show me screen shots please

My thoughts on this:

http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Leviathan_Blade
http://wiki.spiralknights.com/Cold_Iron_Vanquisher

Take a look at their damage bars. The Leviathan is only very slightly stronger, or so it would appear, correct? Would it surprise you if I told you that the Leviathan Blade is about 30%~ stronger than the Cold Iron Vanquisher unless the CIV is up against undead? 30%. That's a HUGE difference. This data was taken from Level 10 Levi Blades and CIVs from very well known members of the community. I myself have low level (although they're the same level) weapons and the information holds true for me (in case you don't believe me: http://i55.tinypic.com/6h7z80.png)

So yeah, please, please, PLEASE give us numbers instead of bars. If you for some reason you cannot do that, at the very least you could fix up the bars so they look more accurate. But please just give us numbers instead.

Okay...then get over it and make a Leviathan...

Oh. Yeah, that really sucks...
Don't know what to say...tell other people so they don't make the same mistake?

I realize there's a lot of other development issues going on due to the game's recent release and bugs and new content development and whatnot but... c'mon.

I can understand Cold Iron Carver/Vanquisher not being as powerful in general as the Ascended Calibur/Leviathan Blade. It shouldn't be. It has a lovely increase to damage against Undead. But the gap between the weapons' base power is so large that the lovely increase becomes the only thing keeping it even mildly relevant.

Obviously there's an issue with stat representation. CIV's power bar is nowhere near accurate. If the 30% base damage difference in the OP is to be taken at face value, then that's about two full bars lower than what the game tells us. While it's understandable to want players to learn the nuances of the game, that is just completely misleading. The bars need to be fixed.

Another issue is that, again, if the 30% base damage difference is to be taken at face value, then the bonus damage to Undead is rendered somewhat meaningless without an *additional* Unique Variant to increase it further. The only thing the innate damage increase does is make it on par with Leviathan against one enemy type. On par... against ONE type of enemy. It should be noticeably stronger against Undead, not just barely better. To fix that, just make CIV's base damage stronger. Not as strong as Leviathan, obviously, but stronger. I imagine fixing CIV so its base power is tuned to be 15% lower (and properly represented as such with the status bars) than Leviathan instead of 30% would solve the balancing issue and make CIV a very desirable weapon to have against Undead without making it too powerful against anything else. It would still be noticeably weaker than the Leviathan Blade, and that's fine. But with that change it would also be noticeably stronger against Undead, which is necessary to differentiate it from the Leviathan Blade in a positive light (as opposed to now, where CIV being only as effective as Leviathan against undead, and much weaker against everything else differentiates it in a negative light). Alternatively, once the Carver is upgraded to a Vanquisher, change the maximum bonus of the innate undead damage increase from High to Maximum and leave the base damage alone. I can see how that'd be a bit extreme since Maximum bonuses are supposed to be super special and whatnot, but it would be a good way to send the message to players that the Cold Iron Vanquisher is THE undead-slaying weapon and it would push CIV's damage to Undead up enough to earn that recognition, and Leviathan would still be the preferred weapon for everything else, as I assume it is meant to be.

On the 30% difference: How much is this on an absolute scale? I've never played T3: I don't know if you're regularly seeing damage in the 100s or what. Because if defenses work additively and subtractively, then it's entirely possible the bar is perfectly accurate. If the defense of your opponent is enough that it essentially removes the first 8 bars of attack from any item, Then a sword with 9 bars of attack will be about 30% more effective than a sword with 8 & 2/3rds of a bar of attack.

This being said, the stat bars on these are very, very hard to read if you ask me. I can't even tell a difference between the two of them. Even if there is a difference, I would never notice it myself. I'd prefer it if (for example) every full bar was given a separate dot, while each partially filled bar was filled like a pie chart or something: I just think it'd be easier to tell the difference between two items than it is currently.

And you're right: we're not going to see numbers in this game. It looks like they're trying to do the same thing in that regard as what they did with Puzzle Pirates, which was pretty successful there.

"I'm sorry, but in general we avoid discussing the actual numbers behind the weapons because we like to encourage players to discover it themselves."

Players need enough information to make meaningful decisions. Fun games should not be solvable. The above philosophy hurts the former statement, and would hide the latter. Players WILL figure out any game system, assuming that there's enough interest in the game. This is the era of wiki sites and gamefaqs; when one person discovers something, then everyone will learn it. I've learned things like:

In Final Fantasy 9, part of stat boosts from equipment are permanent when you level when equipped with them. That's why Red Amarant is generally terrible: you get him last, and he's gained the least of these hidden buffs of any character.

