History Main / DiminishingReturnsForBalance

** Using the SPECIAL system based on GURPS, the ''{{Fallout}}'' games require increasing numbers of skill points to improve skills once they're up to 100% (provided the installment you're playing allows skills past 100%).

* ''ChampionsOnline'' implemented this feature fairly early on to balance out the downright insane returns people were getting on Dex/Ego builds (things like critting on almost half your attacks for almost double damage). They instituted a "softcap" partially determined by the character's level that seems to be working well as a compromise; low level players see better returns early on (Dex became a feasible defensive stat BEFORE the late teen levels). but the higher level min/maxers can still push their stats high enough to get noticeably better performance from their characters.

* In ''DemonsSouls'' stats tend to start giving diminishing returns when brought up to somewhere around level 30-50; Endurance is the most extreme, as at level 40 it outright stops giving stamina boosts.

* In older ''FinalFantasy'' games (''I'', ''II'' and ''III'' mostly) by endgame evasion would outgrow your quickly diminishing armor stat, meaning it was often better by game's end to wear ''no'' armor.
* The ''{{Fable}}'' games give you three sets of stats and let you choose how to level. Unfortunately, each level of a stat costs about 5 times the cost of the previous level. Since leveling a low stat is so cheap, almost everyone advances roughly equally.

* [[http://www.ubercharged.net/2010/01/28/players-you-dont-want-on-your-team-weenies/ This]] blog entry analyzes that while ''TeamFortress2'''s [[GlassCannon sniper]] and [[MasterOfDisguise spy]] classes can be useful in small numbers, a team mostly consisting of these two classes is going to be wiped out pretty easily.

* Similarly, the NewWorldOfDarkness tends to encourage evening out one's portfolio past a certain level -- each new dot in a category typically costs its new rating multiplied by a flat rate, so buying the fourth dot in an Attribute from the third costs twice as much as buying the second dot in an Attribute up from the first. Similarly, the character-creation rules make the fifth dot in a Trait (out of a normal maximum of five dots) cost twice as many of starting points to buy.

* The RolePlayingGame ''RoleMaster'' has this for the skill system. Every ten points in a skill up to +50 gives you +5. The next ten give you +2, up to +70. Then you get +1, then +1/2. Magic items and stat bonuses, on the other hand, are linear, so +10 is +10 whether you're adding to 10, 100 or 1000.

* While it's rather hard to notice this in ''{{Warcraft}} 3'' given the level cap is 10, on fanmade maps with higher level and stat caps it became clear that agility and armor both employed diminishing returns pretty ruthlessly.

* The ''[[VideoGame/MarioAndLuigi Mario & Luigi]]'' {{RPG}}s award points into every stat automatically on each level up, and then let the player apply a bonus to one stat by timing a roulette spin. If one stat is getting too high, the numbers on the roulette get smaller, but there's always a 3 on the wheel, so with good timing, you can get the stache stat (or whatever you want) way up.

* The ''[[MarioAndLuigi Mario & Luigi]]'' {{RPG}}s award points into every stat automatically on each level up, and then let the player apply a bonus to one stat by timing a roulette spin. If one stat is getting too high, the numbers on the roulette get smaller, but there's always a 3 on the wheel, so with good timing, you can get the stache stat (or whatever you want) way up.

** The most direct example is the patentable method ''TheElderScolls'' has used for leveling for a long time - you are awarded experience for misses and critical failures as opposed to successes. Your level is proportionately related to your ability to use a skill successfully, hence you will be able to learn something you have no skill in quickly, but master something you have a lot of skill in only through devoted use (since you will stop failing as often). There are only a few exceptions, such as some implementations of magic.

[[AC:MMORPGs]]

* To encourage flat out tanking rather than dodge tanking in ''SuperRobotWars''. Diminishing returns made that if the unit is successful in dodging the attack, the other foe gets an innate plus 10% to hit. Some units just plain refuse to die though with diminishing returns as if they are equipped with sufficient barriers and defenses. by the time the enemy had a 100% hit rate, your unit will only be able to taken down by boss units. And woe to the Diminishing Return if the unit has counter.

** It was however very necessary as the Inventions System that came out a few months later and gave many newer ways to enhance powers would have been absolutely gamebreaking if there were no diminishing returns. Inventions also had the side-effect of making many builds that were previously unfeasible under the old system into very effective ones that can rival the most powerful of the pre-diversification builds. If anything MinMaxing was made even better.

