[Discussion] Damage Types in ARPG's

Grim Dawn General Discussion
1

Reasons for having different damage types
There are three core reasons to have different damage types in an ARPG. Thematic, mechanical and strategic. Sometimes, these core reasons are in conflict with each other. Firstly, let’s get thematic out of the way. It may be pretty obvious that you don’t want your fireball to deal the same type of damage as your sword slash. However, you could simply tweak the numbers to be appropriate and get away with both a sword slash and a fireball impact displaying a white number indicating health loss / damage done.

Then why are we still going for a difference? Because the way in which someone might resist the sword slash and fireball should be completely independent from each other (this ties into strategic). A thick suit of armor may be well suited to block a sword, but won’t protect the wearer from the searing heat of a fireball. The game should be able to discern the difference to logically translate this to the player to help them define their class identity, and thus their lore-oriented gaming experience.

Secondly, there are mechanical reasons an ARPG could chose to build into their damage. This can be done by making negative effects associated with a certain damage type. The most clear example of this is a slowing effect from taking cold damage. Developers might want to embed into their coding that cold damage inflicted will also always slow down a target, or perhaps even freeze it solid after taking multiple hits from cold damage. Fire damage could always have a burning after effect, causing a target to take a portion of the damage over time. Poison might cripple the target’s damage, and so on.

Lastly, we have strategy. An ARPG is all about building your character to be more powerful. This is done through items, skills and other modifiers, and is tested on endless hordes of monsters. If all your skills did the same type of damage however, the game would quickly become bland. You only have one damage type, so you want to buff it as much as you can while maintaining survivability. Basically, you are narrowing down choice in the character build to two choices upon levelling; do I boost my damage, or my health? That is going to get boring quite quickly.

So different damage types allow for different resistance types, which allows for strategic choices. If some monsters are immune, or highly resistant to a certain type of damage, you will want to balance out at least two different damage types to be able to beat all monsters. However, if the strategy reason is ignored in designing, then players are likely to simply focus on their favorite damage type (or favorite class identity associated with that damage) and will only buff that damage type. Without specifically (highly) resistant monsters, there is only an illusion of strategy, but clever players will see that simply boosting their favorite damage type is the most efficient choice. Who cares that it’s a skeleton, the game makes it bleed, so I’m going for bleed damage.

In conclusion, when designing damage types and resistances, many developers only take two or sometimes even only one of these important reasons into account. Because damage types are at the very core of an ARPG, it’s not something that can be changed easily later on, and because it ties into every fiber of what makes a good ARPG, it’s something we want to get right as much as possible. Below, we will discuss some cases of ARPG’s and how their damage type system makes them work (or not).

Case 1: Diablo 2
Considered by many to be one of the best ARPG’s of its time, Diablo 2 is based on very crisp pillars of foundation which I will skip over here to focus on the damage and resistance types in the game.

Diablo 2 has 4 clearly presented damage types with an associated resistance; Lightning, Poison, Ice and Fire. In addition, it has two less obvious damage types; Magical and Physical. So, how well does Diablo 2 hold up to the core reasons for having different damage types? Quite good actually.

The damage types are associated with thematically correct skills and spells, like fireball does fire damage, and leap attack does physical damage. Things that are clearly fantasy-magical and can’t be grouped into anything logical deal magic damage (like Bone Spirit). Thematically speaking in damage types, Diablo 2 is fine.

Then mechanically, the damage types all have a tied in uniqueness; Lightning damage has a very high spread damage (like 1-400), fire is a consistent damage dealer (like 80-120) and ice damage will always slow down or completely freeze enemies, but deals less damage overall. Poison’s unique mechanic is that it’s damage is dealt over time, period; no exceptions. Magical damage is unique because it can’t be resisted percentage-wise (only reduced with special items). But then it gets a bit muddled. Physical damage is reduced by varying factors; block (influenced by equipping a shield), dodge chance (influenced by how much armor one has), and flat resistance like magical has.

Arguably, the mechanics aren’t as inspiring as they could be, but at least the 4 primary ones are clear, you know what to expect from them.
Strategically, Diablo 2’s damage system falls apart. Take the fire sorceress for example. It is very satisfying to bombard hordes of hellish monsters with fireballs, meteors and block their path with walls of flame, but once you advance your character, the damage type becomes less effective. Some monster become completely immune to it (and fire is by far the most resisted type in Diablo 2). What? But that’s no problem right? After all, we want these resistant & immune monsters to enable strategic choices!