In the mech game Chromehounds, weapon's attack values are scaled to roughly the 2.2nd power before determining damage. While a machinegun may have 200 power with artillery weapons having 2000, each machinegun bullet does 1/100th an artillery shell's damage, not 1/10th.

In the shooter Shadowrun, the health bar is not linear. "Half" your health is actually more around when the bar is 1/3 full (the first bars lost are worth less than the last).

None of this is ever directly told to the players, but people have figured it out. Once I learned these things, I was able to make more educated decisions. What should I equip in FF9? Which weapons in CH are best when considering damage, ammo, weight, range, etc? Should I run from this fight in SR, or do I still have a fighting chance? Finding this information out doesn't ruin these games, since there are many other variables to consider with the game. Tic-tac-toe is solvable, and that does ruin the game when you learn about that. Spiral Knights is not Tic-tac-toe; you can't just crunch numbers down to figure out the weapon with the best DPS and is therefore the only weapon that players should use (if that was true, it wouldn't be a very engaging system).

Revealing the numbers would let players more quickly digest and evaluate equipment options. If there's a weapon that is inferior, or superior to all others, then they will catch it for you and you can fix it. Besides, the best choices involve incomparables. I love heavy swords. I see people with cutters run in, killing enemies faster than I can, but I will end up rezzing them several times during a run. Heavy swords have wide arcs, good damage, and knockback. If you can time and position your attacks to avoid the opening after your swings, you can go a long time without taking damage. One thing that's terrible with them, though? Cutting down crystals. These are all things that can't be shown in numbers: handling, range, and practicality. The Spur is interesting, as it is fast with oddly high knockback, a substantial increase to damage on the 3rd hit, and you travel while swinging. Some weapons have better basic attacks, and some weapons have surprisingly good charge attacks. Even if you gave the numbers to these weapons, players will still experiment with them.

Would krabboss, or any other player, have made the CIV if he knew that it did 80% normal damage, but 110% against undead? Prolly not. Seems better to let players see that, realize that it isn't a choice that a player would make (willingly), and fix it. Would I see half the Spiral Knights population wearing some type of wolf cap if they knew that the "vague descriptor" damage to melee weapons was only 5%, and they were sacrificing 20% defense for it? Players asking to see the numbers are really asking to know what decision they are making, because if its just made at random then it really isn't a decision at all.

(Note: numbers in the last paragraph are totally random)

so yeah...anyone just randomly had enough time to go to Tier 3 with both weapons and take one swing at a non undead enemy with both weapons and compare(screenshots/ video even better)? Seems like the simplest solution to figuring it out.

Another slight problem with the Cold Iron Vanquisher is this:

A Unique Variant for increased Damage to Undead as low as... well... Low, appears to be enough for the Leviathan Blade to do equal (if not slightly more) damage to Undead as a weapon whose inherent ability is "increased damage to undead: High." It's... really... backwards. So yes. Just more reason for Cold Iron Vanquisher to be fixed or rebalanced in one way or another.

Since there's no reason for anyone to believe there's anything wrong with Leviathan, the problem must lie with the CIV. In order for it to be properly balanced so people want to use it, it can't be this much weaker than Leviathan. I imagine it would be greatly appreciated if the bars themselves properly represented the gap in the weapon's base power, but it will literally kill the Cold Iron Vanquisher as a useful weapon if it doesn't get some kind of tweak to properly balance it with its counterpart.

From everything my friends who actually use the weapons have told me and my own eyes watching them swing in combat, the speed is actually the same.

Also, if what AlexJS said turns out to be true (that the stat bars are logarithmic and thus the first bars are worth much less than the last bars), then by looking at the speed bar we should be able to trust what it says more readily. Just like the power bar, the speed bar on both weapons APPEARS to be "equal." However since the bars represent less, I would think a difference might still be visible on the bars if there was one.

"horribly underpowered weapons" *COUGH* IONIZED SALT BOMB *COUGH* Excuse me.

Once I read the suggestion that the bars were logarithmic, I was immediately convinced. I remember the Hot Edge and Calibur, for example. A lv1 Calibur has about 3.25 bars of Normal damage, and a lv10 Hot Edge has what looks like 1.75 or so each of Normal and Elemental damage. If used on something neutral to Elemental, you'd expect the Hot Edge's Normal + Elemental to add up to 3.50, which is more than 3.25, right? RIGHT???

Nooooooo! lv1 Calibur is WAY ahead of lv10 Hot Edge. The bars are probably looking at me and saying that that addition was like adding 1+1 and expecting 10. Has anyone else felt that?

