Multipliers Bane of D4 - Completely Remove from Game

PC General Discussion
1

For Season 10, I urge the devs to remove all multipliers from the game, that includes but not limited to: gear, aspects, skill tree, paragon, mercenaries, seasonal powers, etc. I mean every single multiplier, gone.

Simply put, stacking multiplicative damage bonuses contribute to exponential growth, which should be completely avoided. Instead, all damage bonuses should be additive in nature, which is associated with linear growth. That is a fundamental problem of D4. Damage numbers every Season tend to run amok, often hitting the integer limit.

With this change, D4 will be in a much healthier state and easier to achieve balance going forward in future Seasons. This change also mitigates “weird interactions” with seasonal powers, thus significantly reducing probability of game breaking bugs. Devs would be in a better position to balance top end damage in Pit to 1 million dps and adjust monster/boss health accordingly. Monsters don’t need quadrillion HP, just a terrible design.

Multipliers is a systemic issue, and should be eradicated for a healthier game.

14 Likes
2

yeah maybe. make most things additive, adjust health values for enemies, and reserve the big multipliers for chase items

3 Likes
3

I’m afraid this ship sailed long ago. Instead of removing multiplicative bonuses, they doubled and then tripled down on them with the introduction of legendary glyphs and all the new uniques.

If they removed them at this point, the player base would probably collapse and massively reduce their shop income. I don’t see it happening.

3 Likes
4

I think the community at-large would support this change as it would make the game healthier for future Seasons, players would be happy that there would be less game breaking bugs and better overall class balance.

Disagree. Multipliers are a cancer to the game, should be completely eradicated. The proof is in the pudding, the devs can’t handle all the multipliers as it gets away from them. Keeping all damage linear is the way to go.

3 Likes
5

In my experience people usually aren’t so forward thinking as that. Rather than being happy about future seasons, people would likely just get mad that their characters are so much weaker and stop playing. It’s pretty clear based on the changes Blizz has made (I.e. turning D4 into an updated D3) that the D3 crowd dominates the player base of D4. Anything is possible, but I’d be shocked if they took out multipliers now.

2 Likes
6

Impossible.

Additive damage is a multiplier.
Attack Speed is a multiplier.
Cooldown is (effectively) a multiplier.
Etc.

We need to have a healthy conversation about linear vs exponential growth in video game systems, but to do that we need to understand what it is we’re really debating.

“Additive” damage is no more difficult to compute than “multiplicative” damage. The issue D4 has is in the number of sources of each, how they intersect, and the number of bugs the game constantly has.

3 Likes
7

IMO the earliest iteration from the game had the right approach in having only 2 types of multipliers:

  • x* damage vs status-effect
  • x* damage from masteries

That’s it, that was perfectly fine

The problem is people overreacted to conditionals i.e. damage vs status-effect i.e. “damage on tuesdays” and they got but removed completely (except a few tempers ?, maybe)

There were like 15 affixes that rolled on gear that could’ve been reduced to just 4-5 mostly

  • vs chilled, vs slowed, vs mobility impaired => vs mobility impaired
  • vs rooted, vs stunned, vs frozen, vs immobilized, vs knocked-down => vs immobilized
    ** any of these ? => vs crowd-controlled
  • vs poisoned, vs bleeding, vs burned, vs corrupted, vs cursed, vs affected by traps => vs suffering

That’s it, those were your 3 required “multipliers” based on gameplay style that all revolved around (or were imagined to revolve around) a small window of opportunity to capitalize

On top of that there were “skill masteries” in the style of “Pyromancy skills deal X% more damage” or “Cutthroat skills do X% more damage” or “Imbuement skills deal X% more damage”, e.t.c. along with 2 “generic” masteries in physical and non-physical skills deal X% more damage

I think that was fine actually… The only one that was missing “all skills deal X% more damage” so it was a “baseline boost” (and a rare/carry chase) for late-game masteries

Well, that story is “long gone” now so we have “deal X% [ x] more damage based on Y” type things, I mean they’re capping those things, but that’s what the community preferred instead of “damage on tuesdays” type things

In-general when it comes to D4 people “prefer” build-first instead of combat-first itemization which is quite weird considering all the other games out there have an obvious combat-first itemization by design (D2, LE, PoE2, e.t.c.),

And the “build making” in those games comes mostly from skills, passives, and crafting :slight_smile:

8

I think we should avoid complicating the issue. I’m strictly talking about damage values X%, make them all “additive” in nature. Leave attack speed, cooldown, etc. alone as I think they can achieve desired outcome without touching those.

Agree they are effectively multipliers, but strictly talking about damage values. If it doesn’t say “damage,” ignore it.

9

Hundreds of trillions is the new low now

10

I wouldnt say all multiplicitive dmg sources are cancer but there should only be one single sorce. Example if we look at D2 the multiplicitive stat was enhanced damage but itemization was so good you needed to sacrifice something else for it.

2 Likes
11

Agree to a point, but D4’s itemization is a far cry from D2’s. Its clear the best solution is to simply remove multipliers as the damage continue to zoom to the moon. Also, D4 is too complicated to get a handle on it at this point by the developers. The main goal is to ensure the health of D4, hence remove the cancer.

12

I don’t think a x50% crit multiplier makes one build 1000 times stronger than the next. I think Blizzard just makes low effort Tuesday into every day when it comes to balance.

13

If that premise is correct, that strengthens my argument to completely remove multipliers.

14

this is your opinion. i think if you actually polled the entire playerbase, they prefer the large numbers and “breaking” the game with power. people want to screen clear and blast. they dont want to be slowed down. i understand there are a small minority of players who want that, but blizzard knows their audience and playerbase.

3 Likes
15

Most people are short sighted and don’t see the big picture. People complain about class balance, but fail to realize multipliers is a primary cultprit (there are other contributing factors). Plus, game breaking bugs continually plague game with unforeseen interactions. Constant screen clearing ultimately cheapens the experience and moves the game in the direction of DI. D4 needs to find the north star and move towards D2 for a solid future.

As an arpg comparison, PoE2 scaling feels much more linear. There are some multipliers, but not nearly as many as D4. It makes content more relevant for longer too.

1 Like
16

Waaaaaaay too late in the games life cycle to be asking for changes like this.

17

i remember one rpg game that used small integer numbers – Nox.
the numbers in the game started with single digits and at most reached up to the thousands, yet it was very manageable and fun to play.

2 Likes
18

Let them have it…. But it must be earned not just handed over on a silver platter.

19

I agree with this, but the entire game is based around multipliers. You will sooner see Clicker Heroes do what you are asking for.

1 Like
20

I dont think literally everything should be additive. Tbh, the bucket system was a good idea, badly implemented.
But stuff like legendary and unique affixes should mostly be additive.