But that doesn’t add up due to a major flaw in the game’s skill tree design and gear build-up. The sheer damage loss from spreading your valuable skill points into two, or goodness forbid even three damage types will make your damage so pathetically low that you are even less effective. Most players who’ve played Diablo 2 will know it’s better to cut your losses and quickly run past immune monsters.

So why this limitation, that seems to severely cripple the gameplay? Originally, the game may have been designed with a party in mind. Specifically, teams of players that will compensate for each other’s lack of damage types. However, for a single-player experience, this is an absolute death sentence to the fun.

Another flaw that comes looking around the corner here is the sinister ‘resistance reduction’. Ice may not deal that much damage, but it doesn’t only slow, the sorceress has a passive ability that makes her ice spells ignore a percentage of resistance. This makes ice very overpowered compared to lightning and fire. Additionally, the necromancer had a curse that reduces all resistances.

Despite these ‘flaws’, Diablo 2 is still a very satisfying game that is fun to play. The online and LAN multiplayer experience did compensate for the strategic lack (for single player), though for a game where all the loot can be picked up by anyone, single player ‘farming runs’ are still desired. Furthermore, the resistance system towards magic and physical damage could leave some players confused. It is important to consistently be clear about why something does different damage, and how a player should / could deal with it (in their build, or strategy).

In conclusion, we can learn the following things from Diablo 2’s approach:

  1. Single player and multiplayer damage type design might collide, it is probably best to focus a game on being either multiplayer only (with human or AI party members to cover other damage types) or single player only (and the player has to choose how to deal with spreading their damage alone).
  2. Damage types should be simple and clear, allowing players to recognize what the damage type will do for them and how they should approach protecting themselves against that damage type.

Case 2: Grim Dawn
In Grim Dawn, damage types are a base pillar of the game. Grim Dawn has clearly attempted to follow one of it’s major keystones in designing the damage types; choice (in build variation). They have significantly more damage types than Diablo 2; ten damage types (with some associated damage over time types, which I will discuss in a moment) and some less obvious damage types.

Firstly, the primal damage types: Vitality (DOT: vitality decay), Pierce, Chaos, Aether, Lightning (DOT: electrocute), Cold (DOT: frostburn), Fire (DOT: burn), Bleed, Physical (DOT: Internal Trauma) and Acid (and poison). Then lastly, there are four damage types that are less clear: Elemental, Internal Trauma, Pet and Life Reduction. Elemental is a 33/33/33 mix of Fire, Cold and Lightning, and life reduction cuts down current health as a percentage, becoming less effective with lower health targets. Pet damage only benefits… summoned minions and internal trauma has no resistance associated with it.

Let’s analyze this system through the three core reasons of ARPG damage types, starting with the thematic reason. Thematically, skills and spells in Grim Dawn are very intuitive. Their associated damage types are inspiring and feel natural for each ability. Necrotic, death/blood magic as Vitality Damage is enjoyable to play and makes the player feel closer to their character’s chosen identity. Being able to use the otherworldly powers of your opponents, like demonic Chaos damage and astral Aether damage is also very awesome for a player’s experience. Furthermore, you can clearly see each spell is hand-tailored to feel thematically correct. Unfortunately, this sometimes interferes with strategy. This happens when damage types that are difficult to tailor together in a build are both present in a class’s mastery.

Mechanically, Grim Dawn’s damage types are not unique. Their intuitively associated negative effects have been separated from them to be tuned individually. This is also caused by the choice to split damage over time components away from the damage type (like Fire damage and Burning damage). Skills that deal cold damage usually have a slow component linked into them, but this is a separate piece of information. For example, Wind Devil’s modifier Raging Tempest adds cold damage to the original Wind Devil, and also adds a slow that scales with levelling. This is a design choice with a strong logic behind it; the developers wanted to separate cold damage from it’s slowing component so they could individually tune them (more cold damage might not mean that much more slowing effect). But to a player this extra piece of information adds to a total pile of information, which will make the game less accessible. This is part of a clarity to complexity discussion I will avoid here, but the point is that if something deals cold damage, wouldn’t you always want players to experience it through the slowing effect anyway? This is a blurry boundary between thematic and mechanical and I’m not saying one choice is superior to the other.

