I was intrigued by an answer given in this interview yesterday by Yoshi-P:
https://www.mmorpg.com/final-fantas...interview-with-yoshi-p-yusuke-mogi-2000117841
Concerning trust damage, Yoshi-P says:
The AI calculates the overall damage inflicted on monsters as well as the overall pace of progression through the dungeon, constantly making adjustments to damage output based on these variables. (...)
To put it simply, the AI is making internal calculations and adjustments to ensure that the dungeon is always completed in a certain amount of time.
These statements clearly imply that the trust AI will intentionally do less damage if you're progressing quickly, or intentionally do higher damage if you're progressing slowly. There are two ways to interpret this:
I wanted to test this. To do so, I parsed two trust runs with a level 79 DRK, together with Alisaie, Urianger, and Y'shtola, all level 79, heading to Mt. Gulg. The two runs are done as follows:
Already we see that there is a huge difference in clear time based on whether or not you do damage. But this is not enough to prove what we want. The two above runs are clearly hugely different in terms of overall pace of progression, so comparing them will give us clarity on the two problems. Let's test each of them in order.
1: Was there an adjustment to damage dealt based on pace of progression?
The answer is no.
First, here are the overall DPS numbers for the DPS trusts, not counting DoTs:
Alisaie Y'shtola
Casual 5630 5290
Tryhard 5717 4822
The table does suggest there is no effective DPS difference between the two. But the following makes the lack of an invisible damage adjustment even clearer: the damage done by each of Alisaie's Verthunder casts for the two runs:
https://i.imgur.com/AeGJ0Uh.png
There is no noticeable difference between the two graphs, nor is there a trend for either one of the first graphs to increase or decrease. Keeping in mind I'm doing almost no damage in the casual run, such an invisible damage adjustment either does not exist or sets in too slowly to matter.
2: Did the AI intentionally choose certain skills based on pace of progression?
The answer is likely no.
I took the five best skills in terms of damage per cast. If the AI wants to do more damage, they should use those skills more. They are shown here:
https://i.imgur.com/7t6LjYK.png
For example, Y'shtola used Fire IV 82 times in the casual run and 61 times in the tryhard run, but when scaled to the total run time, the number of casts per second is almost exactly the same.
In fact, Alisaie seemed to use Verholy a lot more in the Tryhard run, but she did use Verflare less, so it seems to work out to a slight increase in overall damage (as we saw above).
(Urianger only cast Death once in the two runs, the first run - and it killed a mob with 20k hp left.)
Conclusion
Within the range in pace of progression represented by the casual to tryhard runs, trusts do not get an automatic damage adjustment, nor do they intentionally choose high-damage skills in an observable manner.
It may be that I'm interpreting Yoshi-P's statements incorrectly; there is a mistranslation (I don't consider this likely); or there is some sort of misunderstanding.
It is still possible that players who do even more damage get gimped in some way (doesn't seem likely, since you do get better clear times still), or wipes cause the trusts to power up (I didn't wipe in either run because it would've been hard to control for). I did not test for much higher damage because that would require me to use a DPS, which would need 3 different trusts and I can't be bothered running with the ones that are already leveled.
TLDR: nothing ventured nothing gained
submitted by /u/LighthouseGd
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Continue reading...
https://www.mmorpg.com/final-fantas...interview-with-yoshi-p-yusuke-mogi-2000117841
Concerning trust damage, Yoshi-P says:
The AI calculates the overall damage inflicted on monsters as well as the overall pace of progression through the dungeon, constantly making adjustments to damage output based on these variables. (...)
To put it simply, the AI is making internal calculations and adjustments to ensure that the dungeon is always completed in a certain amount of time.
These statements clearly imply that the trust AI will intentionally do less damage if you're progressing quickly, or intentionally do higher damage if you're progressing slowly. There are two ways to interpret this:
- There exists an invisible damage debuff/buff that is based on overall pace of progression.
- The AI intentionally chooses low damage/high damage skills based on overall pace of progression.
I wanted to test this. To do so, I parsed two trust runs with a level 79 DRK, together with Alisaie, Urianger, and Y'shtola, all level 79, heading to Mt. Gulg. The two runs are done as follows:
- The "casual" run. I did little damage, only enough to pull aggro, while avoiding AOEs and otherwise standing still. I did 1060 DPS (calculated as total damage divided by total run time) and the clear time was 36:30.
- The "tryhard" run. I did as much as I could, with the same DRK, while avoiding AOEs. I made reasonably big pulls. I did 6170 DPS and the clear time was 27:18.
Already we see that there is a huge difference in clear time based on whether or not you do damage. But this is not enough to prove what we want. The two above runs are clearly hugely different in terms of overall pace of progression, so comparing them will give us clarity on the two problems. Let's test each of them in order.
1: Was there an adjustment to damage dealt based on pace of progression?
The answer is no.
First, here are the overall DPS numbers for the DPS trusts, not counting DoTs:
Alisaie Y'shtola
Casual 5630 5290
Tryhard 5717 4822
The table does suggest there is no effective DPS difference between the two. But the following makes the lack of an invisible damage adjustment even clearer: the damage done by each of Alisaie's Verthunder casts for the two runs:
https://i.imgur.com/AeGJ0Uh.png
There is no noticeable difference between the two graphs, nor is there a trend for either one of the first graphs to increase or decrease. Keeping in mind I'm doing almost no damage in the casual run, such an invisible damage adjustment either does not exist or sets in too slowly to matter.
2: Did the AI intentionally choose certain skills based on pace of progression?
The answer is likely no.
I took the five best skills in terms of damage per cast. If the AI wants to do more damage, they should use those skills more. They are shown here:
https://i.imgur.com/7t6LjYK.png
For example, Y'shtola used Fire IV 82 times in the casual run and 61 times in the tryhard run, but when scaled to the total run time, the number of casts per second is almost exactly the same.
In fact, Alisaie seemed to use Verholy a lot more in the Tryhard run, but she did use Verflare less, so it seems to work out to a slight increase in overall damage (as we saw above).
(Urianger only cast Death once in the two runs, the first run - and it killed a mob with 20k hp left.)
Conclusion
Within the range in pace of progression represented by the casual to tryhard runs, trusts do not get an automatic damage adjustment, nor do they intentionally choose high-damage skills in an observable manner.
It may be that I'm interpreting Yoshi-P's statements incorrectly; there is a mistranslation (I don't consider this likely); or there is some sort of misunderstanding.
It is still possible that players who do even more damage get gimped in some way (doesn't seem likely, since you do get better clear times still), or wipes cause the trusts to power up (I didn't wipe in either run because it would've been hard to control for). I did not test for much higher damage because that would require me to use a DPS, which would need 3 different trusts and I can't be bothered running with the ones that are already leveled.
TLDR: nothing ventured nothing gained
submitted by /u/LighthouseGd
[link] [comments]
Continue reading...