Damage "strength?" descriptor

[UltraAlt]

So I've been trying to figure out what the heck is going on with the damage "strength?" descriptors.

 

I had always just taken it for granted that "Light" was less damage than "medium" or "moderate", that  "medium" or "moderate" was less than "heavy" or "high", and "heavy" or "high" was less than "superior" or "extreme" damage.

 

I don't see listing of what these "strength?" descriptors actually mean.

 

I tried to look on the wiki, but nothing relevant came up.

 

I don't know if it is the points of damage it does per hit or some other trait that would give it one descriptor over another.

It seems to vary from power set to power set and even sometimes within a power set.

 

Anyone know anything about this?

 

Is there a list of all these descriptors somewhere that also indicates what they mean (kind of like the breakdown of damage types [lethal, toxic, dark, etc.])?

Edited May 4, 2021 by UltraAlt

[MTeague]

I would always just use the Detailed Info for the power in game. 

In general I would expect Minor < Moderate ~ Medium < Heavy ~ High < Superior < Extreme.

But I would never treat the text as more than a *Very* loose rule of thumb, and I would expect variations.

[Snarky]

flavah text.  and each cook for each set used the same adjectives but never really consulted with the other chefs.  spicy here could mean bland there or rip your face off at the next table.

[UltraAlt]

1 minute ago, MTeague said:

*Very* loose rule of thumb

 

That's my problem.

It shouldn't be that way.

The term should mean something.

I'm assuming there is a list somewhere that indicates what these terms actually mean and in what order?

 

I'm wondering if it not only has something to do with damage done, but also penetration ability (versus resistance) and who knows what else.

 

It does seem to be "very loose" and that's what I'm trying to look into find a better definition of what the "strength?" descriptors mean

[Doomguide2005]

Yep as Snarky said.  It's about 90% flavor and at best 10% relative to the other powers in the set as far as I know.

 

Edit: From the same wonderful descriptive text that gave us Blasters are ranged damage while giving us the issue 0 Fire Manipulation secondary for said AT

Edited May 4, 2021 by Doomguide2005
Afterthought

[Techwright]

1 hour ago, MTeague said:

I would always just use the Detailed Info for the power in game. 

In general I would expect Minor < Moderate ~ Medium < Heavy ~ High < Superior < Extreme.

But I would never treat the text as more than a *Very* loose rule of thumb, and I would expect variations.

Where would you put "Light" in that lineup, before or after "Minor"?  I've been seeing both on some recent toons.

[MTeague]

3 minutes ago, Techwright said:

Where would you put "Light" in that lineup, before or after "Minor"?  I've been seeing both on some recent toons.

honestly not sure if it belongs with Minor or Moderate. 

But that's another reason I'd go straight to Detailed Info.

[UltraAlt]

It seems that everyone that has replied to this thread does not know.

They have stated in one manner or another that they don't know if there is a list of the damage "strength" descriptors and do not know where it would be found.

 

Based on their replies, there isn't one. But the selection of answers so far is so small that it does not mean that there isn't one.

Edited May 4, 2021 by UltraAlt

[UberGuy]

We don't have one that I know of. There is no hard link in the game itself between those text descriptions and the actual damage of the powers. Meaning the game does not look at the damage a power does and choose a descriptive word based on that. Instead, they are entered as free-form text by the devs as part of the power description.

 

These used to be very inconsistent. You could not, in fact, make assumptions that "moderate" was more than "light". A pass was done by the devs some time back to standardize them using objective criteria, but that was done with tooling that exists outside the game itself. We don't seem to have a copy of the "rules" they used here on these forums.

 

Note that these descriptions cannot be used across ATs. What is extreme damage on a support AT may be moderate on a more damage-focused AT. This is intended.

 

If you are interested in knowing the relative amounts of damage things do, you're really going to be best looking at the in-game details or City of Data.

[Greycat]

These are from the early, "Numbers? You don' need no stinkin' numbers" era of the game. Looking for consistency is like looking for an elephant in a bowl of rice pudding.

[Doomguide2005]

What Uber Guy said.  It isn't that I don't know with certainty there isn't some listing of hard numbers to match the descriptions it's more that since I started in issue 3 I've never heard of such and everything I have heard indicates it's flavor text and any correlation that does exist is only relative to within the set itself.  And as Greycat points out those descriptions originated from a time when there were no "real numbers" or knowledge among the player base of hard numbers.  The forums themselves would point out the inconsistency of the terminology to those making inquiries.  