Lastly, let’s discuss strategy. Grim Dawn doesn’t have the problem that Diablo 2 had; a single player and multiplayer issue (though there is multiplayer in Grim Dawn, the design choice was much clearer; no PvP and solo play is emphasized in the core). This would open up a wide array of strategic choices for a player, were it not for the lack one important component in Grim Dawn. Monster resistance is there, but it is hidden. While one could assume that most Ch’tonic monsters do quite well against Chaos damage, it might be less intuitive that some are actually very resistant to Vitality damage. This information should be clear, in-game to a player, so they can choose to use a different type of damage to pass those monster types. Additionally, monsters are never immune. While immunity is a mistake in a game like Diablo 2, where there are no tools to allow specializing in two or more types of damage, the lack of it in Grim Dawn enables players to solely focus on two things: boosting their damage type and their ability to reduce enemy’s resistance to that damage type. This makes picking a damage type solely thematic, and not strategic at all.

Arguably, resistance reduction is a poor design choice on its own. By simply removing it, developers avoid the needless complexity that comes with balancing out all different damage types resistance reduction. While in the game, it narrows the choices for players significantly, by funneling them into focusing on one damage type, since as long as they can get it strong enough, it will allow them to beat anything. This is in conflict with another aspect of the game, the fact that many skills and spells actually deal two or more damage types already and that most devotions boost multiple types of damage. This might have been because of a thematic reason, or it could be a strategic reason. If it is thematic, it only adds to frustration because it will feel to players as if a part of their invested skill point is wasted (on damage they will never focus on). If it is strategic, it is pointless because players can beat the game with just one damage type in their arsenal; since there are no immune monsters in the game.

In conclusion, we can learn the following things from Grim Dawn’s approach:

  1. Thematic choices that make sense to class identity might conflict with strategy. It is arguably best to first design the strategy and then design thematic things around it to prevent this.
  2. Separating the mechanical component from damage types may add to build diversity, but it will also add to information clutter. Building a specific, clearly defined negative effect to each damage type will reduce information clutter and increase the thematic aspect of damage identity. This means no separate damage over time for each damage type, and no split slow from cold damage for example.
  3. To promote player strategy, it should not be possible to beat every game’s monster with just one type of damage. Adding (a maximum of one) immunity to some monsters, especially on ultimate difficulty, will see to this. Removing resistance reduction could increase clarity, but if immunity actually means “cannot be reduced below 100% reduction” it could stay and add to player build diversity. The only question here is then; what is resistance reduction? If it is only a glorified type of damage increase, then it might not be needed at all.

Please note that this is of course, just an educated opinion. I only studied ludology and game design, but never worked in the industry so my idea might be flawed. This is in no way criticism on the developers of Grim Dawn, I know I wouldn’t have done a better job building it. Discussion is always welcome!

Sources:

  • Salen, K. & Zimmerman, E. Rules of Play; Game Design Fundamentals
  • Koster, R. A Theory of Fun for Game Design
2

Damage Types in Grim Dawn 2
Pointing out problems without coming up with solutions is called whining, therefore I’ve taken some time to design a damage type philosophy that might be used in a new ARPG, let’s call it Grim Dawn 2 (Grim Dusk is also fine if you feel inspired).

Design of damage types should be bottom up, meaning we start by actually looking into the damage types themselves, and should obtain complexity from using and combining them. First, I will discuss the damage types, and secondly I will discuss how they might be best tied into a mastery.

To accomplish this, some damage types from Grim Dawn should be reworked. Our first aim is to simplify the damage types. We can do this by sorting them into main categories with one resistance type (in brackets).

  • Elemental: Fire, Cold, Lightning and Acid damage. (Insulation)
  • Physical: Piece, Crush, Bleed and Poison damage. (Armor)
  • Planar: Aether, Chaos, Eldritch and Vitality damage. (Faith)

Either of two design choices can be made: resist as categories, or as individual types. The clearest choice is to resist as categories, as it reduces UI clutter and balance difficulty. Resistances can still uniquely affect individual damage types’ negative effects if desired (such as amount of slow reduced for cold damage based on percentage of Insulation). Note that immunities should be given only to a specific damage type, not a category.

Damage types interact with both monsters and the player. Damage types should give a player two clear expectations to contribute to its feeling of damage identity:
• What is this going to do to the monster?
• What will it do to me?

