Damage Calculations and why transparency is important

There I am in the middle of a mission fighting some Fallen, and a green item drops. I'm excited, of course, so I finish the mission and go back to the Cryptarch to see what it is. It's a new Auto Rifle. I check the stats, and it has notably more attack than my current rifle, which had served me well over the last couple levels or so. I equip my shiny new weapon and go back to do another mission. That's when I notice something seems a bit off. It seems to be taking more shots to kill enemies than with my previous rifle. Well, this can't be. It has a noticeably higher attack rating. I look, and sure enough, it has more attack and is doing less damage. I am confounded to say the least. I look at all the bars looking for differences, and double check to make sure the attack of the new rifle is indeed higher than my previous rifle. That's when I notice that my previous rifle, while having close to 30 less attack on it, has an impact bar that is roughly 4-5 times higher than with the new weapon. Despite the new weapon having significantly more attack (upwards of a 40% increase), it does noticeably less damage. Needless to say, "impact" has quite an impact on the damage calculation. (pun intended)

This may not be a problem for some people, but there simply isn't enough transparency when it comes to the damage calculation in this game. The bars are fine for simple comparative purposes, when you just want to view broad differences at a glance, but they simply aren't specific enough to convey the necessary information required to make a decision on what weapon to use on the fly. It's forced me to test out each weapon, unless the stats, specifically impact, are nearly identical. This has happened numerous times, and it's always the same. Even if a weapon has a higher attack rating, be careful, because if the impact bar is very low, you might not be getting the extra damage boost you were expecting.

Here's are a couple examples for you: I had a sniper rifle with 72 damage and an impact bar that was about 1/3 - 2/5 of the way filled. I found several other sniper rifles that had attack ratings that were between 100 - 110, however, the impact bar was only filled around 1/10 of the way. It looked like just about a half inch (on my tv anyway) . This 72 damage sniper rifle lasted much longer than expected, since I was actually getting new sniper rifle drops that were ranked around my level. Keep in mind that this is a 40-50% increase in attack, but still does less damage. The second example is that of an auto rifle. I had an auto rifle that had 106 for an attack rating. The impact bar was around 1/4 of the way filled. I found another auto rifle that had an attack rating of 142, but again, it just had a little sliver of an impact bar. I was sure that the new auto rifle would do more damage, but sure enough, it did roughly 30% less damage. I can deal with some minor variations or reductions in damage if the rest of the stats, like reload, stability, range, etc., are really good, but I can't be doing this much less damage and expect to not get killed, when I simply can't kill the enemies fast enough. And just so I'm clear, I tested these weapons at very close range, so that the range stat wouldn't be a factor. I also made sure the elemental damage was the same so that wouldn't be a factor either.

I'm sure most people are no stranger to this type of problem in games. RPGs have been plagued with inconsistent damage calculations for quite a while now, but usually they're intuitive enough that you can figure them out, without necessarily knowing exactly how the damage is calculated. Strength gives you more physical attack power, and magic gives you more magical attack power, just to name a couple. In Destiny, however, it just seems needlessly convoluted and totally counterintuitive. There is no reason to have an attack rating and then a separate bar, impact in this case, that also effects the damage output of the weapon, without it conveying to the player how this impacts the damage output. And in this case, it is significant. Impact also seems to effect how likely it is that weapon causes an enemy to flinch, but it doesn't tell you that. All it says is that impact effects the damage rating, but then, why have an attack rating too? Impact should have just been "stun chance" and attack should have been, well, the attack rating. This kind of thing frustrates me to no end, because sometimes I just want to look over a weapon's stats, and be able to tell if I'm going to prefer it over my current weapon. I should be able to do this, but in this game, even minor changes in the impact bar seem to have a huge impact on the weapon's damage output, but you're never going to know which weapons is better if you don't constantly test them.

That having been said, I still like the game, but this is extremely irritating.

You should post more often - I really appreciate the rigor with which you tested this. I knew something was fishy with Destiny's damage numbers when I found my pistol out damaging much higher rated auto rifles. The largest difference is indeed the impact stat.

Cheers mate, thanks for the info and effort.

