Complete Armor and Helmet Rework

[smoky ibex]

Old post, just read the latest thing i said, if you want read what i wrote originally its here

The reason why the current armor system sucks is simple:

It is not built for an arcade mode, it is built for a milsim.

Listen, a milsim mode is coming eventually and current armor system makes the most sense to be in a milsim mode. It doesn't have to be completely removed, just put there and tweaked.
In arcade, it just feels inconsistent. Armor is a gamble that decides the outcome of a battle by random chance.
To elaborate further, armor right now serves as extra health, but it only provides you with extra health if the bullets actually hit the armor. In most cases, it is practically random because player character pulls his arms up when aiming and such, which are unprotected and in the way of said armor. That combined with unprotected legs creates a system that in this mode, is not good and worst of all, not functional.

How can this be solved then?
A proposal heard from others is the one I find personally the best for this:

• Giving armor % damage reduction, from top to bottom, legs and arms included, all the way to the neck. Helmets will give % damage reduction regardless of where you hit the person (face or helmet).
• Making it unbreakable. No need for any kind of new repair mechanics. Nothing breaks.
  This is a simple solution that I propose.
  Some may like it, some may not. I really do not care.

The point of this entire thing is at the very least express a need to fix for what I believe is one of the biggest, underlying problems Battlebit has right now. There are many problems that directly or indirectly stem from armor, primarily class imbalance.

Solve this somehow, anyhow and put the current one in the milsim and the new one for arcade. That is it. Nothing more, nothing less.

[brave idol]

Honestly if oki doesn't want to add armor packs, at this point it may as well be a flat damage reduction. I think it would make supports insane and need some serious testing for sure though

I think regenerating armor from encounter to encounter would be better balance wise tbh

But people will complain it's not realistic and silly, but oh well

[smoky ibex]

Honestly flat damage reduction is kind of a must now
Obviously it needs a lot of testing to make it somewhat balanced, which should be a thing soon with dedicated servers for that
As for if armor should break and how to get it back, there is about a dozen ways to go around it, all of which would work one way or the other

[agile patrol]

Well, flat damage reduction is a step in right direction tbh.
RN you have a support, who have additional HP only first encounter, while having movement speed restrictions all day long. That's basically an inherent nerf for no reason.
That's simpler and more robust system, super intuitive - trade movement speed for more health.

[ebon ginkgo]

%DR is good, flat is a bad idea.

[agile patrol]

You may introduce some combination of both tbh. %DR + some flat values. Or just %DR. Or just flat values. You name it. That can be iteratively tested and changed.

[ebon ginkgo]

%DR+flat is complicated for not much

[agile patrol]

That's interesting, because it's a way to balance some guns, like Vector or P90, while not really affecting other guns

%DR is good start, flat DR not needed rn tbh

[somber sierra]

Did he state that he doesn't want adding armor packs anywhere, actually?

Because adding something like an armor bag (like R6 Siege Rook's) to Support doesn't seem like a super awful idea?

[merry thicket]

IMO armor never feels good in a fps, due to damage inconsistencies it gives the guns. I would just remove armor at this point in the game and keep it in milsim mode. Yes there would have to be a gun overhaul with it, but the game is still in early access so I don't see an issue with it. Amor in this state with how it breaks is somewhat useless, and this is why light/ ranger is meta due to the speed it gives.

[muted spade]

armor removal leaves support with basically 0 identity

they're big man with gun

[boreal shale]

There are already multiple suggestions about exactly this, but anyway.

This alone will make the issue worse if anything. TTKs currently vary somewhat depending on which body parts you hit and how much, but by changing them to a % damage reduction that variation grows vastly if other things are not changed as well

[muted spade]

without armor they're just man

[boreal shale]

For example I found that for exo chestplates to have the same effect as they do now they’d need something like an 80% damage reduction, so your ttk could go from not being changed at all to being 5 times longer, just depending on where you hit

With the current system that doesn’t happen to nearly the same extent as the armour is likely to be used to its potential even if they will hit elsewhere with many of their shots

[nova grove]

80% is too big LUL

bruh

[boreal shale]

That’s the value that would give about the same protection as you get right now

Purely because a lot of shots will hit the limbs

[agile patrol]

Nah, just make support body armor 39% reduction. Feels a lot, but that's exactly 165 HP after resistance. Like it rn anyways

[boreal shale]

Only if 100% of the shots hit the body.

They do not.

