Why 'too Much Damage' Is The Ultimate Bane Of Warframe

[Innocent_Flower]

So, Asking for ballance tends to get a small team of dedicated mobsters yelling 'but I like being OP' for weapons and for mods; 'but i need this for t4 survival 80 minutes' (even though most would assume, and in some threads it is explicitly stated, that enemy scaling would be re-balanced accordingly to any changes mods would make) So I decided to write a small list on the bad things that are results of the game being reliant on you continually doubling stats, increasing nothing but the damage of your weapon. 

 

 

- If the player wants to play a game on a tileset of an early game, and wants some semblance of challenge, he will need to handicap himself hard. You can't just waltz into a game, you need to go to the back of the liset, change your loadout (taking anywhere between ten seconds and several minutes) so that you're within good margins. You shouldn't need to do that if you don't want to instant-kill everything with the slightest scratch of a fully automatic weapon. 

 

(the playerbase is too spread thin for difficulty levels, and the extreme range of damage players can do might just need us to spread thin the difficulty levels) 

 

 

- Bosses are made less interesting. Do you know why almost all bosses have this bullS#&$ one-weakspot system  and periods of invulnerability? It's to stop players from instantly killing him with uber-guns. 

 

 

- The reason for the lack of development on ai (or stealth for that matter) is because it would be entirely wasted. What's the point of intelligent enemies if they will be instantly killed before having a chance of doing anything intelligent? 

 

- Weapon modding is far less interesting. + damage and + multishot are mandatory. Crit chance/damage is for crit weapons and elemental damage is highly recommended. Want to improve your gun rather than the bullets it fires? Nope. Try using 3-4 'utility' mods in a game of level 35+ enemies. One of those mods better be ammo related; Because you will need far too much. Thing is; Utility mods make weapons far more personal/enjoyable to play. Compare the difference between the mareloks; Damage is the same in the Vaykor, but the weapon is made infinitely greater with a higher ammo count and the syndicate effect (the damage is also more specialised and there's a higher status chance; Not that people go for status when damage is more effective) New and interesting mods aren't being made because nobody would use them. (any reason to use that +projectile speed mod on anything other than pvp?) Instead we get stupid additions like 'piercing caliber' or 'Primed weapon mod we just threw in with limited consideration no.5' which is just a straight upgrade of a mod that needed a buff (in context to the current system). 

 

- Enemies are of a lesser quality. We don't get increasing enemy variety to deal with our increased utility; We get the same enemies with higher numbers because all we're doing is adding more numbers. DE's true 'enemy variety' comes from things like nullifiers who are unique in which they stand up to a certain amount of hits seemingly regardless of your weapon's 50 damage multiplier.  (this is less true for infested, but very true for grineer and corrupted)The result is a lesser sense of progression as enemies are the same, and can scale endlessly higher than you can. 

 

- Infinite gamemodes. you gear up to be capable of killing a level 60 enemy; Only problem is you're going to be bored out of your mind whilst they grow from 20 to 55, and utterly incapable five minutes after they get to your powerlevel. 

 

- PVP ballance. Would be so much easier to obtain if increasing your damage by 70 wasn't a thing. I'd even go as far to suggest that were players to mostly use utility mods on their weapons; You could almost have a respectable pvp game without needing to re-unlock most of your mods. (no, it wouldn't be balanced. But it'd be a lot closer) 

 

In short: players stacking (or being able to stack) a crazy amount of damage onto their weapon is the reason for warframe's lack of progression as a game. 

Edited January 23, 2015 by Innocent_Flower

[Dromeos-Prime]

I doubt that, because even if DE does nerf our weapons dmg output. Efficient people will find the next best/most effective set to use. Then you're back to square one. 

 

In other words humans are lazy and want repetitive/boring things to be done with quickly. No balance pass can change that.

[vaugahn]

I doubt that, because even if DE does nerf our weapons dmg output. Efficient people will find the next best/most effective set to use. Then you're back to square one. 

 

See, that's not true though.

 

Because the best set doesn't have to be crazy OP. Yeah.

[zoboso]

DE could technically could let us keep our rediculus damage numbers, but if it is balanced everything will have rediculus numbers including enemy health.

[(PSN)WiiConquered]

I doubt that, because even if DE does nerf our weapons dmg output. Efficient people will find the next best/most effective set to use. Then you're back to square one. 

 

In other words humans are lazy and want repetitive/boring things to be done with quickly. No balance pass can change that.

People keep saying this, but it makes no sense if they've played any other game. Believe it or not, a lot of games don't have this problem.