[KauaiJim]

For me those descriptions are very subjective and I believe meant more to be a 'general' description or 'idea' of what the power can do.  I think standardization was not really the intent of those - more just a brief summary.  Another example of this for me is the sliders showing how each AT 'ranks' when you make a new character (damage, survivability, etc).  They are just sort of guides, not really anything rooted in an across the board standard.

 

(interesting question though!) 🙂

Edited May 4, 2021 by KauaiJim

[Snarky]

7 hours ago, Techwright said:

Where would you put "Light" in that lineup, before or after "Minor"?  I've been seeing both on some recent toons.

If this is still your question you have kind of missed the point of nearly every reply.  These words mean less than a politicians promises.  

 

Use MiDs to find what a power actually does.  How much damage, the radius, etc.  

 

Then, if you want, make up your own spreadsheet ranking the powers.  But trying to rank and compare powers based on these words will take you to a place where Harley Quinn will be 'helping' you find your way back to reality.

[Chewburkka]

5 hours ago, Greycat said:

Looking for consistency is like looking for an elephant in a bowl of rice pudding.

Oh, I hate finding elephants in my rice pudding. And worse in my peanut butter.

[arcane]

The exact damage numbers are just a click away at all times, so it really doesn’t matter at all that the descriptions are of questionable meaning. You should look at the numbers. They’ll be a better tool to you than a word.

 

EDIT: and just to clarify, you don’t even need mids. As a Mac user that cannot run mids, I have built dozens of characters using the in game power info tab and then organizing things in a google doc spreadsheet. No extra software required. But do still get mids if you’re not an idiot with a Mac like I am... teenager me recalls it was pretty cool so many years ago.

Edited May 4, 2021 by arcane

[Shred Monkey]

If you just want the real numbers use this:

 

https://cod.uberguy.net/

 

I honestly don't think they used hard logic in the descriptors for this game.  Unusual, because most games do.

[Greycat]

1 hour ago, Shred Monkey said:

 

I honestly don't think they used hard logic in the descriptors for this game.  Unusual, because most games do.

 

There was an explanation for this... either long ago on the live forums, maybe in an interview or article. I'm fairly sure it was on the forums. From *really* hazy memory they thought it would be a good thing and more immersive/less distracting to fuzz the values, letting people focus on characters instead of numbers.  (Something along those lines.)

[UberGuy]

Yep. The early game had no numbers for players, and this was a very explicit decision by Jack and probably others from the early design team. They envisioned a more story-centric MMO, where people cared less about the numbers.

 

That never really worked out. Fist, lots of gamers really want to know the numbers. Especially early on, when you recall that there were no respecs! You were stuck with your power choices. But probably more importantly, CoH is almost totally combat focused. Hiding the numbers in such an environment makes less sense than if it were actually, functionally more about the story. The numbers turn out to be very important to ... everything we do.

 

Edited May 4, 2021 by UberGuy

[UltraAlt]

3 hours ago, arcane said:

The exact damage numbers are just a click away at all times

 

yeah, I know it's easy to go into the manage window and click on the "show detailed info" thing. 

 

I just figured the terms might actually mean something.

 

I was looking at a couple of the sonic cone powers and they were marked as minor. I looked at the damage and couldn't figure out why they were called minor.

 

Just figure terms mean something when are used instead of just haphazardly slapped onto to something.

 

Good to hear that the DEVs at least did a pass on it.

 

11 hours ago, UberGuy said:

We don't seem to have a copy of the "rules" they used here on these forums.

 

There is a damage type listing at https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Damage

 

I figured there might be something like that for the "strength?" descriptors but I just didn't know the proper term to use for searching the wiki for it.

 

 

[UberGuy]

I searched for the actual terms we know are used and didn't find anything, including using Google for the search.

 

The game's damage types are an actual, literal in-game thing. They have actual game-mechanical meaning, and aren't abstract terms like these damage "scale" terms.

[Riverdusk]

Just a quick look at my current character shows how questionable the descriptors are. 

Plant control entangle (the ST hold 33.64 dmg base at lvl 50) is listed as "high" damage. 

Arcane bolt (sorcery pool attack 45.27 dmg at lvl 50) is listed as "moderate" damage.

 

Pretty sure "high" should be a bigger number than "moderate".

[Arbegla]

I thought there was some information that the various strength damage words were standardized to the damage scale of the power themselves, but I guess I could be mistaken.

[Vanden]

HC went and standardized the language describing recharge times in power descriptions to correspond to discrete recharge ranges, but I don’t think the same was ever done for damage.