SWTOR formula list

[LagunaD]

Well, they do admit to obvious mistakes (like the Ataru screw-up).

But I think it's a bit like parenting. They need to (or think they do) maintain a facade of authority - that everything is worked out to the Nth decimal place based on their all-seeing metrics, and models, and in-house testing, and whatever else.

But occasionally, as with the Ataru change, we see through the smoke and mirrors a bit. In this case, it was a buff (or was supposed to be), so nobody is really complaining about it. But clearly, whatever model they used to determine the new parameters for that ability was not very sophisticated, since the minute I saw the numbers in Nodeviewer, I said to myself: "There's no way the damage will be higher with these numbers." And clearly whatever testing of the change they did was not very sophisticated, and the metrics were not very accurate, because they were testing something that was supposed to be a 10% buff and was actually a nerf 2-3 times as big, and nobody noticed.

Maybe we shouldn't read a lot into one isolated case, but it does raise questions about the aura of omniscience they always adopt when talking about changes to the game. "I am the Great and Powerful Zoeller! Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain who thought a 25% nerf was a 10% buff!"

(03-28-2012 01:39 AM)Wolfmith Wrote:  why 0,01/0,3 and not a much more simpler 1/30 ?

Because it is 0.01/cap, where cap = 0.3.

[RuQu]

(03-24-2012 07:58 AM)LagunaD Wrote:  Just for future reference, in every instance I've seen, going back to when I was figuring out the DR formula in beta and had to experiment with fits for rounded, truncated, etc possibilities, numbers are always rounded to the nearest displayed digit.

Quote:The only evidence for this was that GZ claimed they changed them all

True, and they also claimed that Ataru Form damage was increased by 10%, when it was actually decreased by 20-25%. So this may be another case of the left hand not knowing what the right is doing.

Looking deeper into healing changes I just found that Kolto Cloud / Recuperative Nanotech took an ~11% decrease in total healing despite the Patch Notes saying it got a 10% increase.

Quote of my post on the topic from the SWTOR forum:

Quote:The only ability that was changed was Kolto Cloud.

Live Stats:
Cooldown: 12s
Ticks: 5 ticks, 3s interval, 15s duration
Coefficient: 0.386
Base Heal: 136.032 (no variability)

PTS Stats:
Cooldown: 15s
Ticks: 6 ticks, 1s interval, 6s duration
Coefficient: 0.286
Base Heal: 100.607 (no variability)

What I call "Base Heal" is how much it will heal for if you had zero bonus healing, and is a fixed number. For some abilities this is a range, but the min and max are the same for HoT effects.

Strangely, this appears to be a nerf to the healing done! The faster time clearly increases the utility of the ability, but the Patch Notes said the total healing was increased by ~10%. Instead it was reduced by ~11%.

The value for the healing of a single tick is:

Tick Heal = coefficient*(Bonus Healing) + (Base Heal).

Multiply by the number of ticks to get the total healing.

For illustration, let's assume 450 Bonus Healing.
Old KC/RN: 1548.66 total
New KC/RN: 1375.842 total

New/Old = 88.84% or an 11.16% reduction.

Keep in mind that the old one had a 15s duration but a 12s cooldown, and the new is 6s, but with a 15s cooldown. This means in 4 man content you can still only cast it exactly as often as before (no point clipping in Live). In 8-16 man content, you could actually cast it at 12s on a second group, which would give you an extra tick by the 15s point and further reduces the group healing of the ability. If you consider this 6th tick on a second group, the total healing was actually reduced by 26%.

These numbers are all per person, for the total of the ability just multiply by 4, but all of the ratios will remain the same, so the nerf % is the same still.

If I made a mistake, please let me know, but as of right now this looks to not only show zero change when we were told there were positive changes, but, in fact, shows a negative change where we were told it was positive.

[hxxr]

Thing with healing increase is not as black and white as it is with damage.
The question is what did they mean with 10% increase? Potential or actual healing. Because factoring in overhealing that's caused by slow ticks it actually might turn out to be an increase after all.
Either way, at least usability got greatly improved by these changes.