If it is true what Krabboss posted from the dev's (about players finding this out on our own), then the bars need to be easy to understand. For example we'll take the CIV, The CIV has a max of 10 bars of power (at level 10). Without there being numbers to reference we are forced (from a mathematical stand point) to assume that the bars are equal the same amount of ATP for every weapon in the game.

I.E. a new brandish and a new calibur both have about 30.25% ATP (3.25 bars according to the wiki) so they should do exactly the same amount of damage on the same exact mob (± a few).

So according to the Wiki the LB and the CIV should have the same ATP when leveled to 10 (100%ATP) and the CIV should do just a little more to undead. Which seems correct to me as you have to go through a lot more work to get the CIV to earn the reward of having the extra ATP to undead.

If this is not the case then they need to come up with a new method of showing a weapons ATP, because it would mean that each bar for each weapon (even in the same weapon family) equals to a different % of ATP, which is dumb lol, and renders the bars useless.

Any news on this being fixed yet? Not balancing the weapons per say, but just making the system SIMPLE and easy to understand.

As to Zingman: Wanting a number doesn't mean we want the exact number that each sword does on each level to be displayed, but rather a numerical system where COMPARISONS are EASY, and FAST. Think of WoW's DPS number. There are lots of nuances in sword speed, damage range, and other values, but it is visible as a simple and quick comparison to know the average power of a weapon.

Right now you have to count bars, either assume the bar system is linear or logrithmic, then give the hell up because they don't appear to mean anything anyway.

This isn't just frustrating from a min/max perspective, its frustrating from even a casual "informed decision" one.

That seems like a fair estimation of the damage system, I've noticed the depth multiplier as well.

I do agree with you in that a bar system could work just as well as a numbers based system, just as you stated. But when someone screws up a system so badly, I generally prefer it if they chuck the whole system and implement one that is far harder to screw up, rather than making incremental and ultimately meaningless changes to the current one.

There are numerous examples of the bar system either not behaving intuitively, or being damned wrong. The transition from Horned owlite to Wise owlite is a huge boost in 'bars', but a nearly unnoticeable change in effect. Compounded to the Cold Iron Carver bars, and the handful of other weapons with similar bars acting at different powers, and I'd say they conclusively got the current system wrong.

All this in addition to the fact that in order to determine which of two weapons might be incrementally better (assuming the system worked at all) reduces you down to counting pixels.

While the easiest way to fix the issue is to just boost CIV's innate bonus against Undead from High to Maximum, there's a much more elegant solution.

Find a way to make it so that bonuses innate to equipment are part of the equipment's base status and separate from the effects of a Unique Variant.

The way I'm thinking about it, this would mean that innate equipment bonuses and Unique Variants stack separately to their own separate Maximum limit. Using the CIV as an example, if the character has that and Silvermail on, the innate equipment bonus adds up to Very High against undead. Let's say the CIV has a Unique Variant of damage increase to undead: Very High on top of that. Ideally, this would mean the character has two Very High bonuses in effect rather than one Maximum bonus that wastes half of the Unique Variant.

Using numbers (1 = Low, 2 = Medium, 3 = High, 4 = Very High, 5 = Ultra, 6 = Maximum) I guess it would look like:

4 innate + 4 variant = Very High x2

instead of what it is currently which is:

4 innate + 4 variant = Maximum x1 with 2 wasted.

I have no idea how difficult this would be to code/program but it would instantly make specialized items like CIV (both current and future) much more appealing to use. And to make it visible to characters, on their stat page where you can see all the bonuses affecting a weapon, you'd want to make the Unique Variant show up separately like it does on the individual weapon status as it appears in your inventory.

All of this would pretty much only apply to offensive bonuses, though, because as far as I'm aware defensive bonuses behave differently, and status resistances already have an absolute limit.

I was really considering going down the CIC and the CIV line before reading this, I"ve got level 3 gear overall and I know that my arc razor is going to be useless later on, so I thought that the CIV seemed like a great line of swords to use!

But after reading this, dang! its WORSE than the Ascended calibur? even though the materials AND the recipe are harder to find? seriously!
thanks for letting me know ahead of time before I made that stupid mistake lads!

Now... I need recommendations, I'm pretty much an all rounder player though I defiantly use my super blast bomb the most, can you recommend me a better line of swords to go down please?

peace and love

Sparkster the rocket knight (play rocket knight adventures for the genisis)

People put time and effort into getting items with these supposed stats. But nope, the system is flawed, and it's all a lie. Seriously, this might just be a computer game, but you don't just fool around with someone's time and effort like that.

Lol, I got a Medium bonus to undead UV on a Leviathan. I do nearly double what my CIV did to undead (on the charge, at least; regular swings I just do like 30-40 more damage), and that's sad.