I suspect that the impact stat interacts differently with the type of damage a weapon does - but this is just a hypothesis based upon the naming of normal weapons "kinetic" damage type. From that name I suspect that weapons which do, say, warp or fire damage interact with the stats differently. I wish I had more glimmer and a larger sample size with which to do some testing.

That aside, I 100 percent agree that they need way more transparency with their stats. Makes me miss Diablo-type RPGs. I feel this is just one of quite a few oversights I've noted with Destiny. I wonder if they'll nearn from posts like this for their next games.

I noticed this too when I went from a Hand Cannon with about 100 damage and 4/5 Impact to an Auto Rifle with 150 damage but with 1/5 Impact. The Hand Cannon would kill guys in about two shots while the Auto Rifle would take about a full clip if not a clip and a bit.

As an outsider to the game with just about zero knowledge from disinterest..... Buuuuuut.

You make it sound like "impact" is some kind of damage multiplier based on the base damage, but that seems like a useless stat on its own if it only increases the damage on everything.

My personal theory is that impact would be an armor penetration stat, where unarmored enemies would take the damage value straight, and impact would boost your damage against armored enemies to cover up for the damage decrease of hitting plate. Perhaps these massive increases are on robots and armored fellas, and the weapons would be more in line with the numbers if you hit a meatbag? Doesn't hurt to look into at least. Though if 90% of the games enemies are armored "looks like that to me" then that is a different balance problem altogether.

Secondary theory is that the range stat you reference only governs the range where you can hit things at all and impact governs the damage on range, where a high impact gun would do more close up but even out as you go further away?

@tobbrobb: Here's the thing though. According to the wiki Impact is how much damage each individual shot does. But if you look at the stats of weapons shown, you'll see a big number called Attack which represents the damage the weapon will do, most people will think (and probably rightly so) that the higher a weapons Attack, the more damage it will do. But it's clear from testing weapons that this isn't the case at all.

For anyone interested

Rate of Fire: How quickly shots can be fired.
Impact: How much damage each individual shot does.
Range: How far shots travel before rapidly dropping.
Stability: How much the weapon resists recoil.
Reload: How long the weapon takes to reload.
Magazine: How many shots can be fired before having to reload.

@jesus_phish: So is attack then a dps calculation like Diablo, and impact is the damage on a per bullet basis?

@tobbrobb: Presumably the attack is some sort of dps calculation, but normally higher dps - things die faster. In this, you can have a higher attack rate, but you're taking longer to kill things. As per my previous example, I've a hand cannon (space revolver) with 100 attack but 75% impact. It will kill an enemy in 3 (non-critical) shots, which I can fire about as fast as I can pull the trigger. I've also got an auto rifle (space ak) which has 160 attack but 25% impact. It will take me close to a full clip (roughly 26 bullets) of non-critical shots to kill the same enemy.

I'd assumed (probably due to lots of mmo's) that the attack number (the big one) is more of a damage per second calculation result.

So your hand cannon with 100 dmg and 4/5 impact might hit like a truck, but in the same time frame the auto rifle with 150 attack and 1/5 impact will do more damage (assuming you hit with each bullet).

But your point of clarity is still a perfectly valid one.

@jesus_phish: According to some internet research, impact and attack have different scaling depending on the level of an enemy in relation to you. So in general, high impact will let you shred enemies that are of equal or lower level to you and attack will give more of a damage buffer against enemies that are stronger than you.

But yeah, this game's numbers are hilariously obtuse and the UI does a really poor job of representing it. Good stuff. I see the point you guys wanted to make pretty clearly.

EDIT: Also just for my own amusement, can you actually see the enemy health as a number? I'd be curious to play around with dps numbers with your handcannon vs assault rifle example. Assuming those numbers were about correct.

I've noticed this as well. The best advice here is probably to not throw away your old weapon before testing it out on some enemies. I've had some cases where I was looking at my newly acquired weapon and seeing the stats and immediately salvaging the old one, before testing it out and finding out that it sucked way more then my last gun. :(

So the conclusion now is that the big number is not saying much at all? Is it a DPS calculation without taking into account the magazine number and reload times?

