The mechanics thread - beta edition (in depth FAQ)

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Malice wrote:

AFAIK there aren't any breakpoints.
Faster block & stun recovery reduced the stun time by a percentage, for instance 50% faster block and stun recovery will halve the stun time.

I think the default stun length is about 400ms, but don't quote me on that.

Unless there has been some revolutionary breakthrough in video game design, I don't see how what you are saying is technically feasible. Games run something called the 'game loop' which renders the game world in slices of time. For each frame it runs various game logic functions (can the character start an attack this turn? Has their life reached 0?) and then renders the game world's graphics. It then waits the remaining time until the next frame occurs, and repeats.

If the time between frame slices is .04 seconds, then nothing in game can ever happen faster than .04 seconds. Also, it is impossible for an action to require exactly .31 seconds, as it would be (likely) rounded up to .32 seconds, or 8 frames.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_programming#Game_structure

Unless you're claiming GGG has invented some sort of radical magic, I don't think they have changed the basic rules of computing.

For reference, diablo 2 ran at 25 frames a second, meaning .04 seconds per frame.

Edit: for clarity, it is possible (and common) that graphics are rendered in a separate loop, which means you can get 80 graphical frames per second even though the game world runs at 30 frames per second. This is probably what GGG does, but I have no idea what number the game logic loop runs at.

Well, I can't speak about technical feasibility, but here is what chris had to say to an earlier question about D2-style breakpoints:

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Chris wrote:

We don't have frame breakpoints, we do things based on exact times.

Frame breakpoints in Diablo 2 did produce very fascinating itemisation results, but it'd suck to have to fake it to achieve that.

Sadly I took a pretty poor screenshot, but I managed to ask this to chris when he was online several hours ago. As close as I can remember, my question was "How many frames per second does the game logic run at?"



You can see ladypewpew talking about it, and then chris answered 25.

I think the confusion is that the -graphics- engine doesn't need to use breakpoints, but the "flow of time" of the game world does. I'm starting to wonder if I'm being too technical for even a mechanics thread ;)

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overpowdered wrote:

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50% faster block and stun recovery will halve the stun time.

Why halve? Without further knowledge i would asssume that 100% halves the stun time.

I'd agree with overpowered.
There are some mods that imply they subtract from 100% though — mods which say reduced (energy shield delay, stun threshold [which I doubt])

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Tasonir wrote:

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herflik wrote:

I have one question since i am trying to make ring.

Every ring in game can have the attack speed mod??
I am cirious since i roll the mod easly on some rings ,while on one i cant roll it even after 50th try.

As long as the item level of the ring is high enough, yes. use /itemlevel when it's picked up to check it's item level. I don't know what level it has to be, but it should be reasonably high for the best stats.

I got a good 10% IAS recently on my level 20 or something at a shop — it's kinda dumb.

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Tasonir wrote:

I'm starting to wonder if I'm being too technical for even a mechanics thread ;)

No, I know exactly what you are talking about.

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Tasonir wrote:

my question was "How many frames per second does the game logic run at?"
[...]
You can see ladypewpew talking about it, and then chris answered 25.

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Chris wrote:

We don't have frame breakpoints, we do things based on exact times.

I'm no expert, but I don't consider these two things to be either contradictory or mutually exclusive.

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Xapti wrote:

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overpowdered wrote:

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50% faster block and stun recovery will halve the stun time.

Why halve? Without further knowledge i would asssume that 100% halves the stun time.

I'd agree with overpowered.
There are some mods that imply they subtract from 100% though — mods which say reduced (energy shield delay, stun threshold [which I doubt])

It seems to me that if it takes me 5 minutes to eat a sandwich, and you eat a sandwich 50% faster than me, then you eat it in 2.5 minutes.
If you eat the sandwich 100% faster than me, then it takes you no time at all, the sandwich instantly teleports into your stomach.


I see what you're saying though. You could look at it like I'm eating sandwiches at a rate of 0.2 per minute, and 50% faster than that would be 0.3 per minute, or 1.5 sandwiches in 5 minutes.
So 100% faster would halve the time needed to eat a sandwich.

The semantics of percentages are always ambiguous :(

I'll stick with my first assessment though, since the stun length is given as a set number of milliseconds, not a rate over time.

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Malice wrote:

Combat

Level scaling
Level plays a big role in many of the combat calculations in Path of Exile. Enemies higher level than you will be harder to hit, hit you more easily, do more damage, and take less damage than if you were the same level as them.
Similarly, enemies lower level than you will be easier to hit, have a harder time hitting you, take more damage, and deal less damage.
Level also affects the amount of XP you gain from killing enemies. Enemies higher level than you will have their XP reward reduced. The exact formula for this is unknown.

Wow is this really true? Seems counter intuitive. Most people would expect to be able to level faster by going to high level areas. I guess this prevents some1 from skipping ahead and then just leveling super-crazy fast on some area that's high above him.

Monsters have to be 6 levels above you for those penalties to kick in. And if you can deal with monsters 6 above you, something is maybe up with game balance. The penalty is to prevent powerleveling of low lvl characters entering high lvl zones and having other players kill things to gain massive XP.

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aimlessgun wrote:

Monsters have to be 6 levels above you for those penalties to kick in. And if you can deal with monsters 6 above you, something is maybe up with game balance. The penalty is to prevent powerleveling of low lvl characters entering high lvl zones and having other players kill things to gain massive XP.

Thanks for this info. It'd be nice if Malice could add some of this more detailed info to the mechanics section on the front page. Cheers!

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scyko42 wrote:

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Malice wrote:

Enemies higher level than you will have their XP reward reduced.

Wow is this really true? Seems counter intuitive. Most people would expect to be able to level faster by going to high level areas. I guess this prevents some1 from skipping ahead and then just leveling super-crazy fast on some area that's high above him.

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aimlessgun wrote:

Monsters have to be 6 levels above you for those penalties to kick in. And if you can deal with monsters 6 above you, something is maybe up with game balance. The penalty is to prevent powerleveling of low lvl characters entering high lvl zones and having other players kill things to gain massive XP.

Ah, yes this was a recent change and I neglected to update the thread. As aimless says, you won't be penalised unless fighting monsters 6 levels or more higher than you. I'll fix this now.

The change was introduced with version 0.9.2:

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• Added a five level grace period above the player where monsters still give full experience.

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/7307