Elemental Damage (resisted by Insulation)

  • Fire: Deals 80% of its damage instantly, and the other 20% over 3 seconds. New applications stack damage and refresh the duration. Insulation is 300% as effective against the DoT component.
  • Cold: Slows targets by 5-20% for 3 seconds. New applications refresh the duration and add 1-10% additional slow. At 100% slow, the target is frozen for 3 seconds. Breaking free from freeze resets the slow percentage. Insulation affects how much slow is applied.
  • Lightning: Has a 1-25% chance to stun targets for 0,5-3 seconds. Insulation affects the stun chance and duration.
  • Acid: Has a 1-25% chance to blind targets for 1-3 seconds. Blinded targets cannot use skills or attack. Insulation affects the blind chance and duration.

Physical Damage (resisted by Armor)

  • Pierce: Has a 1-10% chance to deal no damage, but benefits twice as much from Critical Damage bonuses. Higher armor increases the chance that Piercing attacks deal no damage at all.
  • Bleed: Deals all of its damage over 3 seconds, and slows targets by 5-25%. New applications stack damage, but not the slowing effect. Armor affects the slow percentage.
  • Crush: Has a 1-10% chance to confuse targets for 3 seconds. Confused targets may strike their allies or randomly use abilities on empty ground. Armor affects the chance to be confused.
  • Poison: Deals all of its damage over 1-9 seconds. New applications stack damage and refresh the duration. Armor affects the duration.

Planar Damage (resisted by Faith)

  • Chaos: Has a 1-20% chance to terrify targets for 3 seconds and reduces maximum life by 0-10%. Terrified targets run away from the cause of damage. Chance and reduction are affected by Faith.
  • Aether: Deals 50% of its damage instantly, and the other 50% over 10 seconds. This drains 0,1-2% energy per second. Energy drain is reduced by Faith. New applications stack damage and refresh the duration.
  • Eldritch: Has a 5-50% chance to apply a Cold, Lightning, Acid, Chaos, Aether or Vitality debuff to the target for 3 seconds. Chance is affected by Faith and damage caused by Eldritch is reduced only by Faith.
  • Vitality: Reduces target’s damage by 5-25% for 3 seconds. New applications refresh the duration but not the damage reduction effect. Faith affects the percentage of damage lost.

How are these damage types best implemented?
For optimal effect, masteries should be constructed in a tabular overview first. This is the bland part, making sure that each damage type is represented equally throughout the game. Choices in design here can include increasing a certain damage type’s effects, but reducing how much they are represented in the game.

We have a total of 12 damage types. To accommodate all equally, we can decide to have each mastery have a total of 3 different damage types. Without any overlap, that’s 12/3 = 4 completely unique masteries. However, overlap is fun and desired (thematically, but also mechanically and strategically), so many more masteries could be added. It is important to limit the number of damage types done by each mastery but make sure none is underrepresented. In the classic 8 mastery setup of Grim Dawn, I’d give each class access to 7 damage types with the 12 that we have. We can give each ability 1-2 damage types on their own, and add modifiers to the abilities to convert the damage (both as masteries, in gear or perhaps even in constellations).

Plain skills without a theme should be constructed in these masteries. To decide how much damage they do, the following three things should be kept in mind.

  1. Damage Type: cold damage also slows, it shouldn’t deal as much damage as a similar fire spell.
  2. Range: bigger range means less risk to the player, so it should deal less damage than melee.
  3. Cooldown: bigger cooldowns allow for larger bursts of damage, whereas smaller cooldowns should limit the damage of each cast.
  4. Cost: energy cost should be higher for more damage.

When all these skills are finished, they can be colored in with a theme that best suits them. If there is a really annoying skill you want in a mastery, but it’s hard to think of a theme that suits it, exceptions may be made to make it suit the theme better, but this should be kept as rare as possible to prevent under- or overrepresentation of certain damage types.
After the active skills and their modifiers are finished, passive skills can be added to fill up the masteries.

The elephants in the room
Hold it, you skipped over pets. Where are they in all this? How will they deal damage? What about Internal Trauma? Life reduction? Elemental damage is a cool idea, why is it gone? Where are all my DoTs? Don’t worry, I will explain how they might be dealt with here.

First, pets. Minions in Grim Dawn and their associated pet builds are a lot of fun, and they must stay for this reason alone. But pet damage as a stand-alone might not be the best way to deal with them. For one, it makes pet builds limited to being a single damage type, while if you want to be able to beat resistant monsters, you need to focus on two damage types. Secondly, it discourages all hybrid builds. Want only one super strong Fire pet to go along with your Fire mage? That will cause diminishing returns on your invested damage type, as pet and fire and now separate, and you also still need a second damage type to beat those resistance and immune monsters. For this reason, pets should benefit completely from their master’s damage and resistance type bonuses.

