Steps Towards Balance

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Preamble

I've alluded to this before and have been using this system personally, but I think it's time I put it out there.  There are problems regarding the movement towards balance in Warframe.  Unfortunately, people have been putting the cart before the horse.  It is the purpose of this thread to assert that there is an order in which these changes should be applied.

 

 

Steps Towards Balance

1. Acknowledgement of Balance's Importance: despite being a PVE game, Warframe is still impacted by balance.  The problems related to imbalance are explained in full here.  In summary, as long as there is imbalance, player agency is reduced.

 

 

2. Stabilization of Power Growth: simply put, power growth in Warframe is random and arbitrary.  RNG is the determining factor in a new player's power.  While that may be clear, what is not as immediately evident is how impactful arbitrary power growth is on veteran players.  Quite simply, veteran players have power spikes and fissures which deviate from their norm.  If you're using your 3x Forma'd Soma, you're going to be a lot more powerful than your fresh Boltor Prime.  

 

You see, the devs never know how powerful you are.  There is no point in the game where a player's power is predictable outside the tutorial mission.  I could be in T3 with the negligible damage output of the the Spectra or with a maxed Ogris.  The devs simply don't know where your damage output is.  Until they know, balance is darn-near arbitrary.  Why?  Because if they don't know your power level, difficulty is arbitrary because they don't know what levels to peg enemies at.  If difficulty is arbitrary, outside of boring your squadmates by nuking everything in sight with your ultimate, the balance of equipment has minimal meaning.  You can't balance against a standard that doesn't exist.  If there is no stable power growth and veteran players lose power when switching to a new weapon, balancing the game cannot be done.  No stable power levels, no enemy balance.  No enemy balance, no challenge.  No challenge, no fun.  No fun, no game.

 

Personally, I'm inclined to believe that my Proficiency system is the best solution (obviously I'm biased, but still).  Regardless of what system we go with (maybe we should just give players damage mods whenever they kill a boss for instance), we need to stabilize power growth.  It must be the player that is empowered and the equipment is merely the medium through which the player expresses that power.  It shouldn't be the equipment that is the locus of power, and it sure as heck had better not be RNG-dropped mods.

 

Component Change Examples

-Power Transfer: power transferred from RNG-dropped mods to something that rewards progression/skill.

-Killing Crit: Crit builds scale differently and unpredictably with normal builds.  My personal recommendation is to make Crit Damage be a multiplier to weakpoints.  Crit chance could then change into any number of things.  Personally, I'd prefer it change into something having to do with proc power (so now instead of a Freeze proc slowing an enemy by 50%, they're slowed by 60% etc).

Flattening Elementals: elemental mods changed so that instead of adding damage, they convert a percentage of the damage dealt to their element.

-Enemy Growth Normalization: enemies scaled to whatever system is chosen to ensure challenge.

 

 

3. Niche Establishment: until niches are established, we have a lot of things all vying for the same role in the same way.  Divergent playstyles are not possible.  To do this, we have to establish a standard for each tier of weaponry.  As an example for two tiers, I drew up this.  

 

Establishing niches for DPS weaponry is easy.  All you do is adjust damage and rate until they match up reasonably, with lower ammo economy weapons having higher DPS.  The real trick is TTK weapons.  To do that, you have to adjust things very carefully, making sure that they don't start crowding each other out.  It took me a couple hours to make the above spreadsheet.  That said, I could probably turn the entire game into that in a fairly reasonable amount of time.

 

With frames, this is more difficult, but still possible.  Right now, the frames feel very similar.  Now, while I would agree that this is in large part due to difficulty trivialization, I would also argue that it is because they are too general.  They try to support too many things.  Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not suggesting that usability go down.  I want Absorb to be able to be detonated early.  But there's a difference between making Rhino feel like a tank rather than a juggernaut, and actually making him unfun to play.

 

One might be curious as to why I'm not separating Warframes and weapons when it comes to niche establishment, especially since Warframe differentiation looks a lot like Step 4.  The reason is that if they aren't changed together, the meta is going to go all kinds of crazy as preferred damage sources swing wildly between frames and guns.  We could lose players that way, so naturally I want to avoid that.