[TheWebbliestPrime]

Correct me if I am wrong, but most of this game is about progression, and things scaling up, and there's plenty of progression within the design of the game as well. Enemies are being added on a regular basis, they retooled the damage system and melee system a while back, and they are reworking lots of other aspects of the game, including stealth. People don't want to go back and do early missions after they have cleared them out unless there's an alert there or a resource they need off that planet, and pretty much every game with a leveling system is like this. Going back and playing an early map is going to be boring even if the person takes all their mods off just because if nothing else you can kill almost everything with a jump kick. No one really goes back to "challenge" themselves on a map like that, they use them for getting a few levels on an unranked item, and I'd think you'd know that if you're really a member since November 2013. That's kinda what they're there for. And even if someone wanted to do that for some dumb reason, it's really not that hard to walk to the back of the Liset and unequip your mods to nerf yourself, we have to do stuff like that for Tactical Alerts anyways. Also, no one usually uses more than one utility mod, not because they're not useful past a certain level, but because in most cases using more than one is pointless to begin with, regardless of damage modding.

 

Also, modding would still be sorta cut and dry to an extent anyways because of how the damage system works in this game, no matter how you modified the mods. The multishot and tons-of-damage modding you listed is only totally necessary for long endless style missions and is not something people need to enjoy the game on a normal level, and they can choose to use it or not, just like you also have the ability to. Endless game modes are one of the things that keeps this game fun for high rank players at the moment until more high-level content is added, so doing away with them would turn away a lot of veteran players.

 

And as for PVP in this game, I have a feeling it will never be anywhere near balanced, mostly because this game wasn't designed with PVP in mind, they just kinda threw a PVP system together because some people asked for it and they have made tweaks here and there. But honestly with Warframe abilities working the way they do, just that is enough to make PVP in this game horribly imbalanced, let alone taking weapons into consideration. Also, most people really don't care much about PVP in this game as it holds no real effect on the rest of the game, mainly since the game isn't designed for it. If you're looking for serious PVP, I suggest looking to another game.

 

TL;DR The game is still under development, give it some time, they are working on making it more challenging and solid. All the things you brought up have already been taken into consideration and are being worked on in some sense. Damage stacking is part of the game especially if you plan on doing long high level missions, and retooling the game by taking damage away for people who don't play that content isn't fair to the people who do. The real lack of progression is in the sense that there's only so much to do after you clear the planets, and they are working on that.

[Aspari]

Correct me if I am wrong, but most of this game is about progression, and things scaling up, and there's plenty of progression within the design of the game as well. Enemies are being added on a regular basis, they retooled the damage system and melee system a while back, and they are reworking lots of other aspects of the game, including stealth. People don't want to go back and do early missions after they have cleared them out unless there's an alert there or a resource they need off that planet, and pretty much every game with a leveling system is like this. Going back and playing an early map is going to be boring even if the person takes all their mods off just because if nothing else you can kill almost everything with a jump kick. No one really goes back to "challenge" themselves on a map like that, they use them for getting a few levels on an unranked item, and I'd think you'd know that if you're really a member since November 2013. That's kinda what they're there for. And even if someone wanted to do that for some dumb reason, it's really not that hard to walk to the back of the Liset and unequip your mods to nerf yourself, we have to do stuff like that for Tactical Alerts anyways. Also, no one usually uses more than one utility mod, not because they're not useful past a certain level, but because in most cases using more than one is pointless to begin with, regardless of damage modding.

 

Also, modding would still be sorta cut and dry to an extent anyways because of how the damage system works in this game, no matter how you modified the mods. The multishot and tons-of-damage modding you listed is only totally necessary for long endless style missions and is not something people need to enjoy the game on a normal level, and they can choose to use it or not, just like you also have the ability to. Endless game modes are one of the things that keeps this game fun for high rank players at the moment until more high-level content is added, so doing away with them would turn away a lot of veteran players.

 

And as for PVP in this game, I have a feeling it will never be anywhere near balanced, mostly because this game wasn't designed with PVP in mind, they just kinda threw a PVP system together because some people asked for it and they have made tweaks here and there. But honestly with Warframe abilities working the way they do, just that is enough to make PVP in this game horribly imbalanced, let alone taking weapons into consideration. Also, most people really don't care much about PVP in this game as it holds no real effect on the rest of the game, mainly since the game isn't designed for it. If you're looking for serious PVP, I suggest looking to another game.

 

TL;DR The game is still under development, give it some time, they are working on making it more challenging and solid. All the things you brought up have already been taken into consideration and are being worked on in some sense. Damage stacking is part of the game especially if you plan on doing long high level missions, and retooling the game by taking damage away for people who don't play that content isn't fair to the people who do. The real lack of progression is in the sense that there's only so much to do after you clear the planets, and they are working on that.

I'm not going to say you're wrong (I agree with a lot of what you're saying), but consider this.

 

What's the difference between a low level mission and a high level mission?