@tobbrobb: You can't see the hp numbers, you just get a bar over the enemies head. Someone might have pulled the numbers out and catalogued them in a way that shows a level 12 Wizard has X hp while a level 10 Wizard has Y hp, but that data isn't shown in the game.

We also can't give you an accurate representation of the bars for things like impact and rate of fire because they're just bars with no measure of 0-100 on them. They could mean anything really. All you can gather from them is that the more filled in the bar is, the better the stat is on that weapon.

Based on my own (admittedly brief) observations my first thought was it broke down like this:

• Attack rating: maximum damage possible
• Impact: percentage of maximum damage inflicted with non-precision shots
• Precision shots: 100% damage inflicted

The scout rifle I played around with last night has an attack rating of 43 and an impact bar roughly half full. Non-precision shots would hit in the high teens and low twenties, while precision shots would hit for 43 consistently.

This is an awesome post. I noticed, even in the beginning since I am only a level 3, that a weapon that I thought was much better for damage actually seems to be much less impressive based on the numbers. I am guessing that when I get home to check the stats I will see that the impact rating is low. That would explain why it's taking me a long time to kill a dude with the "better" gun.

Long story short, thanks for looking at this. I now have to review my guns and test them out to see what is going to work the best and not depend so much on just the attack number and what looks better with a cursory glance.

A training dummy would probably be very useful in this kind of situation. Folks have been clamouring for one in Diablo 3 for a while now, but blizz have refused to do it for some ungodly reason.

While I completely agree with the sentiment here, this is just conjecture and comes off as the standard first reaction to the "attack speed vs damage" concept. An auto rifle will fire much much faster than you can fire a hand cannon, and over time will do more damage than you'd think. Just because it takes more bullets it doesn't mean it doesn't do the job as fast/faster, it just feels like it because you're attacking "more". Displaying a big "attack rating" (that represents DPS) is pretty much standard procedure for all loot games these days, but ye the bars are bad and doesn't convey the info they need to.

Having that said, in my experience there's pretty much only two weapons for each weapon category and the differences in the bars makes for pretty different behaviours. While you do have the low impact auto and pulse rifles the small bump in rate of fire they have is actually quite significant. I was running with a pulse rifle that only had a sliver of impact for a long time and I found it way more efficient than the other weapons I got. I've also played around with using a hand cannon and auto rifle with the same attack rating on the same mission and I can honestly say it pretty much came down to preference. If anything you will often find that with a hand cannon you'll run into damage thresholds where enemies will just barely survive 1-3 shot and you'll be "wasting" a lot of shots finishing off enemies.

In the end, if you find a higher attack weapon to be less efficient it's probably because you're either using it wrong or it doesn't fit the situation you're in.

@ares42: I think the point was that people noticed the higher rated weapon did not kill as fast as the one they had before. How can I use a weapon 'wrong' in this game? I aim at the heads and pull the trigger.

@dussck: Using auto-rifle or shotguns for anything other than close range, hand cannons and scout rifles for swarms of enemies you can't one-shot, Fusion rifle vs multiple enemies, etc.

@ares42: @dussck is on point. The higher rated weapons are taking longer to kill enemies than the lower rated ones. Again, my hand cannon with a lower rating kills faster than an auto-rifle, at the same range, at the same enemies and using the same targeting.

Nice post. I also noticed the impact of impact when I changed from a scout rifle to an auto rifle for the first time. I agree that they definitely need to do a bit more to front some information about the game's mechanics, particularly when it comes to damage calculations. Like elemental damage. Maybe I missed it, but I have no idea what types of weapons are effective against which types of enemies. And when I hover over the element icon in the menu, no info is displayed. I can't help but feel it's really important, but I don't know where to get info about it.

@afabs515: As far as I know the game does nothing to tell you but the way works is arc does more damage against enemies with blue shields, solar against orange shields and void against purple shields.

Seriously bungie, WTF? And here I thought impact was the amount of ''stagger damage'' the weapon did. Between this and the fact that elemental damage isn't explained anywhere I find the obtuse nature of weapon stats pretty fucked.

