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An Insight On How To Decentralize Warframe's Arsenal


Seele
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In this numbers game that is Warframe, certain gear setups reign supreme and enjoy the most routine use among the general populace. Ask in region chat what the best Warframe is and you'll hear a lot of "Rhino" and "Nova". Ask about the best weapon and you'll likely hear "Boltor Prime", "Soma", "Phage", and "Brakk".

 

Now I'm not here to say everything should have identical performance so the first time someone says anything involving the phrase "reskinned Mk-1 Braton" I am reporting the comment and disregarding further discussion from the user in question. Another comment trope which will fall under this clause is attempting to justify the mastery rank lockout as a balancing factor. The objectively top-tier DPS weapon is available at rank 2 and the Spectra is rank 4. The highest lockout of anything is 8 and it does not take much to get there. It's not a factor at all. I hope I have made that clear enough.

 

Now clearly the developers have no qualms with making us players egregiously overpowered, as is evidenced by the mods, weapons, and warframe combinations available to us - but they also value balance, which is proven by the recent work towards such in cases like Nova and Trinity. They've made excellent progress on balancing the frames (though Nova and Rhino still need work) but weapons have been largely ignored, and our hilariously overpowered weapons trivialize a lot of the game's content, even more so than the Warframes ever did. In part it stems from the weapons themselves but the mod system is also responsible.

 

So I am here to submit some possible concepts toward a solution and hopefully make more weapons feel as worthwhile to use as others. I'm against saying "making more weapons viable" because almost anything can be properly modded to bring a player through the star chart, the issue is not that too many weapons are weak - it's the opposite, too many weapons are far too powerful.

 

Let's start with the numerically undeniable top-tier weapon in the game, Boltor Prime. Posing itself as a strictly and objectively superior version of the once-revered Boltor, Boltor Prime is an excellent showcase of the ever-spreading power creep within Warframe. Capable of an astounding 32,000+ burst DPS, it can continue to shred enemies deep into high level survivals and defense, or fell most enemies in standard content with a single shot.

 

Why is this a problem? This is just PvE. I don't hear the enemies complaining about how powerful we are! If you don't like Boltor Prime don't use it! No one's forcing you to. My using it doesn't affect you at all!

 

And other such excuses I've heard on the matter. Well as I cited before, DE values balance in this game - not balancing the player against the enemy, per se, but the myriad options available to the player with each other. Nova should never be called the "best" Warframe. Your favorite, sure. But nothing should be so powerful as to be the "best". Maybe best in one area, or a few, but Boltor Prime has no real drawbacks save its projectile travel time, which is incidentally one of the fastest of all non-hitscan weapons.

 

So do we just make everything else as powerful as Boltor Prime? No. That's making the problem worse, just in the opposite way of how I'm often accused of trying to do. Reskinned Mk-1 Braton, reskinned Boltor Prime. Neither is a good model.

 

It stands to reason that one weapon deserves to do more damage than another, have a larger magazine than another, so on and so forth. One weapon will invariably have the highest DPS of all of them, and that's fine. But our damage potential ceiling needs to be brought down and decentralized. Now again I'm not saying to rework every weapon until they achieve the same DPS through different mechanics, I'm saying it should be a game of give-and-take, which I will touch on again with the mod system.

 

One way I suppose you could view it is to demand more input from the player to touch the damage potential ceiling - as it is now, it's a matter of acquiring the right mods and the right weapons and just letting the bullets fly without prejudice or consequence. Generally aim at head level but don't exert yourself trying to get headshots or anything. That's what makes the game boring, you aren't really rewarded for becoming more engaged, it just becomes wasted effort.

So, if it's not yet apparent, I propose that the numbers be carefully reviewed until it comes to be that the weapon which can achieve the highest damage output can only do so in the hands of a master. A rifle which requires its user to meticulously aim for the head every time, or a shotgun which must be in dangerously close range to actualize its potential. This is a relatively vague concept but one worth consideration.

 

As for things which can easily done to the current in-game model, just tone down some of the top-tier weapons. Not "NERFFF" them, or even make them worse than anything else! Maybe make Boltor only do 45 damage a bolt. It would still be a top tier weapon. Did you know that a Boltor with a maxed Serration only barely outscores an unmodded Boltor Prime? And still suffers even slower projectiles, slower reload speed, and less critical damage. It is positively obscene, and would require quite a substantial cut to fall beneath #2, the Phage. Seriously. It can take it. We can take it.

