, so you may encounter strong enemies surrounding you.
On the other side, Bosses tend to have high HP that won't be 1hko by you, and you will have a long fight with it. The boss mechanism itself is a david-vs-goliath fight, and player will prove themself, not with superior raw stats, but with superior build, talent using or equipment choosing skills.

The result is here: despite using the same talent mechanism, and even with higher talent levels, player are usually packed with good overall resistance and good resistance penetration, with more wise talent and equipments choosing skills while not every boss will have good resistpen. If they do have, something like Primal Infusion will be ... really weak for player.

Those imbalance is critical about the core game experience currently. For example, if you take away the whole resistance mechanism, equally both from enemies and player, the result will be very unfair for player, since they are more excel with it.

[richardhawk]

+1 for some kind of overhaul. When you have 3+ elements at your disposal, your reaction should be "awesome, tools against various enemies!" not "oh no, i can never get enough respen for all of these"