* [[http://www.ubercharged.net/2010/01/28/players-you-dont-want-on-your-team-weenies/ This]] blog entry analyzes that while ''TeamFortress2'''s [[GlassCannon sniper]] and [[MasterOfDisguise spy]] classes can be useful in small amounts, a team mostly consisting of these two classes is going to be wiped out pretty easily.

[[AC:FightingGames]]

* ''DiabloII'' uses this for many skill bonuses, such as Dodge giving you an 18% chance to dodge with the first point, but quickly tapering down to less than 1% bonus per point by level 20. This type of balance wound up turning many skills into "one point wonders." Just put a single point in the skill, and the " x all skills" bonuses on your equipment end up giving you just as much of a bonus as actually maxing the skill would have in the first place.

* ''DungeonsAndDragons'' (both 3e and 4e) uses a variant of this in their point-buy system for stats - The modifier value derived from your stats remains constant for easy math, but the ''cost'' of each stat grows faster the higher you get.
** This only applies for new characters - points gained from leveling (and from items or spells) have no diminishing returns, although the cost of most magic items grows quadratically with the benefit.
* While it's rather hard to notice this in ''{{Warcraft}} 3'' given the level cap is 10, on fanmade maps with higher level and stat caps it became clear that agility and armor both employed diminishing returns pretty ruthlessly.
* In older ''FinalFantasy'' games (''I'', ''II'' and ''III'' mostly) by endgame evasion would outgrow your quickly diminishing armor stat, meaning it was often better by game's end to wear ''no'' armor.
* Used in ''PuzzleQuest'', where putting more and more points into each stat gave less and less reward per point.

* Skills in ''{{GURPS}}'' start to give noticeably diminishing returns around level 14 (90% chance on normal tasks) and additional levels become a total waste of points at level 24 (90% chance on "impossible" tasks) except in the most extreme settings where techniques can have penalties of -30.
** Using the SPECIAL system based on GURPS, the ''{{Fallout}}'' games require increasing numbers of skill points to improve skills once they're up to 100% (provided the installment you're playing allows skills past 100%).
* The ''{{Fable}}'' games give you three sets of stats and let you choose how to level. Unfortunately, each level of a stat costs about 5 times the cost of the previous level. Since leveling a low stat is so cheap, almost everyone advances roughly equally.
* ''TheElderScrolls III: Morrowind'' is a treasure trove of this trope:
** The most direct example is the patentable method ''TheElderScolls'' has used for leveling for a long time - you are awarded experience for misses and critical failures as opposed to successes. Your level is proportionately related to your ability to use a skill successfully, hence you will be able to learn something you have no skill in quickly, but master something you have a lot of skill in only through devoted use (since you will stop failing as often). There are only a few exceptions, such as some implementations of magic.
** Alchemy, meanwhile, is [[GameBreaker broken beyond all belief]] and is the perfect example of what can happen when this trope is not enforced. Not only can mass herb mixing give you lots of Alchemy skill (snowball effect), it will also give your base stats lots of free level-up points AND eventually absurdly powerful and expensive potions as your skill increases. Lots of money, lots of experience, powerful stackable buffs, all while doing very little. Additionally, this leads to the legendary [[TheSingularity Fortify Intelligence Stacking trick]] and can ultimately result in a situation where the game crashes from mathematical overflow.
** When you buy from trainers, it costs increasing value for each level. (The actual increase in price, however, is typically considered trivial compared to one's ability to make money.)
** In what could be a direct call-out to the introduction to this trope, the Merchant skill is broken at 50. Up to 50, the price decrease of all merchants' goods makes sense as a better level should indicate you are better at buying and selling. After 50, things start getting more expensive again. Many mods have attempted to correct this issue.
* To encourage flat out tanking rather than dodge tanking in SuperRobotWars. Diminishing returns made that if the unit is successful in dodging the attack, the other foe gets an innate plus 10% to hit. Some units just plain refuse to die though with diminishing returns as if they are equipped with sufficient barriers and defenses. by the time the enemy had a 100% hit rate, your unit will only be able to taken down by boss units. And woe to the Diminishing Return if the unit has counter.

* WorldOfWarcraft uses this for many cases, including the duration of stuns and similiar effects on other players to prevent "stunlocks". Defensive stats also use them to encourage tanks to invest in all forms (if available to them) rather than just one. Hard caps are also in effect in some cases, but Blizzard is trying to get rid of those or change things around so they cant be reached.