[agile patrol]

If body shot, right

[boreal shale]

Limbs are a big part of the player

Bigger than the torso

[agile patrol]

If you hit head, that's 26% DR. Exactly 135 HP. Like it's RN

[boreal shale]

If you hit 100% of your shots on the head

This is really simple to understand

[agile patrol]

That's why current armor is so stupidly underwhelming you know

[boreal shale]

You don’t need to hit all your shots on the body for an exo chestplate to take full effect

But with percentage damage reduction you do

Therefore the “full effect” has to be scaled up significantly to compensate

Which is where the 80% figure comes from

That is genuinely how much is needed to fix that deficit with the assumptions I currently make

It could even be 100% damage negation and only be a little better.

[regal fractal]

They are people that oppose armour rework. You can't be more obvious troll. Like, WTF

[boreal shale]

This is so simple to understand

I don’t get why so many people don’t get it

[nova grove]

i dont get why you want it to be the same ttk we can make the ttk faster but not as slower as 165 hp ttk we want to make sure exo is tanky but not like 165 hp tanky lmao

[boreal shale]

With 100% damage reduction for example, if you’re hitting half your shots on limbs that’s at most gonna double the ttk

[agile patrol]

Current armor system is not good for the balance

[boreal shale]

To keep it similarly tanky as it is rn

Because most people agree it’s situational and not meta currently.

[boreal shale]

Nor would this one be

Without other changes

[nova grove]

sure but we need to make a middle ground of making people not complain it BE SUPER TANKY

80% is a lot

[agile patrol]

165 hp is 2-3 bullet more. LIKE RN

[nova grove]

bruv

[boreal shale]

The most important thing that would also need to be done is limb damage modifier

[nova grove]

cuz its like hitting the limbns

[boreal shale]

Most of the reason why the 80% is so high is because limbs take full damage

[nova grove]

the rework covers the whole body+limbs

[boreal shale]

OP did not say that

That would change things somewhat

[nova grove]

?

is this not what op said/

[boreal shale]

That does pose a balancing issue as it heavily reduces the number of damage breakpoints there are, but it would fix the inconsistency

[nova grove]

is this not full body reduction

by armor?

[boreal shale]

Somehow I missed that I guess

[nova grove]

since its gonna cover

the whole body now

we dont want that 165hp or 80%

since its gonna be consistent

even if its hitting limbs

[boreal shale]

I could find out what values work best if limbs benefit equally to torso

[nova grove]

the suggestion doesnt even tell there should be limbs modifiers

tbh this is just gonna make every ttk consistent on any body part

beside the head

[boreal shale]

The only issue I have with this is that it makes each gun highly sensitive to different armour types more than others

So now instead of TTKs being so variable generally it depends on the matching of your gun and the enemy more so than it does right now

[ebon ginkgo]

25% whole body armor for exo is already pretty good

[boreal shale]

yeah the values I initially stated make armour waaay too powerful with limb shots negated, let's see how low they need to go

these give very similar results to what we have right now

[chilly hound]

I like the idea of coming around to trying new armor ideas but the weapon damage numbers, rpm, and range are all based of the current armor values. So i think something like this more of a distant future suggestion rather than right now.

[boreal shale]

it would require some rebalancing for sure

[chilly hound]

Its really just too much work rn for the devs

but hopefully can be archived and brought up later to see if theres any merit to any changes to the system.

[boreal shale]

looking at the numbers I proposed it would lead to some goofy changes with breakpoints, for example the f2000 killing faster than the M4

[chilly hound]

Where it stands everything works ~fine~ and theres nothing super wrong with the armor.

[lapis musk]

rework armor = rework weapon damage, i would say OH NO GUYS if i were oki

[agile patrol]

For like 20% MS penalty? - no fkin way. That only about 1 bullet difference between no armor and exo

[smoky ibex]

Imma be real 50% on exo is as far as i would go

[agile patrol]

Exctinction of support players doesn't prove you point tho

[boreal shale]

50% is more than is needed, if the armour covers the limbs

[smoky ibex]

Exactly

[agile patrol]

40% reduction gives 165 hp for bodyshots presicely. That 2-3 bullt difference between no armor and exo. 50% is 200hp, that's too much

[smoky ibex]

Personally 40-50% would be the way for exo

But 50 does seem a bit overkill

[agile patrol]

That's 165-200 eHP range btw

165 is already in game if all bullets hit armored part

[boreal shale]

we don't need a 65% ttk increase to be the same as it is right now, because EXO does not give that big a boost currently

[agile patrol]

The problem, if you hit limbs rn, that's 100% damage

[boreal shale]

40% would actually translate to about 154% ttk when we consider headshots for exo. If the exo helmet is 30%

(with no limb shots)

[smoky ibex]

30% for exo helmet is fair

[boreal shale]

and 154% just by luck happens to be about exactly how it works out now with the current implementation of exo armour

it is actually surprising to me how close it is

0.1% off according to the assumptions I made

[smoky ibex]

Huh thats great actually

[boreal shale]

I was just gonna use multiples of 10 as a baseline and tweak them from there but that turned out to be unneccesary

[worn cedar]

Wouldn't this just make TTK longer?