 

Component Change Examples

-DPS Normalization: bring DPS towards the median per tier with less efficient weapons having more

-TTK Normalization: rebalance TTK weapons to ensure niches for all classes

-Warframe Role Definition: accentuating the role of each frame

-Power Redistribution: by taking a holistic approach to balance, I believe we can redistribute power through a frame and make it far more fun in the process.

-Warframe Counters: making enemies that are particularly hard to overcome for certain frames (but certainly not impossible)

-Energy Rework: Right now, energy is a scarce resource limited by RNG and whether or not you have Energy Siphon in your squad

-Power Tradeoffs: I'm thinking something like notionphil's idea of Primes/Wraiths/Vandals having unique ammo systems that make using them a form of "pro mode."  His suggestion was to have them have reduced max ammo/wasted reload ammo/regenerative energy.  I have this here instead of part of Step 4 because it would define the top tier of content.

-Stealth: by integrating this here, we'll be better able to define the roles of Warframes

 

 

4. Incomparable Additions: after difficulty is stable and defined roles exist, we can then proceed to make changes and give weapons unique mechanics.  The Phage is a weapon that comes to mind immediately.  It has immense power, but it has a mechanic that keeps that power in check.  Ultimately, I believe that these will provide proper differentiation.  Now, some might question why wait until last to do this.  

 

I put this last because I believe that if things were more numerically balanced to begin with, we would have a better idea of how far we can take mechanics.  Also, balancing by numbers after unique mechanics already exist runs the risk of those mechanics covering up slots that niches could have filled.  On top of that, I'd be concerned about DE making a very powerful mechanic which is exceptionally powerful to the exclusion of all else.  When it would come time to balance by numbers, that mechanic would get nerfed hard, leaving something that is woefully underpowered (like Volt was for a while after he lost Old Overload).

 

Component Change Examples

-Unique Mechanics: things along the lines of the mechanics of the Phage/Stug/Castanas.

-Enhanced Utility: notionphil's utility mod idea

 

 

 

Closing

In other words, admit there's a problem, make challenge a thing so balance matters, balance by the numbers, and then balance by mechanics for diversity.  It's a relatively simple plan on paper that holds a lot in store, but would require a great deal of time.  But I believe it is worth it.

 

As told by my poll, it seems that most of us are at least on the same page regarding the value of balance.  As such, I am currently on Step 2.  I hope that others will join me in this.

Edited March 25, 2014 by Volt_Cruelerz

[notionphil]

I hope that others will join me in this.

 

Solid comprehensive overview of what balance means, and why it will make everyone's time with WF more fun.

 

Some people incorrectly think balance means "make every weapon do the same damage", which would reduce the game to a total bore.

 

Balance is about making sure you have many weapons at your disposal instead of just one- because the rest are worthless. It's about making sure that you pop that Ult at the right time and save the day, instead of simply hitting it every 10 seconds bc nothing else works, so you gear/build only for that.

 

It's about giving your actions and choices meaning - not about taking options, power or fun away.

 

I will definitely take you up on that Volt, and join you in proposing some comprehensive and easy-to-implement balance suggestions.

Edited March 17, 2014 by notionphil

[Cwierz]

I enjoy reading your posts.

 

At the moment, I am brainstorming ways for player power growth to be maintained while still using RNG, however it seems highly improbable.

 

Also hai Rebecca, I see you readin dis thread

[Volt_Cruelerz]

I enjoy reading your posts.

 

At the moment, I am brainstorming ways for player power growth to be maintained while still using RNG, however it seems highly improbable.

 

Also hai Rebecca, I see you readin dis thread

RNG has some useful features.  Power growth in an RPG is not one of them insofar as I can tell.  If you come up with anything on the subject, let me know.

[LukeAura]

It's an excellent read and I honestly can't wait to see where this develops further down the road. I'd love to offer my assistance whenever any is needed.

