I was watching the latest Dev Stream from 5/28 when Mike started talking about tooltip DPS and the difficulty of calculating it because of the type of skill, cast speeds, the movement needed to get in range to cast the certain skill…I question why any of this matters and how this obsession came around of needing to calculate DPS for the player rather than giving the player concise information. Damage Per Hit, Attacks Per Second, Crit Chance these are stats that the player can better interact with and can see how their choices affect the skills they want to use.
It provides much better feedback to the player that they can see that the node they just took in their skill tree increased the On Hit damage of the skill by 30, the next node their Crit Chance increased by 3%, finally they put a few point in their passive tree and see Attack Speed goes from 1.12 to 1.3. These values show progress the character is making in improving, rather than only seeing a few extra points of DPS. This also helps players better understand what parts of the skill they are improving. There are dangers of leaning on DPS, such as improperly conveying that a player’s power level may have changed.
As an example, in Diablo 3 an item has +Crit Damage, which the game tells the player will increase their DPS by equipping this item over the one they have. So without much more information to go on, the player believes the new item to be the right choice, however the item they had equipped was giving them Base Damage and Attack Speed, but because of the value of Crit Hit Damage the DPS calculation assumed it was better to equip the new item. The skills feels worse for the player, because it is now more inconsistent, but the DPS number is higher and the player doesn’t fully understand what happened. The calculation also doesn’t account for the play style the player might be looking for.
In another case, The Division shows DPS on their guns. Comparing two weapons the player sees the Assault Rifle has a much higher DPS than a Tactical Rifle. They equip the Assault Rifle and dispatch a group of enemies with ease, then an elite enemy drops in, the Assault Rifle starts to feel weak while they unload magazines into the enemy and only see the health bar slowly deplete. Initially because the player is made to focus on DPS they believed the Assault Rifle was the better choice. In this example the two weapons are meant to serve different purposes, but the game displays them the same. It would be better to convey to the player that the Assault Rifle deals 34 Damage Per Hit and fires 400RPM (Rounds Per Minute) and the Tactical Rifle deal 125 Damage Per Hit and fires 100RPM. This better displays how these weapons might function before the player even needs to use them; the player who wants the slower paced, precise play style can see that the Tactical Rifle might suit them.
It’s important in Last Epoch to understand the choices the player is making in regards to improving their skill. Especially when there are so many facets to improve, a clear concise tooltip can be more valuable to the player for understanding their choices rather than only seeing a single number increase or decrease. It also takes a lot of weight off the development to have to assume all these cases for the player and develop some kind of calculation that can suit everyone but will ultimately lead to improper information for most players.
While I would very much want to see all the details that comprises skill damage, for quite a lot of players they don’t have the numerical skill to determine whether x% of Y is better overall than y% of Z. And unless you’re either a complete maths nerd or a min-maxer then an accurate dps tooltip is very useful.
While I’ve not played the Division, I’d have thought that unless the higher rpm gun had worse spread (so you missed more with it) then the higher dps gun should kill the champion faster. Unless the mobs damage reduction is flat (-x damage) rather than %. That would affect the higher rpm weapon more than the lower rpm gun.
One of my first observations when I started playing this game was the lack of useful tooltip info regarding damage stats. Thought it was super strange that it would only show expected dps and not even show the relevant stats–or at least the basic ones:
dmg per hit
attack/cast speed
crit chance and multiplier
It’s just such an odd thing that these aren’t available on the tooltip. Even if it was a “hold alt to see it,” that would be fine.
I believe that it is 5% base for all skills that can crit. Damage over Time skills cannot crit, some skill nodes may make a skill damage over time or unable to crit.
You’re right an accurate tool tip would be very useful but how much accuracy can you have in a game where there’s many factors that contribute to the output? This is why I believe having more expanded information better suits the player because they can understand all the pieces that determine a skill’s output. Also, basic DPS is just Damage * Attacks Per Second if the player had this information available they could easily determine what choice is more beneficial than another.
I understand your point, though I feel Last Epoch players are a far cry away from players who can’t determine X is better than Y, especially when they aren’t given the opportunity.
The example with the Divisions serves more to explain function and how DPS misconstrues, you’re also correct in a perfect scenario the high RPM gun should do more DPS but if the player is constantly forced to maneuver, or the spread of the gun is higher due to the high fire rate, or the damage reduction of the enemy is stronger against smaller hits they won’t truly meet that DPS number that they are being given.
I know! I also want to see da numbahz, a point which I have made to the devs on many occasions (I even used my pro-level artistic skills to put together something at one point). Hopefully @EHG_Mike’s reworked character screen will see the light of day in 0.8.3 and will show us all the numbers that my cold, shrivelled accountant’s heart desires.
He could even PM me a mock up of how it’s going if he wanted a little bit of discrete feedback, nobody else would know, NDA & all…
Mike said on a recent stream that the tooltip dps is pulled from the cast information, so I don’t think the complexity of these other factors should be much of an obstacle for the dev team.
If you reference the stream from 5/28 at 1:33:00 a question was asked about Minion tooltips and Mike goes on to explain that they can’t calculate accurate Minion DPS tooltips because of other factors such as Minion Movement, or other abilities the Minion is using. Now while his comments here were specific to Minions it brought me to the problem I see in many of these games, over simplifying damage to a DPS number. The same could be said about a skill that Shocks, there are factors you can’t work into a DPS number to accurately calculate the damage of the skill: Shock stacks, Shock Effectiveness and that’s ultimately driven by the character’s Chance to Shock and Attack/Cast Speed in order to keep those stacks active. So if you have to make all these assumptions about the skill’s damage output how accurate can tooltip DPS be?
So in the case of Minions a player would have a much better understanding of what their Minions are capable of if they could see their skills broken down to Base Damage, Attack/Cast Speed, Crit Chance and any relevant effects to go along with those skills (Chance to Apply Ailments, Increased Damage Types).
Last Epoch has done a fantastic job at breaking down a lot of game information, the Game Guide is genius and I believe it’s important that information be available to the player from within the game and not require them to seek the out third party solutions.
Absolutely. I would like to see this sort of detailed info about minions too, but that would understandably be a bit more complex than regular skills in my estimation. I’d be happy to start with just player skills getting this increased tooltip clarity for now.