Similarly, retaliation damage is something I’d add to the damage types, not give it a separate type.

I removed damage that can’t be resisted, like Internal Trauma, and integrated them where possible into the other damage types. Life reduction has been snuck into Chaos damage. If any damage in the game should be unblockable, it might be something like Divine damage, dealt by the gods or their avatars (but I personally dislike the idea of anything you can’t strategically prepare for).

Elemental damage might still be in the game by giving skills part cold, part fire, part lightning damage. It may be difficult to balance, as their associated effects can now make the damage type overpowered (particularly the chances, as twice 1% checks for slow and stun are still better than separately 1%, even at full resistance), but it is certainly possible. This can be compensated by making the skill that uses this damage type simply deal lower damage. Additionally, we open up a world of other damage combinations, like Vitality+Bleed will now has their combined detrimental effects.

Last, what happened to the DoTs; Vitality decay, burn, etc. Well, they’re not gone. Some are embedded within some of the damage types. Fire always gives off some burning. Ok, but what if you want to design an ability that deals fire damage over a longer period of time you might ask. Here’s where the definition of a fun ability comes looking around the corner. By its core, an ARPG is less satisfying if the monsters don’t die fast. If you deal your damage over time, the monsters die slower, which makes the ability less fun. For this reason, I’ve put the maximum duration component of damage types to 10 seconds (for Aether) and that is because it also has the energy drain on it. But DoTs don’t have to be gone with this system. Abilities that simply deal X fire damage every second they are on a monster can still be built. The only difference is that it’s no longer confusingly called ‘burn’ which benefits from fire damage, but not ‘frostburn’. Clarity over confusion was the deciding factor for that. In short, DoTs are still here, if the developer wishes to use them.

3

Read through.

I’m on mobile so I can’t make a detailed post with many quotes. In short, it’s an interesting overview and you did a good job pinpointing some of the issues GD system has (DoT damage clutter, pets and retaliation damage being it’s own separate realm, failure to make bi- and tri-damage build competitive with sticking to single damage types). I disagree with some of your conclusions, namely the idea that strategy of single damage + resistance reduction is a design flaw and shouldn’t exist at all. Also disagree with your idea that effects have to be integrated into damage types - it’s good for games like D2 and TL2 which have 5 damage types but for GD with it’s 10 damage types it would had been hell to balance out. The information about these effects is often super-obscured as well, so the removal of effect clutter would pose a reverse challenge of letting players somehow access the non-obvious information. You also did a factual mistake - saying that internal trauma can’t be resisted. Internal trauma is the DoT counterpart to physical damage so it is resisted via physical damage resistance.

4

I think the separation of eg cold, frostburn and freeze is a good idea as it allows for tweaking the individual components. As long as cold and frostburn use the same resistance type, which they do, I see no problem here.

That retaliation damage is its own damage type overly complicates things however imo.

Where I agree is that we should have other sets of resistances than just elemental, to make it easier to gain multiple resistances. I also think we have too many different cc resistances (freeze, petrify, stun, slow, …) I would have rolled all of them into one.

5

Ah yes it is, but it is not resistable through Armor though, is it? Sometimes I can still get confused with the damage system despite having 500+ hours in the game, :slight_smile:

Thank you for your comments. As I said before, the choice of separating mechanics from damage types is a 50/50. On the one side you obtain the ability to edit abilities more specifically as a developer, on the other hand you clutter the info for the player, and make it difficult to see how you can, for example, increase the effectiveness of your chilling effects.

I embedded CC resistance into the resistance categories, but I see no objection to make a single CC resistance either. As with everything, it is about making an informed decision based on how the final game is envisioned (no easy task). :slight_smile:

6

Mostly due to cluttering of item descriptions. I think the evolution of GD have shown that they are redundant. If burn was called fire damage over X seconds and scaled from %fire very little would change mechanically. Most flat burn values would need to be toned down by about 15-20% but that’s it.

Quite a few players also want to see bleed become a legit counterpart to pierce for damage conversion reasons. A few irregulars like phys/bleed and vitality/bleed would suffer, but the skills in question could be re-designed with new constrains in mind.