Damn I thought impact was just stopping power.

@jesus_phish: Ok cool. That's what I suspected but I was never completely certain. Thanks a lot for the info! Now those wizards and captains might not be so annoying haha

And it seems elemental damage is just a way to get specific kinds of shield down faster. Orange shields (wizards) are weak to solar, blue shields (captains) are week to ark and purple shields (minotaure(?)) are weak to void. Cool this info is NOT IN THE GAME.

@jesus_phish: The point is that for every single bullet your hand gun can fire your auto rifle can probably fire 3-4+. It's just that any guesstimation on the relative difference of something like .13 and .47 seconds based on feel is usually very wrong, while the difference in numbers popping up is very easy to distinguish. And overall that creates a feeling of killing things quicker, especially if they die in a short amount of time.

@jesus_phish: Just curious, have you tried firing the higher rated rifles in accurate, controlled bursts and if there's a difference? I don't have Destiny by the way, I'm just really interested in the topic.

Yeah, the way that information is presented to you in the game is pretty bad so far. I thought that handcannons were completely useless at first, but then I noticed that they did way more headshot damage than any other weapon I had used so far.

This and the lack of explanation around the faction currencies (I eventually found at that if you hover the cursor over the Reputation Details text it explains them to you) were probably the most baffling things about the game so far.

They should have a dummy in the tower so that you can test weapons before you go out in the field, maybe have it display DPS and such and such after you're done.

Distance matters. I noticed in the Beta that you do more damage the closer you are to the target no matter the weapon. Kinda sucks when you're sitting back sniping some dude when you realize you have to move closer to do some real damage.

I noticed this very early on. The way I saw it, and still see it actually. Is that the impact is the rating against the enemies armor rating. The higher the impact the closer to the full damage per shot you get. Because I've never had a shot do full damage on any enemy. But depending on the enemy type and its level, it does more. And yes, the higher the impact the more it does on the same enemy.

Here is an example. Versus the giant spider tank from the first strike. I've fought this thing on my own two times now in free roam. I had an auto rifle with 75% impact and 114 damage. I had another auto rifle with 113 and 50% impact. The first one did 46 damage crit (yellow numbers) to the legs. The second one did 34 crit to the legs. Only one damage point difference. But 25% impact difference equaled 12 points less damage per hit to the enemy. BUT. On a regular enemy in the area, each on would one shot kill to the head, same crit numbers of 68. And one burst would kill anything below level 7. So it really depends on the area you are in and the enemies in that area. I'm almost certain this is the vs armor rating.

According to what I could find online: vid

The impact value is the raw damage a weapon does per shot. The higher the value the more each individual round does. The attack value represents a damage calculation based on impact vs enemy armor. If the enemy has no/little armor the attack stat does nothing, but against high armor/level characters the attack value is increasingly more valuable. In lament terms attack value is an armor piercing modifier.

Although the system seems counter intuitive, the bolding of the attack value is more helpful in general for players, since it more accurately represents the usability of the gun as you progress into harder content. My understanding of why the system is set-up with both an attack stat and impact stat is due to PVP, where the attack stat is negated and all weapons regardless of "level" are equalized.

If anyone is interested, I found this floating around out there. Kind of sort of explains what's going on with the weapon stats.

http://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/2g03i7/weapon_stats_explained/

TL:DL, for enemies at or below your level, you want impact. For enemies above your level, attack is going to help you do more damage. Really, the issue I have is that everything is displayed in meters. Just give me an actual number to look at.

I find that i only get the total "damage" when i get a crit, so my guess is impact would effect the base damage where the highest damage possible with a crit would still be higher.

This is a real problem agreed tc, and really super noticeable when 'upgrading' your sniper rifle especially. Crit numbers are significantly different(and far less on same lvl enemies too)even though 'attack' is more, even between rifles that are several lvls different in my relatively short experience. This seems like a pretty big oversight on Bungie's part for something that should be so basic to this game's design and intention. Either give us a more pertinent damage rating(dps), and/or fix the damage to reflect higher lvl weapons appropriately and to allow players to choose upgrades more wisely. Disappointing and baffling imo.