[boreal shale]

the idea is to keep it the same in the context of this convo

[agile patrol]

Exo helmet add 35 hp rn, so we can give helmet 26% damage reduction. That's 1 bullet more than no helmet

[worn cedar]

plus the run n gun playstyle for some would just die cause everyone would want to last the longest thus picking the armour that gives them the most dmg reduction

[boreal shale]

that would work out to be slightly weaker than it is now, though with exo helmet I suppose the key thing is working around snipers

which my data doesn't consider

[nova grove]

idk i think just armor rework is fine

i want helmet to fly off

and hp is fine on helmets tbh

[smoky ibex]

30% should be enough regarding snipers

[boreal shale]

people don't do that rn, no reason they would if this were changed really

[nova grove]

we have to adjust snipers again if we change it to damage reduction

[boreal shale]

the peak ttk increase from old armour would be higher than this rework proposes, but the minimum ttk would be extended as well. Just more reliable

[smoky ibex]

But im not sure, i cant do calculations for it right now

More consistent

[boreal shale]

right now there are about 60-70 damage breakpoints against armoured enemies to work with, my main concern is that this would drop significantly allowing for less granular balancing with this change

don't have time to work out by how much it would drop rn but could easily do later

[boreal shale]

(as in, there are currently 65 damage values between 1 and 100 such that increasing the damage value by 1 leads to a potential ttk change.)

[worn cedar]

I just gave you the reason why that would change though

[ebon ginkgo]

gotta modify the downside. And remember it's not something you can bypass if it's the whole body. So more consistent and not breakable? It's a lot better than rn

[boreal shale]

This would keep the average TTKs of guns against the armours pretty much the same

[chilly hound]

Explain this 'Extinction of support players' You're clearly memeing cause there are support players in every game im in.

[agile patrol]

They like 3 per team of 127 players

[boreal shale]

That doesn’t match my experience.

With the extreme amount of invasion games of late I think it’s become more popular, as the player density being so high means you can farm a lot of kills as a support

[chilly hound]

Idk why you're talking in extremes. I think everyone can agree they see way more than just 3 in their games.

can you at least be honest with yourself

[boreal shale]

Welcome to 90% of the active members in the suggestion threads

[worn cedar]

As if Oki would want to spend so much time adjusting the guns to fit said armour system to be that way.

[chilly hound]

https://tenor.com/view/first-time-meme-first-time-the-ballad-of-buster-scruggs-gif-24656975

@boreal shale

[boreal shale]

It would require a total rebalance to keep guns just as good relative to each other, yes

We already reached agreement here that it would be quite a bit of work so possibly not that practical

I think that much is true for every armour rework suggestion I’ve heard.

[chilly hound]

total rebalance would take months, and from the sounds of things, they're already thinking waaay ahead of rn. so its gonna be a long time before its even looked at

[boreal shale]

To be honest it could be done in like an hour provided the person doing it has adequate tools to efficiently see the impact of the changes they make to the stats

But based on how gun rebalances have been so far

Realistically I wouldn’t expect it

[smoky ibex]

Yea it is going to take a while of course

[chilly hound]

I dont wanna be rude but, you're very much underestimating how long this would take if you have not seen the possess first hand

[boreal shale]

Well, we already have a baseline for the balance (the same as it was before), so it would really just be tweaking damage and fire rate in order to get the numbers to line up with what they were before

[smoky ibex]

Yea for now we can calculate how certain % would affect gun balance

[boreal shale]

Since that’s what an armour rework would mess with, TTKs

If I built a proper GUI for the program I use to generate data on this game, it would be easy for me to test whatever balance changes I wanted to on the data, it would just be a bit of work to set that up

[worn cedar]

The current armour system to some including myself make the armour actually feel like armour (whether you're wearing it or shooting someone with it). With a system like this you might as well be playing halo. "But it's Arcade!" Just cause the current mode is clearly made for casuals still doesn't mean the game can't be realistic. You keep on forgetting we have leaning, ammo management system, bleeding, drag and revive. The guns and armour have been balanced together and it took weeks upon weeks, months upon months, and years upon YEARS. Not only that every gun Oki adds has to also be adjusted for the current systems of the game.