* ChampionsOnline implemented this feature fairly early on to balance out the downright insane returns people were getting on Dex/Ego builds (things like critting on almost half your attacks for almost double damage). They instituted a "softcap" partially determined by the character's level that seems to be working well as a compromise; low level players see better returns early on (Dex became a feasible defensive stat BEFORE the late teen levels). but the higher level min/maxers can still push their stats high enough to get noticeably better performance from their characters.
* In some games the basic mechanics are inherently designed to create this. For example, any Tabletop RPG that uses a bell curve (e.g. 3d6) as opposed to a flat statistical probability (e.g. 1d20) for its core mechanic will get a version of diminishing returns: in a bell curve the numbers in the middle of the probability space are created by more of the possible permutations of the dice, while the numbers on the edge of the probability space are created by relatively few permutations. This means that changing a very low or very high number grants a smaller benefit than raising a number in the middle of the range.
* The [[MarioAndLuigi Mario & Luigi]] {{RPG}}s award points into every stat automatically on each level up, and then let the player apply a bonus to one stat by timing a roulette spin. If one stat is getting too high, the numbers on the roulette get smaller, but there's always a 3 on the wheel, so with good timing, you can get the stache stat (or whatever you want) way up.
* The MightAndMagic games had an interesting take on this trope, where the stat system only offered bonuses at certain intervals, which exponentially decreased in frequency as the number got higher. You received bonuses to relevant skills, for example, at 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 25, 30, 35, 40, 50, 75, 100, 125, 150, etc., until finally stopping offering bonuses past 500. So, a stat of 15 and 16, for example, was functionally the same. This tended to make raising most stats higher than around 50 or so rather pointless, and rendered most minor stat gains worthless well before that.
* The RolePlayingGame RoleMaster has this for the skill system. Every ten points in a skill up to +50 gives you +5. The next ten give you +2, up to +70. Then you get +1, then +1/2. Magic items and stat bonuses, on the other hand, are linear, so +10 is +10 whether you're adding to 10, 100 or 1000.

* [[ERepublik [=eRepublik=]]] skill training works like this, in the case of strength when you start out you gain .5 every time you train, by the time you hit 4 strength this is down to .04 every time you train.
* LeagueOfLegends uses hard and soft caps for some stats. Attack Speed and Cooldown Reduction hardcap at 2.5 attacks per second and 40% reduction, respectively, with no diminishing returns. Movement Speed has no hard cap, but two "soft caps" make it hard to increase past a certain point-raising your movement speed past one soft cap causes increases to have their effectiveness cut, and going past the second causes a steeper cut.

* [[http://www.ubercharged.net/2010/01/28/players-you-dont-want-on-your-team-weenies/ This]] blog entry analyzes that while ''TeamFortress2'''s [[GlassCannon sniper]] and [[MasterOfDisguise spy]] classes can be useful in small amounts, a team mostly consisting of these two classes is going to be wiped out pretty easily.

<<|VideoGameTropes|>>

* A problem with relativistic weapons is that as they go faster they get heavier and of course as they get heavier it takes more energy to get them going faster. Accelerating an object from 0 to .1c takes ''much'' less energy that accelerating it from .8c to .9c
** That's not a problem! it doesn't matter how slow, or how fast, it's going - you get out just as much energy as you put in. So putting in twice the energy, while it won't accelerate the projectile to twice the velocity, will still give you twice the energy output when you hit something.

** For instance, there is a hard cap for armor. At some point druid tanks, helped by a generous armor multiplier to compensate leather equipment and lack of shields, could easily push past it. Many healers also had a talent to increase a players armor for a short time after healing them with a critical effect. This was then adressed by several means such as changing the armor multiplier to only work on specific types of items and the healer talent changing to a plain damage reduction effect.
* ChampionsOnline implemented this feature fairly early on to balance out the downright insane returns people were getting on Dex/Ego builds (things like critting on almost half your attacks for almost double damage). They instituted a "softcap" partially determined by the characeter's level that seems to be working well as a compromise; low level players see better returns early on (Dex became a feasible defensive stat BEFORE the late teen levels). but the higher level min/maxers can still push their stats high enough to get noticebly better performance from their characters.

* In DemonsSouls stats tend to start giving diminishing returns when brought up to somewhere around level 30-50; Endurance is the most extreme, as at level 40 it outright stops giving stamina boosts.