If GD2 is ever to come I’d like to see physical, piercebleed, fire, cold, lightning, acidpoison, vitality, aether, chaos and maybe eldrich.

7

I remember when PoE was in closed/open beta there was a mechanicaly diverse
dmg type system . With different mechanic on different dmg type - Fire could burn, Lightning could shock, cold freeze, chaos bypassed ES etc.
But after some time the whole system collapsed. Freeze mine abuse with ele prolif. Triple-dipping burning dmg on trap-mined fireball builds. Spork totems. Poison arrow.
Dunno if this was a wrong concept or GGG just dropped the ball on balancing.

As for suggestions:

Fire: Deals 80% of its damage instantly, and the other 20% over 3 seconds. New applications stack damage and refresh the duration. Insulation is 300% as effective against the DoT component.
Cold: Slows targets by 5-20% for 3 seconds. New applications refresh the duration and add 1-10% additional slow. At 100% slow, the target is frozen for 3 seconds. Breaking free from freeze resets the slow percentage. Insulation affects how much slow is applied.
Lightning: Has a 1-25% chance to stun targets for 0,5-3 seconds. Insulation affects the stun chance and duration.
Acid: Has a 1-25% chance to blind targets for 1-3 seconds. Blinded targets cannot use skills or attack. Insulation affects the blind chance and duration.

Yes, nice suggestion in ideal world when you need to fight content. But in all ARPG i know most good builds kill stuff too fast to see secondary effects of dmg types.

8

Giving damage types identity does indeed bring a difficult to balance system along with it, but on the other hand you can get rid of all loose debuffs as well.

As for the secondary; the DoT duration is not dissimilar to what we have in GD now, and frankly, in Ultimate, monsters can live within that timeframe for most of my builds (though I suppose I’m not so elitist a player). The proc chances however would have a chance to apply instantly every time the spell is used.

9

https://youtu.be/0G18xojEm4s - generic endgame GD build gameplay. Creeps are only used as targets for movement skill. So, what would change in the game if Lightning could shock or freeze or slow or whatever?

10

The skills that deal that type of damage already do that kind of things. So what’s the point? This change would add little to nothing to the game and would just make balancing more complicated.

Enviado desde mi 6039A mediante Tapatalk

11

Lot´s o text, make brain hurt.
Havin a single source for both burst and dot would make things a bit easier, though I wonder a bit what it would do to the DoT-builds…
Also physical types ought to be Physical/IT (you hit things so hard they got internal bleeding) and pierce/bleed (stab holes into em, stuff comes out)
Then there´s the Aether/Chaos…Not quite sure if they are even now intended to be used by players and wether adding Dot would make em OP due to lack of res exc themed areas like Port Valbury or BoC

12

Thanks for your reply. The game itself would change in it’s core if the other core suggestion was included; monster resistances and immunities. You are assuming nothing else changes, which is not what I argued. Additionally, you must know that less than 0,1% of players reach this kind of play in GD, just read the steam achievement overview. It’s not a fair assessment to say that that video represents ‘generic endgame’ in Grim Dawn.

Uhm, no they don’t. Vitality damage doesn’t reduce damage dealt, neither does chaos damage do life reduction. I know it’s a long OP, but I’m talking about quite significant game changes to enable increased build diversity within the underlying strategy of damage types.

13

Thanks for your reply. The game itself would change in it’s core if the other core suggestion was included; monster resistances and immunities. You are assuming nothing else changes, which is not what I argued. Additionally, you must know that less than 0,1% of players reach this kind of play in GD, just read the steam achievement overview. It’s not a fair assessment to say that that video represents ‘generic endgame’ in Grim Dawn.

In every ARGP white/blue/yellow creeps are exp-bags that die to collateral dmg. They have resistance? Who care? They are immune to our dmg-type? Skip >_>
If CC immunities are left untouched then all of suggestions became meaningless and won`t affect actual gameplay at all. And if you decide to lift CC immunities, then moving CC to dmg type is a terrible idea. Heck, even health reduction is a terrible idea, cause with 8% reduction per hit you will kill anything in seconds - see TQ bone charmers =)

14

I get your point for trash mobs, but champion packs and bosses are a different story. If the depth added is meaningless, I agree it shouldn’t be added. The suggestion I made is definitely not some ultimate solution, but the damage system in GD now can definitely be improved up, as can most ARPG damage systems.