[chilly hound]

Im just going to agree to disagree with you there @boreal shale ive seen how its done first hand its really much more complicated than doing 'tweaking the damage and fire rate to get the numbers to line up'

[worn cedar]

You're asking Oki to literally break the tower of cards and start over.

[somber sierra]

Imo, that's a pretty dangerous line of thinking because any kind of massive balance change requires a lot of playtesting, due to unforeseen things always popping up.

If only it was as easy as "Imma just tweak a few numbers" :/

[boreal shale]

I’d appreciate if you could explain why.

[boreal shale]

It wouldn’t be actually changing much in theory. More maintaining to compensate for the changes introduced by armour working differently

Nerfing or buffing guns would be more complex but that would not be this

[smoky ibex]

I have to agree with these guys on one thing, it will take a long time to change armor from what we have now to the proposed solution
This a building block of bbr and those aren't easy to replace
I do think the proposed solution would help this game in the long run, even if the wait for it is long

[chilly hound]

In example, you're first going to change the armor, so you take light armor for example, go into the code, and change its value number, secondly you have to test the breaking points or resistances of that armor for every gun, and type of damage that can be applied to you Check every guns new ttk and damage numbers also compare it to all of the old guns ttks and damage numbers. Then you have to do it all for deferent ranges. Then repeat all the steps for every peice of helmet and armor in the game. Then you have to run unique testing like x amount of shots in body and x amount of shots in the head, limbs also at diffrent ranges. Then you have to take all these results and compare them to the old results, change everything to fit as close to the current meta of things now. Then you have to run real tests and make sure everything works as intended in the real tests as in the coding, change anything that happens there. Then you can give it to testers if you have any. Then you can place it into the game if ultimately it works out. @boreal shale

Start to finish you're gonna be there a while, its not as simple as change value run code to test, change numer = done

[brave wing]

all good Oki just runs =RAND() on his excel sheet and overwrites stats every patch

[boreal shale]

A lot of that seems just not necessary. Since you can summarise pretty much all relevant info on a gun’s ttk in a singular number, possibly two if you want to tune the variance of the ttk across different scenarios, though that’s not a major concern. Your goal would just be to change that single number to match the old one.

For ranges you have a point, but you could plot that as a graph and adjust drop off values until it performed approximately the same as it did before

You would change all armour at once so as to not repeat the process 5 times, because why would you

Each one would affect the others

[smoky ibex]

It still requires a good amount of time, especially since one guy is essentially in charge of the whole thing
But you also have to fundementally change how the code works and ajusting the hitboxes all over again

[boreal shale]

That’s true

Depending on the current implementation at least

[brave wing]

you can write an optimiser to do that for you in a few lines of code

[boreal shale]

though you’d probably want to do things like keeping mag counts at certain values etc

You don’t want your optimiser to totally change the feel of a gun to more accurately approximate the old values

[chilly hound]

you're missing the point where you have to cross refence every value to the old numbers for every weapon and every type of damage, and all at deferent ranges if applicable , and tweak them one by one. Then you have to feild test everything all over again if you want to make sure theres no bugs

[boreal shale]

Every weapon yes, but every type of damage?

What does that mean

There’s only one

[chilly hound]

Trees, buildings, explosives, falling... theres more

[boreal shale]

None of those interact with the armour system

[chilly hound]

they might! If you're asking for % damage reduction.

[brave wing]

just more columns in the dataframe

y'all need a competent data scientist in your lives

[chilly hound]

Anyways ive made my point its not 1h of work

[smoky ibex]

I doubt it
They probably run on some for of hp, and doubt trees would have armor for some reason

[boreal shale]

If the systems to make balancing easier are not already set up it would be some more work

[chilly hound]

nah im talking about trees damage applied to armor

[nova grove]

like falling trees on player?

[chilly hound]

yes

[nova grove]

just make them insta dead

problem solve

[brave wing]

buff trees

[nova grove]

buff trees

yes

[brave wing]

armor piercing trees

[boreal shale]

Having armour affect trees is an entirely separate issue to this discussion I’d say

[chilly hound]

depending on how its coded, it could effect things , but im not looking directly at the code obvi

[nova grove]

i wouldnt mind it killing me like in an instant that would be funny

[brave wing]

incoming lumberjack meta

[nova grove]

tree rolling down the hill killing you

[chilly hound]

Ive never expirenced it so i have no clue if it does 1 shot or just hurt you.

