Trendy Friday Fun Recap: Critical Damage/Chance Changes

Greetings Defenders,

During today’s Trendy Friday Fun stream we discussed some big changes that are coming out with our next update, some would call it a very expansive update. We are discussing information in pieces as a lot of the upcoming systems build upon one another. Not all of the information and numbers here are final and are subject to change.

Critical Damage Changes

We previously teased that some of these changes are foundational and affect the entire game. This first change is as foundational as it gets. Critical Damage is a stat that confuses some players, and in general can be hard to understand how it works. Here’s some information for what you can expect to see with Critical Damage changes:

• Critical Damage is now a percentage based stat!

• Critical Damage percentages can be increased through Ascension Level point spends and other sources (more information coming soon)!

• All towers Critical Damage is uniform and straight forward!

These changes apply to every tower in the game. As a result, the base damage of every tower is adjusted to maintain the same damage you do now, but have it be more consistent.

Critical Chance Changes

Critical Chance is currently capped at 33%. Many players are able to approach this cap with ascension points fairly easy. We want players to be able to choose between a bursty critical build, or a consistent damage build. Critical Chance is no longer capped at 33%. With this update, you are now able to push Critical Chance as high as the game offers.

Check us out on social media for additional updates and game discussions with our awesome community:

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We’re going to give more details very soon! Our designers are excited to share what they are working on and explain what changes are coming and why. Stay tuned!

For Etheria!

The Dungeon Defenders II Team

Holy! Crit chance NO LONGER CAP!? This is something!

Look, I get it, new update and all.

You guys at Trendy need to get your real game on right now tho, if you don't get your game on, you will go bankrupt.

Here's ideas to get your game on:

- add yugioh card child game into DD2

- crossover with notch from minecraft

- buff apprentice cuz u stink

- give me stuff or i will stab

Hopefully you get  your game on with these mad tips :ok:

(also these crit changes sound really neat, someone reach +100% crit chance, maybe there's red crits back there)

@Paloverde zfogshooterz quote:

Holy! Crit chance NO LONGER CAP!? This is something!

Lawta's comments suggest a trade off between crit chance and crit damage multipler.  Maybe something like the range gambit for crits?

I think this is a good change overall.  The game has ended up too crit focused with pretty much the same strategy - max out crit chance and put PT on everything..

Maybe I'm wrong but it feels like there isn't enough trade off between speed, range, crit % and crit multipler.  There's a little bit now where you might have to choose between deadly strikes or another shard but it's rarely a difficult decision.  I'd love to see it where you start specialising towers and have a low range / high damage SGT for some situations and a long range / high crit chance SGT for others.

My biggest concern is that relics are already overly focuses on stats shards. When crit was separate, you could use two shards to drive crit, then you kind of had an open third slot to decide how to use, usually for range/rate/DP. With this new way of doing things, to have a good crit build, you also must have good DP values. This means it will be even more focused on the main stats then before. My concern is that all of the shards that do anything other than raise stats are getting left behind and are becoming unusable. I really hope a way to separate stats and passives for shards can be made so that we can enjoy both benefits. 

I'm happy that TE shared some of what is coming up. Thank you. 

Hrm... I can't say that crit damage was... difficult to understand or to see how it worked.  I am not sure if it's that I feel it was fine? Or because I would have rather seen other shards, hero specific shards even, improved upon foremost.

Crit chance will be an interesting change-up.

@Lawlta quote:

These changes apply to every tower in the game. As a result, the base damage of every tower is adjusted to maintain the same damage you do now, but have it be more consistent.

I really hope with all the changes there is enough balance to ensure this is a thing. 

2013- Game Announced
2014, December - Steam Early Access Begins
2015, September - PS4 Release
2017, February - Game re-designed.  -Onslaught, -Nightmare, -Passives, -Skill Spheres, +Chaos, +Shards
2017, June - Early Access Concludes & Xbox One release
2017, December - Power of the Ancients (DD2 2.0) released. Onslaught v2 added.

2018, May - Announced that a Core Stat, central to all game mechanics, will be completely redesigned.

Until recently, I never had the desire to post on the forums.  Even Though I've been playing DD2 since the pre-alpha days. I really like this game, and as a whole I want Trendy to be successful.  With that in mind, I suggest the following to Trendy: "Please take your time implementing these changes to Core Game Mechanics."

I think it is fair to say that this game has been all over the place.  Game elements have changed dramatically, almost like a picture is being drawn by passing a paper around a room full of people with extremely different art styles.  You think things are going to develop in one direction, only for it to take a completely different turn that does not account for what was done previously.

I am hoping that the decision to re-design Crit Damage was not taken lightly.  I am not necessarily opposed to the design that was announced.  I am, however, greatly concerned that one of only a handful of player stats (Hero and Defense) is being redesigned at this stage of the game (literally).

Critical Damage is a core game element.  It accounts for approximately 20% of the stats we as players track.  In end-game content, it exists on every piece of gear a player has equipped.  Most likely, these changes will see the end of Marks existing as a Relic. [[166314,users]] indicated that Critical Damage would continue to exist as part of Ascension Points, but would not go so far as to indicate how Gear or Shards would be affected.  At the very least, changing Critical Damage to a Percent Scalar places extreme focus on Pure Damage as a Stat. Depending on how it is implemented, Itemization Changes could remove Critical Damage from Gear entirely. All of this results in Gear becoming even more drab and one-dimensional.