I think people have a pretty good grasp on what attack does in relation to damage on leveled enemies, so I just wanted to point out that "range" is the stat that affects the distance at which your gun will still convey its full damage. I'm not positive, but I think you can get a rough measurement of your gun's range by putting a far away enemy in your crosshairs and moving towards them until the crosshairs turn red. That's your gun's maximum range.

From everything I've tested, I'm all but certain that it's not a DPS stat. The reason I say this is that I've used guns of the same type that have everything the same except for the damage or impact rating. For example, a scout rifle with 100 attack and an impact bar 50% filled will do more damage than a scout rifle that has 125 attack and an impact bar that is only 20% filled. If what you say is true, then the scout rifle with 125 attack would actually would do more damage given the same amount of time firing as the first gun. The problem is, they both have identical stats, aside from impact and/or attack, so they are both going to put out the same amount of bullets over time. Due to the first gun doing more damage per shot, the second is never going to catch up in terms of cumulative damage, since it's not going to be shooting faster.

It's funny you should mention sniper rifles, because that's actually where I first noticed it. One of the examples I gave was with some sniper rifles. Here's a bit more info, if you're interested. The sniper rifle that had an attack of 72 did a crit of about 1800 damage, whereas another rifle that had an attack of 101 only did about 1200. That's a 50% increase in damage from a rifle that has nearly 30% less attack. This was the weapon that made me take a step back and test the damage more thoroughly. It was probably just because the damage differences on previous weapons of other types were relatively small, going from 54 to 48, for example, so I didn't notice it. A 600 damage difference, however, is rather hard not to notice and made me wonder what the hell was going on.

I also agree with what you said. However, the main problem isn't just that this is the way it is, even if that is part it, it's more that the system is essentially hidden from the player. No one is going to think that impact is going to effect the damage just as much, if not more so, than the big number with the word attack next to it. In just about every other RPG out there, this is generally the number you can look at for overall damage output comparisons, but in this game, there is a stat that isn't even a number that effects it more than, I'm guessing, the vast majority of people realize. The impact stat should also be a number, for one, and even if it wasn't, the bar should have been separate from the others and right underneath the attack rating. This would have, at the very least, showed people that it is important when comparing the damage of two weapons. As it is now, it's just tucked away with the other stats, which have basically nothing to do with damage calculation directly (except range, but that's only when the distance gets to a certain point).

The fact that impact isn't displayed as a number is extremely irritating. Trying to determine the difference in damage a gun is going to do based on a bar that is always going to be within a certain range in a rather finite space is very unintuitive . At a glance, a much larger bar is obvious compared to a smaller one, but when the differences are more minute, it becomes more problematic and much more frustrating to try and determine damage output. The only thing that you can really do is test them all out as you get them, which I have to admit, is starting to get on my nerves a little.

@gaspower: Only getting to see this now. I have been firing the auto rifle in controlled bursts, but it's also a weapon with very little recoil and it's easy enough to hit the medium/bigger targets with an entire clip without burst fire. It doesn't make a difference.

@jesus_phish: Ah okay. Unless there's something else that people missed out, it's really a busted or inaccurate calculation.

I have played through level 14 at this point and so far here is what I can personally gather: The impact rating and the attack rating can both be instrumental in increasing the damage of the gun. It's a very unspecific relationship they have, but one is not necessarily more effective than the other. Absolutes will bite you. It seems that if you want to know for sure, you have to test, and that is aggravating at times. In general though, for a good sense of how the gun will perform, there are some trustworthy guidelines:

For weapons of the same type:

- If attacks are similar, look to the impacts for a determination of what is going to produce higher damage

- If impacts are similar, look to the attacks for a determination of what is going to produce higher damage

This is where it can get fuzzy...

For weapons of the same type:

- As the attack values become more divergent, the impact values will become less meaningful in determining which gun produces greater damage

-Example: Auto Rifle Comparison - 119 attack 1/3 bar impact vs 49 attack 1/2 bar impact - The higher attack gun will do much more damage, even though it has less impact. At some point though, if the attacks became closer in value, the impact difference would begin to become more influential.