[nova grove]

it doesnt

hurt you

right now

even the wall in the valley the reactor walls oesnt kill you

[chilly hound]

trees kill players

[nova grove]

never exp tree killing me

[brave wing]

i have

very humiliating

anyway

[chilly hound]

xd

[smoky ibex]

Ah i see
But i mean if tree falling damage deals like a million damage i doubt 40% armor does much
But again i have no idea how it is coded

[nova grove]

ive seen tree rolling down and not doing anything

[nova grove]

i mean they can just code it where trees will just kill you instantly

[chilly hound]

:D

[brave wing]

instantly isnt fast enough

[smoky ibex]

That is also a possibility

[chilly hound]

imagine i found the screenshot and it was ur IGN

[nova grove]

thats funny

[brave wing]

well it was the tree i had just c4'd

so i did it to myself lul

[chilly hound]

rename to Lucuma (The worst lumberjack)

[muted spade]

he did it

[smoky ibex]

Time to revive suggestion
Id make another if the suggestion wasnt gonna get obliterated for being a duplicate
So this will do
Just ignore what i said originally in the suggestion right now
This is just proposing some stat changes, outside of the TTK discussion (and no this isnt bumping cause i actually have something useful to say)

Curently the best armor vest in the game is the ranger armor. Why? Well given speed is better than protection right now, it gives minimal speed decrease and also gives the highest amount of mags out of all armor vests in the game
Once you unlock it, you got no reason to choose anything else over it.
Basically, lets say for example the base amount of mags you get is 3.

• No armor gives you no extra mags
• Ranger gives 1 extra mag
• Light gives 2 extra mags
• Normal gives 3 extra mags
• Heavy gives 4 extra mags
• Exo gives 3 extra mags (exo just needs mild speed buff its too slow)
  Other armor stats should stay the same for now. But it is a start
  Also, some armor/ backpack variant dont give one of those glowing parts that indicate if the player you are looking at is an enemy or not
  Seems a tad unfair that its a thing
  Thats all

[boreal shale]

Disagreed. Ranger is only the best if running out of ammo is a serious issue, which it may not be

ignoring external sources of ammo, assault can double its ammo with an ammo kit and support can do that multiple times

I'm confused by what your bullet points mean though, is that meant to be a suggestion for how you think it should be? If so that would render ranger utterly useless

[smoky ibex]

Honestly everyone I talked to runs ranger and thinks it's the best armor in the game without a doubt. And realistically, there is no good reason to run anything over ranger regardless of what gadgets you have. Other armors provide little benefit to justify using them. At best they give you 1 extra nade and block 1 extra bullet over ranger. Otherwise they just slow you down a good bit. Meanwhile ranger blocks 1 bullet, gives you the most mags and barely slows you down. Why use anything else over it?
Its just unbalanced and overshadows every other armor.
And yeah, bullet points are meant as suggestions.

[boreal shale]

Because it’s objectively worse than medium / light if you don’t run out of ammo with those.

With your bullet pointed suggestion that condition would disappear altogether, it would be objectively worse.

[smoky ibex]

Ok but how is it worse than light and normal

[boreal shale]

Under the aforementioned condition. Light has significant extra move speed. Medium has extra durability.

If you remove the ammo advantage, it is worse in every way

Most ARs with medium armour and an ammo kit will get you a minimum of 360 rounds, which is plenty and you’re likely to run into more sources of ammo along the way anyway

If you’re playing medic or engineer then ranger armour is fair enough, but to act as though it’s just superior I will argue with.

[smoky ibex]

While light does offer 5% more speed, ranger gives more ammo and an extra grenade in turn, which is just free kills.
As for medium, it barely makes a difference and it's pretty much a downgrade. At best it blocks 2 shots from a glock. Not only that, a lot of guns will break normal armor with a single bullet, as it only gives 25 hp.
TTK wise it barely makes a difference. You are better off running something else on classes that do have ranger.

As for classes that dont have ranger armor, its pretty much up to preference.

[boreal shale]

TTK wise, it’s the difference between 7.9% longer TTKs or 17% longer TTKs with light helmet (10.4% and 20.4% with normal helmet)

It’s fairly significant.