Obviously something else is coming in regard to Itemization.  Hints have been dropped.  Heck, an entire banking system was dropped from the sky.  Without knowing what exact changes are coming we can theorize at least one thing.... Core Elements of the Game are changing drastically.

Core Elements of a game are deeply rooted in all the Game Mechanics, which drastically impact all changes introduced to the game.  A Game Mechanic cannot stand up on its own without Core Elements flowing through it, tying other Core Elements together.  Changing the fundamental design of a Core Element, drastically changes the suitability of all Game Mechanics built on top of it.

It feels like we are starting initial development all over again.  Core elements have been changed before.  (Do Not Wipe My Gear Again, Ever.) After each change the player base resets, digests the changes, and picks up the pieces.  Once players are able to fully immerse themselves in the new mechanics, holes or blind spots in the design start to appear. Additional changes are made to compensate for the behavior.  Then, another imbalance is detected. It is as if someone is trying to balance scales with unknown weight measurements, piling more on one side because they had previously put too heavy of a weight on the first.

Before these changes are implemented, please ensure that you not only look to see if they are balanced for the existing game but also potential future rollouts.  Make sure that you are really happy with the design choices you are making now so that you don't need to revisit it again.  Apply the growth curve from Chaos and figure out how things will look if you implemented Chaos 8... or even Chaos 12. Do the core tenants of Player Stats and Itemization still hold?  Small course corrections are always understandable. But if months from now a new round of major revisions are required to re-balance players stats yet again, then this entire exercise is a waste of time.  

A clear long-term direction needs to be identified.  Please take your time planning and designing these changes.  Having a clear direction would provide a stable foundation upon which future developments could be designed.I would really like it for Trendy to have solid Core Elements locked in, so that the team can spend its creativity in other areas expanding upon the content available in the game.  

It’s not the crit damage that’s up the wazoo so much but the scaling on some towers.

Some you get effectively 100% increase per up grade some don’t scale for poop.

By all means fix the meta but look at how it affects all towers at all upgrade tiers. Hom Sha Bom  did a good post way back on upgrade return on towers but you should know all these values, it’s your code after all.

Crit dmg was always confusing to me. I have 33k+ on my barb and I really don't know how that translates to the dmg I do. Is it 33%? So that change is welcome.

Crit chance cap removed will create some more build options.

Looking forward to the patch and more news.

Some time ago people explained the crit system to me and therefore  had never problems understanding it. I just find it is no fun at all. I dislike crit chance/dmg since its implementation in the game. Since I don't think it will vanish, I'm glad about changes and curious how these changes turn out. (I was a fan of DD1's range & speed stats and loved my machine gun-like harpoons)

It is also a good omen to see the dev team is really changing what's not fitting and they are not trying to build a castle on bad ground. No idea how these changes turn out, but I wish you the best and hope the best.

This has been a long-requested change, as damage in this game relies almost solely on critical hits. For towers you basically get their critical chance to the cap, use Power Transfer and Critical Damage shards, and be sure their speed is of course high enough. And without going that route, you can't do proper DPS for the highest content. When it comes to heroes and armor, too: you either run damage plus crit or ability plus crit. The gain from critical hits was too good to go without. Fans have wanted a choice, something like: critical builds with varying but crazy top-end damage potential, OR raw damage builds which are consistent but maybe 80% as strong at their top end. Right now that second choice isn't there.

That being said, people have every reason to worry. Countless times in both DD games, the devs have gone in with the right intentions and numbers just to end up not having it work in practice. We've had enough of things getting nerfed, whether intentionally or not, and we don't want to see critical builds get hurt just to make raw damage builds viable. The current crit build potential is not grossly overpowered, it just needs alternative options. That being said, if they can adjust base damage up enough while not lowering the power or scaling of crits too much, they can achieve this.

Another worry I'm sure folks have: shards like Power Transfer. Basically a requirement and arguably the single most useful shard in the game - potentially being nerfed or made obsolete. Considering how much time people have spent faring that shard, or even buying shard packs in the hopes of getting it, I pray it is not going to lose its glory. We've had other shards nerfed, it wasn't fun in those cases, but the effect was nowhere near what it would be for PT. Again, can't stress it enough: more work needs to be done to bring other options up instead of the current options down.

If crit damage is going to be a percentage this makes marks obsolete. Why oh why they didn’t just keep the 10 stats from DD1 I just do not know.

Anyways they have a ton of testing to make sure this fundamental change

A Allows all heroes to be viable

B Brings OP towers back into line

C Looks at scaling across equal DU towers

D Looks at single target and multiple target towers together

This is a huge challenge and opportunity for the game a Trendy really needs to finally get it right.

It’s the Last Chance Saloon pardners 

the changes to crit actually sound good, a percentage boost in damage? that is how crit should be, so now DP is more important as a stat instead of a stat most people mostly just ignore cause crit dmg is brokenly OP and demanded to get anywhere.

I look to this change with hopes. That said, im still not quite for the game, not until some other horrible mechanics in the game get changed. Things i think have driven away most of your player base and made it only enjoyable by the most hardcore driven elitist of the worlds population. Which isnt a lot of people.

I hope like Tarius stated that Trendy will take their time and do not rush these changes. I am excited for what is to come with the changes, the staff seems pretty excited, so I am looking forward to these changes as well.

Thank you for the info Lawlta.

Hmm.  Might make Mastery more appealing to some folks.  Hypershard for destruction (previously so underwhelming that the name elludes me) could be very useful.

Mass Destruction is the de facto shard for Moss Hornets