(03-28-2012 01:04 AM)LagunaD Wrote:  I am glad they acknowledged it, and will fix it. All I was saying was that while they feel the need to portray themselves as omniscient about the effect of every change to the game, the reality is obviously different.

Actually they in a way are superior to us consumers. It's only Bioware that can actually change anything.

(03-28-2012 01:04 AM)LagunaD Wrote:  In the other case we are talking about, Zoeller claimed they have made sweeping changes to the mechanics of combat and combat-related stats, but apart from the specifically-mentioned change to Expertise scaling, nobody has yet found a shred of evidence for it. The most charitable explanation is that what GZ thought was in the build isn't, in fact, in the build, either because GZ is ill-informed, or because major changes that were supposed to be included were left out due to some kind of versioning screw-up.

I rather suspect that because 1.2 intended for Live and the patch that's on PTR right now is not the same. I somehow feel driven to not liking poor George, but he never said those changes are on the PTR, just that they are part of 1.2. Thus it remains to be seen if he wrote the truth or not.

[Kaedis]

Quote:Maybe we shouldn't read a lot into one isolated case, but it does raise questions about the aura of omniscience they always adopt when talking about changes to the game. "I am the Great and Powerful Zoeller! Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain who thought a 25% nerf was a 10% buff!"

Point in fact, Tracer Missile was quoted as a 10% nerf, which in fact it was a ~18.5% nerf, and Heatseeker Missiles was quoted as a 10% buff, when in fact it was precisely a 30% buff.

[dulfy]

Hey Kor, have you calculated the expertise changes based on the latest update to PTS?

They reduced the healing bonus from expertise quite a bit

[Kaedis]

Yes, new cap is 30%, new divisor is 1.5. This gives a much flatter curve, and represents a fairly significant reduction in total benefit. A character at 600 Expertise in 1.1.5 would need 1050 to gain the same healing bonus in 1.2 (for reference, 300 -> 590). I'll upload a graph tomorrowish.

On a side note, the damage reduction portion of expertise is acting very oddly on the PTS. There's been no change to its cap or divisor in the PTS game files, but it is showing a slightly reduced benefit compared to the damage bonus on the character sheet. As best as I've been able to interpolate, it fits a curve with a cap of approximately 27.5 and a divisor of approximately 0.81. More details on this tomorrow as well.

[Kaedis]

Here's a graph of the current PTS values for Expertise, including the interpolated curve for the DR (which still hasn't been updated in the client files, don't ask me how the character sheet is displaying it that way...)

Edit: Breakthrough! They are no longer using a traditional formula for the DR section. Instead, DRBonus = 1 - 1 / (1 + DamageBoost). They cancel each other out! This means that a player attacking another player with the same amount of expertise will deal the exact same damage they would deal if both players were at 0 expertise. Essentially, only the difference in expertise matters. Graph updated (the new formula fixes the data points I used for interpolation perfectly).

[Freehugs]

Are the new numbers maybe hidden somewhere else in the client files?

[Kaedis]

Breakthrough! They are no longer using a traditional formula for the DR section. Instead, DRBonus = 1 - 1 / (1 + DamageBoost). They cancel each other out! This means that a player attacking another player with the same amount of expertise will deal the exact same damage they would deal if both players were at 0 expertise. Essentially, only the difference in expertise matters. Graph updated (the new formula fits the data points I used for interpolation perfectly).

[bukojoe89]

hello freehugs!

im a newbie here and i know this is kinda too much to ask!

in page 1, wow, the list was super complete and i thought that it was really really helpful for people like me that's really enjoying SWTOR now.

but hmm.. i know 1.2 is coming up and i think there are a few changes in the computations of these stats. like in the past replies i think EXP had computation changes. can we update the first page so that what we're gonna get are somehow accurate to what's been changing now in the game?

sorry i know it's really too much to ask!