Balance oddity: Armor vs Lifesteal

from Demigod Forums

So, one of the weird effects in Demigod, is Lifesteal.  While most games have this effect in one way or another, the DG version of it is implemented in a very weird way.

Lets say you have 12% lifesteal going on.  It would be intuitive to assume that the little green numbers above your head would be 12% of the white numbers popping up over enemy heads when you stab them, right?  You gain 12% of the damage you do.

This is not the case however, because most units have ARMOR.  Armor reduces the damage, sometimes significantly, of impending physical damage.  The problem is, that ARMOR does not effect the amount you life steal!

So if you would deal 100 damage with 12% lifesteal, but someones armor negates 50% of that, you end up dealing 50 damage, and stealing 12.

So why is this a balance concern instead of just a weird aspect of the game? The end of the game generally has players all doing te following:

High armor

Large Damage

High Lifesteal.

The more these three things increase as a whole, the longer it takes to actually complete a combat.  I have played many games recently that got to the "everyone is level 20" area (Mainly due to generally more competent players who were neither feeding, nor being fed).  Such players were all in the 8k to 12k health range, and negating I'd say about 60% of the damage thrown at them.  All players were dealing about 300 dps, past the armor, but lifestealing about 250 health per second.  With regen, this meant that most players were taking about 10 dps in total!  There was almost literally no way for players to kill each others.

 

 

****Long story short, make lifesteal only determined by the actual damage dealt, and not the damage before armor****

1,611 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Demigod Forums Top

I think there are other issues with scaling as well though.  For example, the fact that autoattacks can constantly be increased in damage and speed.  Abilities, however, cannot have their damage increased (except by ranking up obviously) and cannot have their cast times reduced.  This also leads to the "industructable demigods" scenario you mentioned in your post.

Reply #2 from Demigod Forums Top

Interesting, I had not noticed this. 

I think what you are saying makes good sense technically, but may not make sense for fun.  For example when I am playing and have let's say 400dmg:

400 dmg
400*50% armor negation=200
200*12% life steal=24 hp

Now that's fine, but what is actually more fun 24 health or 48?  I think that may be why they did what they did.  20 health seems piddly and useless, while 50 seems big.  Also this gives a reasonable advantage to dps players who have low armor, while not giving as much of advantage to low dps high armor players.  This is needed as high armor players typically also have more hp.

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from Demigod Forums Top

In an even duel, lifesteal is comparable to extra damage in terms of deciding the victor.   That the lifesteal totals are based off unadjusted armor values is akin to having damage that bypasses armor - which seems to be deliberately not in the game.  Given that lifesteal is actually better than damage (you win by a larger margin), it seems highly probably that this is a bug when considering the conspicuous lack of armor-bypassing damage.

I fully agree with the OP's recomnendation.

Reply #4 from Demigod Forums Top

Quoting Trigeminal, reply 2
Interesting, I had not noticed this. 

I think what you are saying makes good sense technically, but may not make sense for fun.  For example when I am playing and have let's say 400dmg:

400 dmg
400*50% armor negation=200
200*12% life steal=24 hp

Now that's fine, but what is actually more fun 24 health or 48?  I think that may be why they did what they did.  20 health seems piddly and useless, while 50 seems big.  Also this gives a reasonable advantage to dps players who have low armor, while not giving as much of advantage to low dps high armor players.  This is needed as high armor players typically also have more hp.

 

Yeah but when both players have this situation going, with your version, the are dealing 200 damage - 48 healed (by the opponent, on his swing) = 152 dps.  If you ahve +40 HP/s, that's 112 dps.  7000 hit points, and maybe priests nearby... your life steal numbers may look 'fun' as bigger numbers, but the inability to finish a combat really neuters it pretty bad.

Reply #5 from Demigod Forums Top

Lifesteal also works with QoT shield (and I think also Oak shield). The damage is absorbed but the said party still receives the life stealing. This also works in the case of Erebus' bite.

Reply #6 from Demigod Forums Top

While i agree with the overall principle, I don't think it's very important.  The thing is, when you get to the point where you are 'unkillable' then you should be trying to win the game, i.e. destroying the Citadel.  The flags don't really matter at the end, the reinforcements and towers don't do that much damage to you with those stats, and defending your citadel is a waste of time.  There's no real reason to worry about killing demigods at the end game, just go for the win.

Reply #7 from Demigod Forums Top

Making lifesteal be affected by armor/absorption/invulnerability would probably go a long way with all the complaints about Erebus's Bite and peoople almost always going for Mageslayer/Ashkandor first in the artifacts list.

Reply #8 from Demigod Forums Top

This largely explains the end-game scenario where Demigods can't kill each other, so they ignore each other instead and just rush to kill the enemy citadel.  Life steal definitely needs to be tweaked so this doesn't happen.

Reply #9 from Demigod Forums Top

I've dealt with this one myself, and while it is hilarious to watch two Rooks go Rock'em Sock'em on each other, it's ultimately kind of counterintuitive to be able to get strong enough that everyone is unkillable. However, I think it is also important for lifesteal to bypass armor.

Therefore, I propose the best way to balance it is, make it to where only the highest benefit for a given stat applies; for example, if you had an item that granted 12% lifesteal, and another that granted 5%, you'd have 12%, not 17%. This could be applied similarly to Armor, HP/sec, Max HP, Attack Delay, etc., if necessary; it would severely limit people from stacking gear to absurd levels.

"But that's not really reasonable", a player might say, "if I want to devote 4 of my 5 slots to armor, I deserve the full benefit!" Which is true. Therefore, perhaps make it to where bonuses don't stack from artifacts, or even that you can only have one artifact at a time--it might make people think more carefully about what artifacts they get. In addition, it might be good if Ashkandor wasn't SO much more blatantly better than the others. I feel like they wanted artifacts to each have cool, unique abilities in addition to big-number stat bonuses, but right now it seems like Ashkandor's cool clever ability is "you automatically win against everyone who didn't buy this."

Reply #10 from Demigod Forums Top

I never noticed that. Very good point, that should be changed (and I'm also in favor of an overall reduction in the potency of lifesteal items and abilities).

As for the unkillable endgame scenario, it's a team-game and no one is unkillable if you can force a 2v1 and / or are smart with your disables and positioning.

Naz