So we might not have specific numbers, but maybe we can have some sense of how it works? The whole issue is even more complicated when you consider what stats transfer to PVP versus which ones don't.

So it seems like people have a very basic understanding of these two stats, impact and attack. I thought I would toss in my 2 cents of what I found during my brief testing.

If you hover over the attack number the descprions actually says "higher attack allows your weapons to damage higher level opponents" and it seems like people have found that to be accurate.

Now what I was what if a gun with a lower attack had the same impact as a gun with higher attack, here is what Got:

level 10 hunter

Auto rifle with 60 attack at medium range against a lvl 6 Dregg: 28 dmg to body and 84 to head

Auto rifle with 72 attack and equal impact as the rifle above at medium range against a lvl 6 Dregg: 31 dmg to body and 91 to head.

So if the enemy is of equal or lower level and two weapons have the same impact, the one with higher attack ultimately does more damage. Now, I then switched to scout rifle wth a much higher impact but same attack as one of the rifles and here's what I got.

Scout Rifle: 72 attack with more than double the impact of the previously mentioned rifles: 56 dmg to body with 138 headshot damage.

So I guess in the end you really need to look at impact unless you have guns that are at parody, have elemental damage or are facing enemies of a larger level.

Amazing how much confusion there still is on this, despite so many people trying to get a definitive answer. A testament of how messy of a system they've built.

But here's what I've figured out, based on research and experimentation, for those still scratching their heads.

IF DEFENCE < ATTACK, then DAMAGE = IMPACT

IF DEFENCE > ATTACK, then DAMAGE = IMPACT minus a PENALTY

Where the size of the PENALTY depends on (DEFENSE - ATTACK) or (DEFENSE/ATTACK)

Unfortunately, we don't know what each enemy's defence rating is, which is another transparency issue, but presumably they go up in level.

Conclusions:

• For enemies around or below your level, all you care about is IMPACT
• As enemies gets stronger DEFENCE, your amazing high-impact weapon becomes less effective because the PENALTY is too high, and you'll need to replace it.

To make things more complicated, there is also a FIXED level penalty, which has nothing to do with the impact/attack of your weapon:

• minus 30% damage when attacking enemies your level+1
• minus 40% damage when attacking enemies your level+2
• minus 50% damage when attacking enemies your level+3
• etc

There are some more intricacies, but I think that's the gist of it.

Isn't Attack something akin to DPS?

Impact = damage per bullet, so you see higher numbers.

@southgrove, definitely not...

@southgrove: Nope, if it was it'd be too simple.

How dare they!? How dare a developer make you work for something, and actually use your brain to figure something out, instead of handing you everything including the answers on a silver platter. Welcome to the oldschool RPG style of game design. You know where you actually had to figure things out on your own. It's all a part of the exploration and the sense of satisfaction you get when you actually figure something out for yourself. This isn't CoD.

First, "oldschool" doesn't automatically mean better no matter how much you want it too. "How dare they" is taking it a little far. I'm simply saying that it is idiotic to make it a puzzle, or whatever you want to call it, in order to figure out how damage is calculated so as to not waste any more time than I have to. It shouldn't require hours worth of testing to work out what your base stats really do. I'm not opposed to figuring things out for myself. I welcome it, in fact, but damage calculation is a fundamental mechanic of countless RPGs. It's often not a problem, but this game needlessly convolutes it without giving you any heads up as to how it's going to effect the quality, so to speak, of the weapons you're getting. Please understand that the fact that it's done like this isn't so much the problem as the fact that it isn't adequately conveyed to the player to help lead them in the right direction when comparing weapons. On top of that, the tooltips are essentially useless. Lastly, this has nothing to do with exploration, and I gain no satisfaction from having to constantly stop and test weapons to make sure I don't inadvertently screw myself over just because the devs didn't feel like explaining a base gameplay mechanic that would have reduced needless downtime on something that seems to have been omitted purely for the sake of creating confusion and wasting people's time.

On a side note, as far as I can tell, nobody mentioned Call of Duty before you did. You might want to think about that.