I've begun to feel that every individual component of feedback we give in the individual feedback forums, associated with gameplay in some form at least, is marginalized by the fact that we seem to lack any form of overarching plan as to how the game will be developed, and where it wants to be developed towards. A plan much like this one, one that doesn't tackle problems on several parallel individual scattered levels, but intends to see them built upon and corrected in a specific order such that one is completely solid before progressing to the next because the changes to any more basic levels will or at least might break the higher ones.

I would make further comments on the specifics outlined here, but I'm going to hold on those as it seems you intend to break this down further in to more detailed and smaller subjects to tackle the problems. 

[Volt_Cruelerz]

It's an excellent read and I honestly can't wait to see where this develops further down the road. I'd love to offer my assistance whenever any is needed.

I've begun to feel that every individual component of feedback we give in the individual feedback forums, associated with gameplay in some form at least, is marginalized by the fact that we seem to lack any form of overarching plan as to how the game will be developed, and where it wants to be developed towards. A plan much like this one, one that doesn't tackle problems on several parallel individual scattered levels, but intends to see them built upon and corrected in a specific order such that one is completely solid before progressing to the next because the changes to any more basic levels will or at least might break the higher ones.

I would make further comments on the specifics outlined here, but I'm going to hold on those as it seems you intend to break this down further in to more detailed and smaller subjects to tackle the problems. 

Well, most of it is a rehashing of what has been said before.  The point of the OP wasn't to introduce new ideas for solving the individual problems.  It was for notifying people that we can have a systematic way of doing this.  This is the process I've had in mind for a while now, but it came to my attention recently just how rare looking at the big picture can be.  Hence this.  You're welcome to respond to any particular part though.

Edited March 18, 2014 by Volt_Cruelerz

[notionphil]

It's an excellent read and I honestly can't wait to see where this develops further down the road. I'd love to offer my assistance whenever any is needed.

I've begun to feel that every individual component of feedback we give in the individual feedback forums, associated with gameplay in some form at least, is marginalized by the fact that we seem to lack any form of overarching plan as to how the game will be developed, and where it wants to be developed towards. 

 

 

Well, most of it is a rehashing of what has been said before.  The point of the OP wasn't to introduce new ideas for solving the individual problems.  It was for notifying people that we can have a systematic way of doing this.  This is the process I've had in mind for a while now, but it came to my attention recently just how rare looking at the big picture can be.  Hence this.  You're welcome to respond to any particular part though.

 

This is all highlighting the need for player reps. DE is getting exponentially better at DC communication, and player communication in general. However, we're still individuals shooting ideas into the dark like flares down a canyon.

 

Which questions don't yet have answers? What's on the table next? What information/feedback can we help gather?

[Davoodoo]

What to say? +1

[notionphil]

RNG has some useful features.  Power growth in an RPG is not one of them insofar as I can tell.  If you come up with anything on the subject, let me know.

 

RNG should never be used as the key driver of progression.

 

Having said that, if there is a reliable progression mechanism in place, RNG can add excitement to the game by increasing rarity of non-required, yet powerful rewards. OR by allowing grindy/lucky players to short-cut their way to a little more power, ahead of their progression curve.

 

The Detron is a quasi-reasonable example of RNG locking. The extent of the lock is unreasonable, but could easily be modified (+1% chance to spawn for every Grineer supported mission to a max of 100%).

 

Both you and I have proposed suggestions such as making all key mods guaranteed, one time rewards for specific missions/bosses etc. If that were in place, I'd still be OK with RNG drops of key mods in addition, so that players who grind have a chance to increase their place on the power curve relative to where they are in the 'progression landscape'.

Edited March 19, 2014 by notionphil

[Volt_Cruelerz]

This is all highlighting the need for player reps. DE is getting exponentially better at DC communication, and player communication in general. However, we're still individuals shooting ideas into the dark like flares down a canyon.

 

Which questions don't yet have answers? What's on the table next? What information/feedback can we help gather?

The sad part is that I think we've come up with answers for most everything or could if the opportunity called for elaboration (such as the details behind normalizing DPS which clearly no one has bothered to do, yet we know that bringing DPS weapons into into line with each other is just a matter of number changes).