 

Now another thing, the mods. The unspoken true secret to our success. I'm mainly going to attack the elemental mods here. Strict damage like Serration has gotten a lot of flak as well, but I abide it for the time being, as it can be vaguely indicative of a player's progress through the game... still needs work... but I'll concede for the time being. Elemental mods, however, are a total mess, and I am unsure how it's gone unchecked for so long. Further compounding on the roster of "required mods" and thus further stripping viability from the rest of the long, long list of useless mods, elemental damage mods unashamedly supply an arbitrary amount of damage without real consequence.

"Oh, but Seele, there's the faction weaknesses! Fire's no good against Corpus!" But that's still wrong. Adding fire damage to your rifle will enact less of an effect against the Corpus than the Infested, sure, but it's still free damage. Just less free damage than when you Pokemon it up for each faction.

 

Which makes said strategy defunct. Why fumble between mod loadouts or spec for weapon damage types when you can take literally anything, apply as many damage mods as possible, arrange them so it ends up dealing at least Corrosive damage in some capacity, and then steamroll the entire game? The so-called "advanced" damage types are hit or miss - there's Gas, which despite its decent proc effect is useless outside of the Infested, and then there's Corrosive which nothing can really stop. That damage dip against shields is not even noticeable, nor is the one from Puncture. Seriously, someone go take a Corrosive Boltor Prime to the Corpus and tell me how much you struggle. I'll wait.

 

The problem with the elemental mods is how much damage is offered and how no penalty is posed for using them incorrectly. There is no incorrect use, just pile 'em on! It looks like an attempt was made with Damage 2.0 as far as, to reuse the term, Pokemon-ing it up goes, but it falls short in every way. If you look at the damage charts on the wiki you'll see more blank spots than anything, in which your weapon will continue to inflict full damage if modded for that element.

 

The first step I would take towards fixing elemental mods is to make them replace an amount of existing damage, rather than add to it. If, say, my weapon did a total of 50 impact and 50 puncture for 100 total base damage, and I added a maxed cold damage mod, my weapon would now do 27.5 impact, 27.5 puncture, and 45 cold. Same base damage, but is now more effective against enemies weak to cold.

As for advanced elements, if I had a 90% cold damage mod and a 90% electric damage mod, I would get 90% magnetic. Not 180%. If I had 90% and 45%, I would have 60% magnetic, so on and so forth. This would allow for specialized builds without making advanced elements necessary or even feasible all the time.

 

Secondly I would rework the damage resistance tables. As I mentioned before, there are quite a number of blank spots on the chart, with no multipliers at all, meaning your various elemental mods are just additional copies of Serration with the added bonus of advanced elemental damage procs and the like. Borderlands has an excellent model for elemental damage that I do not feel Warframe should plagiarize, but should look to for inspiration. In Borderlands, shooting a bandit with an electric gun will kill it, but not as fast as a gun built with the same parts but without the electric damage. Now replace that electric capacitor with a fire one and now it's roasting that bandit much faster than the non-elemental one.

 

Here in Warframe, however, there is never an incentive to leave a weapon without elemental damage mods. It's completely nonpunitive. Again, doing less bonus fire damage is still doing more damage overall. With this model, leaving a weapon without an element would be the best way to have an "all-rounder" weapon which could be effective against all enemies without changing mods, but also incentivize the alternate mod loadouts (A, B, C) to maximize potential against given factions as well - a magnetic build, a blast build, etc.

I may develop a "damage 2.5" matchup chart if this receives significant support, which I hauntingly doubt, but will publish this long-winded account all the same.

 

Naturally a large portion of this community is violently opposed to any form of new limitation or a decrease in their numbers, but I'm well versed in being surrounded by torches and pitchforks at this point... sometimes I wonder why I bother... but I care very much for the success of this game, and some of the recent developer initiative has truly dumbfounded me, often equally by what has been done as what has not. If there is some glaring flaw in my logic that I have overlooked at this ungodly hour, feel free to embarrass me, but please refrain from mudslinging and any criticism which is not constructive. "It's fine as it is" doesn't constitute anything constructive, by the by, but a founded reason as to why it is fine, does.

 

I realize this is bordering on an essay at this point, but how the mind does ramble in fits of passion. Those of you who have maintained your attention spans long enough to read this in its entirety, I thank you; those of you who have not, I understand, but do not comment like you did read it all.

Edited by Seele
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Read it all, will agree to disagree. I see your point, but I don't think it's really a point for non-powerplayers.

I've been playing since U6, and I'm only MR9, I have over half the Warframes, but Pluto is still nearly impossible for me to solo, and nightmare mode is a really, REALLY bad idea for me to take part in, as my damage numbers aren't through the roof, despite my soma/Boltor prime/marelok/dragon nikana

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Ave!