 

The answer is stats and slight changes/additions in enemy types (and technically, this is on a per-node basis). Other than that the missions are exactly the same, just sometimes on different tile sets. At that point I don't see how progression even matters when the only thing you're really doing is playing tit for tat with enemy scaling until you eventually crush them for a brief moment then they turn around and crush you. That's when numbers start being much more involved in the game than the player is.

 

In action games the main challenge is adaptation to the new situation at hand. You can't really do that in Warframe because everything is the same whether it's low level or high level. Of course, like you said, the game is still being developed. Hopefully this won't be the case a year or two down the road. However, this is part of the current foundation of gameplay.

 

I wouldn't say the bane of Warframe is big damage numbers, but the way one applies extra damage to their weaponry is the bane of customization in Warframe, especially since maxing out damage is the only thing that matters on most weaponry and the rest of the game. Exceptions apply, of course, but those exceptions are few.

[Ashnal]

 

I doubt that, because even if DE does nerf our weapons dmg output. Efficient people will find the next best/most effective set to use. Then you're back to square one. 

 

In other words humans are lazy and want repetitive/boring things to be done with quickly. No balance pass can change that.

This is very true .... but that's not really what the OP is talking about.

Lowerign damage output and enemy health with it to match would be more about making damage mods matter less. The less % increase mods give, the smaller the gap between having a mod and not having it, and thus the more fair the comparison between utility and damage.

 

Of course people will still optimize if there was less damage scaling ... but due to how scaling works, it wouldn't matter as much.

[Tr1ples1xer]

No one ever said ''too much damage'' in the history of video games ever.

[TwiceDead]

No one ever said ''too much damage'' in the history of video games ever.

Actually, they did, they still do, everywhere, all the time. 

[Tr1ples1xer]

Actually, they did, they still do, everywhere, all the time. 

They should try a new hobby

[DSpite]

You have all the mods, all the guns, all the Frames, and 6 Forma in everything. Congrats. What's the point of now saying "low level zones are too easy" when that is exactly the direct outcome of putting 6 Forma in everything?

 

Then don't go to low level missions. No one if forcing you to do it, no one is forcing you to gimp your Frame for "challenge". You could just take a new Frame there, oh, you can't because you have already power leveled all of them to 30? And who's to blame for that exactly? How many similar games are out there that have re-playability after you have done everything there is to do?

 

Build a duplicate Frame and go level it all over again. Give it a new credit bought gun. Use a Heat Dagger the entire way. Who cares.

 

Rather then a pull down menu with "pick unit levels from 1 to 40" we have Nodes on planet we select. That is how we try to match what we have to what we can do. If you're geared so high that "everything" is easy, then congrats "you beat WF". Go play something else.

[Dawn11715]

Im for nerfing all elemental- damage mods to +30% at max level and for completely removing serration.

Of course enemys would need a big nerf, but as im sure there health is getting generated by level through an specific algorithm, this shouldnt be this difficult to do.

in the end we would get e smaller gap between low- and high- level areas, also abilitys like fireball or Rhino-charge would stay cabable of dealing damage and other mods, like +60 percent firerate would become usefull.

People could even run T4-void without ANY damage mods.

 

EDIT:

 

Also the oposite is possible, which means to buff all other mods, like putting in +200% Magazine size or + 200% firerate.

Anyway there need to be balance between those mods...

Edited January 15, 2015 by Dawn11715

[Innocent_Flower]

words

You've missed the point entirely. 

[DSpite]

You've missed the point entirely. 

 

I've missed the point? It's a game. You actually know the definition of a game? It would appear not, based on the amount of new topics you start where you simply complain about the parts you don't like.

 

This game has unique mechanics. Go play Guild Wars 2, and you will discover that every time you start a new character you have to start all over again. All the gear is level locked, soul bound, and the entire world map has to be unlocked from scratch every play through. Go play Borderlands, where taking on a mob that's 5 levels higher then you is sheer suicide, and your gear is the only thing keeping you alive. Go play Global Agenda where the top gear gun is 1% better then the trash gun, and everything is balanced for PvP.

 

Here, you can hand a 6 Forma gun to an Unranked toon and you can wipe a mission, OR, you can choose simply not to power level all your Frames and keep options open. You can go straight to Sechura with a Penta and get to Rank 30 in an hour, or you can recycle a Frame and gun here and there and keep a low rank one to rank up with mates.

 

The "point", is that this game is NOT like other games. Playing THIS game means playing it the way THIS game was designed. You are supposed to bend to the game, NOT the other way around.

 

The "flaws" you keep pointing out NON STOP, are FEATURES, not "flaws". I'm here to play it as is. If I wanted it to be AS different as half the people that keep coming here and saying "this is wrong, that is wrong", I would play ANOTHER game that has THOSE features.

