CONFIRMED WORKING Oct. 1st, 2021. Y'all, this isn't a cheat. I've been exclusively a bow main since the base game launched. This was much needed. Thank you so much, AsteriskAmpersand! Donated, for this and ALL the awesome mods you've put out and work you do. I still play MHW today because of you.
The gunner defense penalty also applies to elemental resistance and for most of the curve it will just overpower it. The bonus is already extremely small and any sort of fraction will always shrink it beyond blademaster values. Even when the values match with blademaster, because of how elemental resist works, it's insignificant. Monster attacks mostly consist of raw damage, even the most extreme case barely scrape a 30% of the damage from an attack. Furthermore the scaling of elemental resistance is basically non-existant, player armor values are simply too small to make any considerable reduction in it. To get a visible damage reduction you need something on the triple digit regions while player values hover on the low teens and the gunner bonus barely accounts for a single point or more, normally it's a negative value because the gunner penalty is still active anyway.
AT Velk has a damage multiplier based on aura level. Additionally, when in mid attack animation you take extra damage. Those two factors account for what you are probably experiencing, because the monsters you list almost entirely have their damage as raw. Even things that look purely elemental are mostly raw damage. This is not from anecdotal experience, this results are from calculations on the elemental resist values. The reduction is insignificant considering the penalty gets tacked on to elemental as well.
At this rate with you all fixing capcom's mess, but especially you who made the clutch claw (which should have silenced anyone who says bowguns/ranged weapons are safer) bearable to me, I'll return to the game. Great work, very good numerical explanation (although I am unfamiliar with the notation you use and need to read up on sigmoid functions.) and feels very fair.
Perhaps a few numerical examples (B80 G100, B100 G115, B120 G130 for an example idea I pulled out of my head) would be nice.
I mean....this is by definition a cheat according to wikipedia "Cheating in video games involves a video game player using various methods to create an advantage beyond normal gameplay, in order to make the game easier"the key being "beyond normal gameplay" which is exatly what this mod does...i'm not saying that people shouldnt use it or anything of sorts, i couldn't care less about what other people do to make their gameplay fun, but avoiding the lable of cheating is just blatant dishonesty.
About the argument that this is all a oversight or the fault of the B team doing iceborne...really? they are the developers if they wanned it that way who are u to say its unbalanced? balance is not about equalizing stuff in videogames there are tons of variables for each weapon, monster, local; i could say that this mod is unfair cause gunners dont have to get close and combo mere inches from the monster thus making them way safer trhough the fight and now giving 'em defense comparable to blademasters makes blademasters unviable...
Anyway just trying to clarify my view about cheating, balance and fairness about one of my most beloved franchises^^
Wikipedia isn't an authorative or academic source. There's no official definition or typification of the criteria under which something is considered a cheat. Even under that interpretation the notion of normal gameplay is still going to be dubious. Comparing the different dynamics of the mechanic it's clear that it's gone beyond it's design point to anyone with eyes and basic knowledge of statistics and that this is an unexpected result. Under your logic, the performance booster is cheating, because it grants an advantage beyond normal gameplay by making the game not randomly chug whenever it decides it wants to go rake through all of memory with the speed of Nevada ballot counting.
I'm someone with a background in mathematics and system analysis. I've presented numerical arguments which point that the developers either made a mistake in their original design, or induced one by scaling a system beyond its reasonable limits. I don't see any argument of yours refuting the numerical discrepancies induced by the scaling, just a weak argument about some abstract "blademasters should take less damage because of having to be close" which is false given ranged weapons don't get the privilege of sniping or mortaring from miles away without an accompanying sharp drop in damage. Bow HAS to be in melee range, HBG not only has to be in close range because its main ammo types are focused on this area, but has to do so without a proper dodge, LBG has more leeway but given the late game monsters this mod mainly affects have most of their deadly attacks as projectiles and aoe that argument is still irrelevant.
If you'd bothered to read and follow the math you'd have seen gunners don't get blademasters level of defense. They get a different damage curving which only meets blademaster after certain point.
Thinking the developers have any concept of balance is an absurd idea in a game where HBG exists. Much more so when considering they were also the muppets that gave it scope, shield 3 + Guard 5 + Guard Up (being the best shield in the game bar none) and loyal thunder. Or that Fatalis armor basically trivializes any notion of choice in terms of armor. Love the franchise as you may, numerically speaking it's plain that any person with basic mathematical skills can find how utterly inept the devs are at that particular facet of the game.
After 1 week of using this mod I can share a bit of my opinion: this isn't really a "cheat" per se, you won't be a tank, you still lose more HP than melee users, you still can be one shotted with HB3 if not careful, but now it'll happen only on the most dangerous attacks, no more losing half of HP in fully augmented Safi/Fata gear just because regular Teostra run past you. Now damage scaling percentage is similar to pre-Iceborne days, where you could feel difference between normally upgraded and augmented armor. In my opinion mod brings back the vision created by Team A in vanilla game, butchered horribly in expansion; is it cheating? Technically yes, but not for me, the bow user since Freedom Unite.
