Sure thing!
So there is this concept of stagger value, which is basically number of consecutive staggers an enemy has gotten. Stagger someone once, they have 1. Hit them again during that stagger, value goes to 2.
This count of staggers is universal, doesn’t care if it’s a heavy or light stagger, is reset when a stagger action ends (animation + extra time until AI can act again), bosses are effected too and the value is inherent to the enemy and doesn’t care who caused it or who is hitting to gain bonuses from it.
What we did was add som code at the end of the damage calculation where we take that stagger count, capped at 2 (so 0,1 or 2) and then we have a damage multiplier that we add for each stagger. So if the damage multiplier is 0.5, you’d be getting 50% extra damage for each stagger that you’ve chained on your target (but max is 2).
Basic formula is damage = damage + damage * damage_multiplier * stagger_value
Then we add all sorts of complications, since this is vermintides damage system we’re talking about. So some weapons add more stagger value when they stagger, like 2H hammer heavy attacks, pushes, shield bashes and the like. This was added with the shielded enemies since we use stagger value to calculate when they should open their guard. So as an added bonus we all of the sudden have weapons that will add max bonus in only one hit. Neat - since all those weapons and attacks kind of do that cause they feel heavy and are basically cc/tanky strikes.
Elites use a half system of this, basically 1 + stagger_value * 0.5. Why the 1 base value? wouldn’t that increase all damage against elites everywhere? Yes, it’s cause we bumped all health (see below) and then tweaked it by introducing this.
Then we had a bunch of weapons that really played on their single-target damage capacity, like executioner heavy or 1h axe hits and such. They felt real weak and since they have a profile of being heavy hitters we created an exemption from the damage bonus where some attacks got a default 1.5 stagger_value regardless of stagger (basically a minimum stagger_value used, so if you hit someone with stagger_value 2 you’d still use that but anything else counts as 1.5). We also used this for ranged attacks.
THEN we added talents that you can use to modify the system with. And then we fail to get real great text to explain how they work. They have been and will be reworked but the beta version had these effects:
Smiter: for first target, add 0.25 stagger value per stagger_value, so 0 is still 0, 1 counts as 1.25 and 2 counts as 2.5. Hence the test result in the linked thread of “got no bonus” I’d suspect.
Assassin had a flat 0.5 bonus + stagger_value * 0.75 (basically per stagger_value 0=0.5, 1=1.25 and 2=2)
The other two work as described, adding to either yours or others stagger_value used in the calculation.
Then, after all this, we increased everyones health to test how our beta testers would feel about more resilient enemies with a way to compensate through working together and/or staggering/focusing on individual enemies. Why not keep health values and just lower damage output instead of complicated maths? Well, we didn’t want everyone to stumble into Beta and scream as their weapons produced smaller numbers.
All of this is for science and we’re still tuning and testing and evaluating feedback. Expect changes to be made and excuse the long rant. Hope it helps and I’ll try to stick around for followup questions and otherwise gulp up feedback.