 

There is already a ton of games that do things the "conventional" way. I've ALREADY played those. Warframe, for whatever flaws it might have here and there, allows people a break from other games they have installed. If you keep insisting to simply smooth over all the unique features, then it's just another copy cat Borderlands or Global Agenda.

 

I have already played those. I've taken a BREAK from those. I'm here now. If YOU want those, then YOU go play those.

 

There happens to be a Steam user that stated this in the Warframe review:

 

"The developers are incompetent and are unlikely to produce any significant improvements for the game anytime soon."

 

That sound familiar to anyone here? Because from what I can tell from the Steam name it's one of you guys. Now please tell me, why a person that states such a thing would even play this game, or post in the forums, and yet, they seem to be doing both.

Edited January 16, 2015 by DSpite

[dukelego]

don't forget to many enemies and terrible spawn mechanics

[Innocent_Flower]

point missing

Naw, Like, there is this game. I'm offering feedback. Then you come sweeping in with "But I Like thisssss" without any thoughts on the issues mentioned in the original posts. 

[Mazrim]

There isn't much thought in the OP anyways, so I don't know what you're getting at. I do have to ask, what is a 'utility mod?' Hawkeye? Something that isn't Fast Hands? Magazine Warp? The horrifyingly bad faction mods?

 

Oh, you mean those mods that have straight up zero point in existing? Nerfing damage mods/removing Serration doesn't change the fact that those mods are trash tier and removing things that are used in every build does not change that they are still trash tier.

 

Another game did the same thing. Its called Firefall. Their changes to their mod system had zero impact on how people built their weapons. Which is pure rate of fire/accuracy. They keep introducing mods that no one wants anything to do with because there is zero point to them. Warframe has much the same problem and removing the "problem mod" like Serration/Split Chamber does absolutely nothing to fix the first problem.

 

That the 'utility mods' are trash tier. 

 

Having read the OP, I can see you don't understand that this game isn't difficult at all and what you suggest would be a case of "Let's make everyone's enjoyment not!" Kinda like how Syndicate Key packs require you to be Rank 3 and 25k into Rank 3 to actually purchase.

Edited January 16, 2015 by Mazrim

[Rakshal]

Agreed 100%.

 

Those ideas about removing damage and multi-shot mods are looking pretty good right now.

Edited January 16, 2015 by Rakshal

[Mazrim]

Agreed 100%.

 

Those ideas about removing damage and multi-shot mods are looking pretty good right now.

No. They're terrible. Ponder why and get back to me.

[Rakshal]

No. They're terrible. Ponder why and get back to me.

Or you could just tell me why (assuming you are gonna come up with a good argument).

[Mazrim]

Or you could just tell me why (assuming you are gonna come up with a good argument).

Warframe is a power trip game. The whole point of Warframe besides grinding garbage tier weapons is to be a badass space deathsquad wizard. Taking away power would mean that the game is less fun. Players are less powerful, which will lead to all sorts of griping. 

 

But hey, if you're going to want to be spoonfed answers, I can do that too. If I wanted a challenging game, I'd play something actually challenging. Not Warframe. To give you an idea of how challenging Warframe is, I just wrote this while carrying a T4D.

[AlphaHorseman]

Warframe is a power trip game. The whole point of Warframe besides grinding garbage tier weapons is to be a badass space deathsquad wizard. Taking away power would mean that the game is less fun. Players are less powerful, which will lead to all sorts of griping. 

 

But hey, if you're going to want to be spoonfed answers, I can do that too. If I wanted a challenging game, I'd play something actually challenging. Not Warframe. To give you an idea of how challenging Warframe is, I just wrote this while carrying a T4D.

Oh, he's good.

[Rakshal]

Warframe is a power trip game. The whole point of Warframe besides grinding garbage tier weapons is to be a badass space deathsquad wizard. Taking away power would mean that the game is less fun. Players are less powerful, which will lead to all sorts of griping.

But hey, if you're going to want to be spoonfed answers, I can do that too. If I wanted a challenging game, I'd play something actually challenging. Not Warframe. To give you an idea of how challenging Warframe is, I just wrote this while carrying a T4D.

I said removing damage mods, you seem to think I said something like remove Marelok. Garbage weapons would still be garbage and powerful weapons would still be powerful. All you have to do is rebalance the enemies. Also abilities would still be in the game, those things that allow you to nuke a room, increase your damage, go invisible, ect. That is where the power trip comes from, abilities. "...I just wrote this while carrying a T4D." I'm sure you did. Edited January 16, 2015 by Rakshal

[Innocent_Flower]

Warframe is a power trip game. 

play the easy missions then. Don't ruin it for the rest of us.