This mod made me go back to main weapon. Thank you for this mod. Bow was tons of fun in the base game but was really frustrating in Iceborne's end game with the ridiculous one shots.
?I was impressed at the high level of effort that went into calculating this stuff, right up until I saw who made the mod. You do fantastic work as always, Astersand. ?I've always been annoyed at just how much more damage ranged take, since its so far in the extreme as to be nonsensical. To make it worse, your defense matters for elemental damage as well, so low defense means more elemental defense doesn't matter, you still take more damage in most cases, unless you get 20+ resistant and then eat for resistance. This was a non-issue in older games since gunner armor had way more resistance, but in MHW, the armor sets are identical between gunner and blademaster. You don't *have* extra elemental resistance for the boost to matter much, and it scaled extremely poorly. ?This mod is especially important for soloers who like to use ranged weapons, since we don't even get the usual benefit of not being close to monsters (a non-benefit these days anyways since critical range is well within melee of basically any big scary), due to them trying to sit on use permanently.
?Thanks again for your work. I wish Capcom would hire you to help them figure out balance stuff. ?
Not gonna lie. I had mixed feelings about this at the beginning.
But after reading the description and looking at the graphs I can totally see capcom making such a massive mistake. If it wasn't you that uploaded this I would probably not believe it and tag it as cheating.
Im a HBG Main and your plugins like the performance booster and the tic rate fix are a blessing.
I will give it a try.
Thank you Asterisk for being a part of the modding community :)
25 comments
Out of curiosity (haven't heard of that before), how much extra damage do you take?
Perhaps a few numerical examples (B80 G100, B100 G115, B120 G130 for an example idea I pulled out of my head) would be nice.
About the argument that this is all a oversight or the fault of the B team doing iceborne...really? they are the developers if they wanned it that way who are u to say its unbalanced? balance is not about equalizing stuff in videogames there are tons of variables for each weapon, monster, local; i could say that this mod is unfair cause gunners dont have to get close and combo mere inches from the monster thus making them way safer trhough the fight and now giving 'em defense comparable to blademasters makes blademasters unviable...
Anyway just trying to clarify my view about cheating, balance and fairness about one of my most beloved franchises^^
I'm someone with a background in mathematics and system analysis. I've presented numerical arguments which point that the developers either made a mistake in their original design, or induced one by scaling a system beyond its reasonable limits. I don't see any argument of yours refuting the numerical discrepancies induced by the scaling, just a weak argument about some abstract "blademasters should take less damage because of having to be close" which is false given ranged weapons don't get the privilege of sniping or mortaring from miles away without an accompanying sharp drop in damage. Bow HAS to be in melee range, HBG not only has to be in close range because its main ammo types are focused on this area, but has to do so without a proper dodge, LBG has more leeway but given the late game monsters this mod mainly affects have most of their deadly attacks as projectiles and aoe that argument is still irrelevant.
If you'd bothered to read and follow the math you'd have seen gunners don't get blademasters level of defense. They get a different damage curving which only meets blademaster after certain point.
Thinking the developers have any concept of balance is an absurd idea in a game where HBG exists. Much more so when considering they were also the muppets that gave it scope, shield 3 + Guard 5 + Guard Up (being the best shield in the game bar none) and loyal thunder. Or that Fatalis armor basically trivializes any notion of choice in terms of armor. Love the franchise as you may, numerically speaking it's plain that any person with basic mathematical skills can find how utterly inept the devs are at that particular facet of the game.
?I've always been annoyed at just how much more damage ranged take, since its so far in the extreme as to be nonsensical. To make it worse, your defense matters for elemental damage as well, so low defense means more elemental defense doesn't matter, you still take more damage in most cases, unless you get 20+ resistant and then eat for resistance. This was a non-issue in older games since gunner armor had way more resistance, but in MHW, the armor sets are identical between gunner and blademaster. You don't *have* extra elemental resistance for the boost to matter much, and it scaled extremely poorly.
?This mod is especially important for soloers who like to use ranged weapons, since we don't even get the usual benefit of not being close to monsters (a non-benefit these days anyways since critical range is well within melee of basically any big scary), due to them trying to sit on use permanently.
?Thanks again for your work. I wish Capcom would hire you to help them figure out balance stuff.
?
But after reading the description and looking at the graphs I can totally see capcom making such a massive mistake.
If it wasn't you that uploaded this I would probably not believe it and tag it as cheating.
Im a HBG Main and your plugins like the performance booster and the tic rate fix are a blessing.
I will give it a try.
Thank you Asterisk for being a part of the modding community :)