 

Nice... Your ideas are pretty good... that thing about elemental damage replacing standard damage not adding on top of it really sounds like a good option.

And currently people go for the power-fantasy thing - best gear in universe, and nothing can so much as look angrily at them without their guts suddenly vacating their body.

I personally have been trying different "options" to make the game harder/more interesting to myself.
While my ideas don`t really go dealing with mods, i look for alternatives, how i could actually use the modded weapons to their potential.

And if i must say - while it`s fun to powerblaze through legions of enemies, I find it more satisfying to run with rank 10-20 weapons. the limitation that it gives in terms of mod space, and the fact that some of my weapons scream for reload speed or RoF more than nuke damage, means that they do laughable damage, but a bit faster than they would if they were unranked.

The problem is in the community. Most people could never put themselves up on a Void run, without a HUD. Let alone with a rather squishy frame, and not really using skills beyond the first 2.

Right now Warframe to me is a field littered with bugs to stomp, and i`m looking for ways to make myself closer in size to those bugs.

Vale!

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I've played since U7, MR13, all Frames. My favorite load out is Ash, Braton Prime, Akmagnus, and Dual Kamas. I can get by most end game stuff without any overpowered stuff. People that use Rhino Prime with their Soma, Castanas, and Orthos Prime. They are just lazy and most likely are under MR 10. When I see MR 10-16 playing as Rhino Prime I cry a little. These players are just joining the Meta so they don't have to even try to play the game. I t really kills the experience in my opinion. There need to be changes to all of the over used things to make the game more balanced. Unfortunately I think DE love Rhino and the Soma too much to nerf them. They know they are overpowered yet they do nothing and it's really disappointing.

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First off, yes, Boltor Prime needs to be toned down, and knowing any business out there that will very likely happen whenever the next prime access starts making sales.

 

Second, The damage tables don't need a complete rework, it's a really good system as is, all it really needs is just a few tweaks here and there.

 

And third, causing elemental mods to replace physical damage is not a good idea, if anything that would accomplish the exact opposite effect than desired. Elemental mods would essentially become a waste of a mod slot that you could use for faster reload, higher base damage, faster fire-rate, physical damage and the like. A much better and easier solution would be to decrease the damage gain from them to a level where there might actually be more valid choices than throwing down as much elemental damage as you could, but still high enough to see benefit from each individual mod. Ie, 60% fire damage vs 90% slash instead of the no brainer 90% fire damage vs 30% slash we have now.

Edited by RancidTurnip1603
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First off, yes, Boltor Prime needs to be toned down, and knowing any business out there that will very likely happen whenever the next prime access starts making sales.

 

Second, The damage tables don't need a complete rework, it's a really good system as is, all it really needs is just a few tweaks here and there.

 

And third, causing elemental mods to replace physical damage is not a good idea, if anything that would accomplish the exact opposite effect than desired. Elemental mods would essentially become a waste of a mod slot that you could use for faster reload, higher base damage, faster fire-rate, physical damage and the like. A much better and easier solution would be to decrease the damage gain from them to a level where there might actually be more valid choices than throwing down as much elemental damage as you could, but still high enough to see benefit from each individual mod. Ie, 60% fire damage vs 90% slash instead of the no brainer 90% fire damage vs 30% slash we have now.

I suppose making the elemental mods just weaker (and physical mods stronger) than they are could still achieve the same ends albeit in a lesser capacity. May be easier for the playerbase to swallow.

 

My idea, however, which may not be plausible with how the game is now, is that the elemental damage weakness multipliers would more than compensate for the loss of inherent bonus damage. Exploiting weaknesses would be your bonus damage, which is why I feel the damage chart needs a rework. Now, it would be somewhat boring if there was a clear-cut best option for each faction, because at that point why not just use a Bane mod? The current system isn't terrible in that regard; Corrosive is handy for Grineer Heavy Gunners but isn't doing as much as Radiation would to a Napalm. Gas is great for common infested but doesn't do extra to Ancients, and so on, but the system isn't fleshed out enough. Too often your elemental damage mods are just free damage, and I feel there should be some form of consequence, good or bad, against almost every enemy, with a given element.

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Read it all, will agree to disagree. I see your point, but I don't think it's really a point for non-powerplayers.

I've been playing since U6, and I'm only MR9, I have over half the Warframes, but Pluto is still nearly impossible for me to solo, and nightmare mode is a really, REALLY bad idea for me to take part in, as my damage numbers aren't through the roof, despite my soma/Boltor prime/marelok/dragon nikana

That is fairly tragic. 

