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After working with the original 7.4 spell formulas for a long time on my current server, I’ve seen the same pattern over and over. I remember a player telling me something like: “EO early game is really balanced, but once you reach around 150 it starts to fall apart.” He couldn’t give me the exact level, but that comment stuck with me. From that moment I knew something in the scaling wasn’t behaving correctly. Eventually the math made it obvious why.
The classic formula is:
Ignore spellFactor and you’re left with purely linear growth. That works fine early on, but somewhere between 100–200 the damage ramps far too fast. Monsters simply can’t keep up unless you inflate their HP or add artificial defensive mechanics. The formula produces runaway scaling in late game.
CipSoft’s later approach:
avoids the late-game explosion, but makes level almost irrelevant. With similar ML, a low-level mage can hit nearly as hard as a high-level one. Different problem, same root cause: linear growth in the wrong place.
The cleanest fix I’ve found so far is keeping the original idea but adding diminishing returns:
To be clear: the exponents are just placeholders. I haven’t tested this formula in production, so this should be treated as highly experimental. The idea is simply that controlled diminishing returns might solve the late-game scaling problem without breaking early/mid-game progression.
If anyone here has played with diminishing-return spell formulas or has practical experience balancing something like this, I’d be interested in hearing how it went.
The classic formula is:
LUA:
(2 * level + 3 * magicLevel) * spellFactorIgnore spellFactor and you’re left with purely linear growth. That works fine early on, but somewhere between 100–200 the damage ramps far too fast. Monsters simply can’t keep up unless you inflate their HP or add artificial defensive mechanics. The formula produces runaway scaling in late game.
CipSoft’s later approach:
LUA:
level/5 + magicLevel * spellFactoravoids the late-game explosion, but makes level almost irrelevant. With similar ML, a low-level mage can hit nearly as hard as a high-level one. Different problem, same root cause: linear growth in the wrong place.
The cleanest fix I’ve found so far is keeping the original idea but adding diminishing returns:
LUA:
(2 * level^0.85 + 3 * magicLevel^0.75) * spellFactorTo be clear: the exponents are just placeholders. I haven’t tested this formula in production, so this should be treated as highly experimental. The idea is simply that controlled diminishing returns might solve the late-game scaling problem without breaking early/mid-game progression.
If anyone here has played with diminishing-return spell formulas or has practical experience balancing something like this, I’d be interested in hearing how it went.