Or would you argue damage types should be solely thematic and not related to mechanics and strategy of builds at all?

15

Or would you argue damage types should be solely thematic and not related to mechanics and strategy of builds at all?

I d love to see different dmg types with different mechanics behind them. But I know for sure - adding CC to a dmg type is a big No-no in ARPG. Cold dmg slow? All spammable cold spells became gamebreacking. Lightning stun? All lightning spells became gamebreacking.
And I really doubt that is possible to balance 12 mechanicaly different dmg Types. GGG had 5 and they blew it. Too much stuff to worry about.

16

Hmmm, won’t monster CC resistance and immunities compensate? I do see your point, but I wouldn’t avoid it until I’d tested it myself. Numbers can always be tweaked; ex. cold slow percentage could start at 5%, lightning stun duration could be reduced to tiny numbers like 0,2sec. I agree that it’s all about the action flow, and that many trash monsters will die before your special damage types have a lot of effect, but during the levelling process before you do enough damage to melt everything / and against bosses, these flavors of damage could really shine in an ARPG I think.

Perhaps 12 is too much, Diablo 2 ran fine with just 6 damage types as well, they might want to cut back on damage types in a sequel here too.

17

I think Grim Dawn did quite well in that part. U can always find something
that could be “better” but if u bind effects to damagetypes it doesnt increase
the build diversity.

For example, like u said now, lightning could “just” stun for 0,2 secs. That would lead me to make lightning builds always beeing fast with tons of hits per second to get nearly permastun. Freeze the same, so i cant play Big slow cold damage, because it will be much bader and not slowing well.
Im pretty sure it would make the balancing impossible for GD. Its even hard
enough to balance things out like it is now^^

In Grim Dawn when i played my melee fire Saboteur, i could decide if i want
to focus on the Dot-Part (burn) or if i go more on direct Firedamage. Both would lead me to a different Itemchoice, Skillsetup and Devotions a bit. So im having 2 Options here. When Fire would work like u said, id have only one choice :wink:

And thats what i love on this game, sometimes i met someone, playing same groundidea that i had, but the 2 builds are pretty different overall. Maybe just because of different playstyle. For me for example its more important to have always movementskills and beeing fast, while i like to drop defense for that. In Grim Dawn i can take this choice for nearly all my builds because of its system doesnt care too much about bounded cc to dmg-types.

I agree that it can be confusing sometimes in GD, but for me thats only a small negative Point due what u get. Only stuff i dont like is the Lifeleechresist, cause for maingame i never had to care about this resistance beside killing red Ravager (and he still died on elite to me with -25% lifeleechresist …) and i really wouldnt miss anything if it wouldnt exist as Extra-Damage type. Just bounded to Bleed or vit .

18

Thank you for your perspective. The more I read and think about it, the more I think the built-in mechanical aspect is better suited for smaller scale combat, like turn-based RPGs and MMORPGs. Still, the strategy aspect is one I firmly stand behind. If the damage type only stays thematic, the game does suffer from a very basic approach (cleverly hidden within the forest of illusory options).

  1. Pick a damage type well supported by your two masteries, gear and devotions. Prioritize RR.
  2. Pick a defense strategy within the boundaries of the masteries, gear and devotions.
  3. Win.

I’d personally much rather construct a build tuned to overcome monster resistances and immunities. The game as is, is great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just missing out on this strategic potential. One I’d like to see unlocked in a sequel.

  1. Pick at least two damage types that are well supported by your two masteries, gear and devotions.
  2. Balance out their output to defeat all monsters immune to the other type through gear, masteries and devotions.
  3. Pick a defense strategy within the boundaries of the masteries, gear and devotions.
  4. Win.

In an overview, it may look like a minor difference, but there is a lot of hidden potential in such an approach. As for the mechanics, I suppose they’d have to be assigned to skills individually depending on the pacing of the game.

19

Optionally, for a fast-paced ARPG alternative, there could also be a minimalist approach like:

Elemental Damage
Physical Damage
Magic Damage
Vitality Damage

These four types can cover any theme, and it will give the game a lot more overview. Any fire, lightning and cold spell could be categorized as dealing elemental damage. Any physical, bleeding and piercing as physical damage. Anything that makes you sick (poison, death magic, acid, disease) could be vitality damage and finally, everything fantasy-distant can be ‘magical’ (such as chaos, aether, soul bombs, you name it).

It’s not pretty, but certainly improves overview.