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But all damage mods with the exception of the corrupted mods are "free damage", and I dislike the idea of giving every elemental positive and negative multipliers against each health/armor type; It would over-complicate an already established and fleshed out system and essentially turn each enemy into a scaled down version of a prosecutor which honestly doesn't sound fun to me. Though, Speed Holster might finally be used for once....

 

Honestly I would much rather just see mods relatively balanced.

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I like the concepts in this post.

Execution would be hard, along with the screaming crowds of power-fantasy future burnouts who don't understand the difference between gameplay and "big numbers = fun", but I am sure DE already knows the jist of this... hopefully.

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I definitely agree that things need a rework.  I think that part of the problem currently lies in the way DE is having to go about things.

 

Currently, there seems to be a focus on new content first, re-balancing second.  The main reason for this is so that they keep enticing new players while still giving older players fun toys to mess with.  I do like the idea you made about reworking the elemental damages and their tables, just not sure how easily they'd be able to implement it.

 

I do also think that, in regards to what you said concerning the Mastery Rank stuff, that the weapons themselves should be looked at and given another pass-over as to which ones are restricted to which MR.  Things like the Soma should be a higher one than the Supra, while ones that currently don't have that much in the way of effectiveness or are more niche weapons should get lowered.

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DE has been extremely limp-wristed and light-handed when it comes to dealing with weapon imbalances.

 

I've been here since Closed Beta, and have been observing grossly disproportionate power creep and numbers inflation, with little to no acknowledgement of the ludicrously powerful weapons that have been sitting at the top, without downsides, without incentive to use other weapons. Why should 6 out of 130 weapons sit at the top? They're the ones that see the most use. They should have more downsides and negatives to using them, for their raw power, that is.

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Elemental mods should contribute damage, instead of converting pre-existing damage, but the amount of damage they contribute should be proportional to physical damage, and physical damage should always take precedent when you are shooting lead.

 

Lets have a quick demonstration. I have a gun, the kraken prime. My krakenp does 40 impact, 10 slash and 10 puncture damage by default. ALL elemental mods have the same ceiling, at 100% of highest phys. damage type (maybe on principle we can lower that, but its gotta be constant across the board). Once I've installed pistol pestilence, my krakenp does 40 impact, 10 slash, 10 puncture, and 40 poison. Combined elemental mods SHOULDN'T add cumulative damage, however, since having that damage type in the first place should validate the mods. So Pistol Pestilence and deep freeze together give +60% viral, NOT +120% viral.

 

As seele suggested, enemy armor tables are the biggest issue of damage 2.0. Armor types without a multiplier against a given element should be the exception, not the rule. For a given element, in each enemy type, most enemies should have a modest weakness OR strength against it (±25% damage), one should have a more robust strength (-50% damage) and one should have a significant weakness to it (+100% damage). This way, players will get noticeable utility from their elemental mods, but have to play the system and "Pokemon" to get the full use out of those mods. This model also gels with the core mechanics of warframe, since the game is primarily a power fantasy where players stomp weak mobs en masse with single, tougher enemies interspersed. Chargers may have a 25% resistance to x, but as they are cannon fodder anyways, players will gladly take this handicap for a multiplier against ancients. OR, if players wanna play crowd control, they can always do that too. This model would allow for more choice in player's arsenals.

 

I love warframe, and I love the effort DE has put into complex systems like Damage 2.0, but as it is currently implemented, players simply miss most of the hard work and talent that went into these systems. I understand that the game was made a power trip and it'll die a power trip, but as PsychoToxin said above, It would do wonders to be smaller than the bugs I'm stomping, for once. There's a reason games like Dark Souls and Roguelikes have gotten so popular in recent years; a little bit of challenge can go a long way.

Edited by Dream-dad
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  • 2 weeks later...

 

The first step I would take towards fixing elemental mods is to make them replace an amount of existing damage, rather than add to it. If, say, my weapon did a total of 50 impact and 50 puncture for 100 total base damage, and I added a maxed cold damage mod, my weapon would now do 27.5 impact, 27.5 puncture, and 45 cold. Same base damage, but is now more effective against enemies weak to cold.

As for advanced elements, if I had a 90% cold damage mod and a 90% electric damage mod, I would get 90% magnetic. Not 180%. If I had 90% and 45%, I would have 60% magnetic, so on and so forth. This would allow for specialized builds without making advanced elements necessary or even feasible all the time.

 

 

I posted this, too. Than... people shat on my post. Curious how now they don't realy have something against it. F*** this forum.

Edited by nekrojiji
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