Corvid

Something to note is that Deimos IRL is only ~16km on its longest dimension. For reference, if you put Deimos in the Strait of Dover (the narrowest part of the sea between England and France) it would only reach just over halfway across. There's not exactly much room for biome variance, even if we assume that Orokin construction efforts vastly increased its size.

It's worth noting that there was a window before Heart of Deimos came out where DE removed the need to use keys to access the Derelicts. I actually completed the Steel Path for them during this period. Personally, I think DE should move them back to being their own region, expand the tileset used for the Drift's caves and use that to fill in the Deimos mission nodes.

You say that as if the two options are mutually exclusive, when in reality the players calling for nerfs to the most overpowered frames are generally in favour of both. Look no further than the Inaros rework, which brought a frame that was memed on for its lacklustre kit up to a level where it's both decently powerful and fun to use. Those are changes that pretty much everyone is happy with.

At what point did they do this? Please point to a single piece of official marketing that specifically tries to get you to buy Dante on the basis of him being overpowered at launch.

Yeah, a thing that often gets left out of the story of Railjack's launch is that in the lead-up to it the community was throwing a fit and demanding that they release it ASAP regardless of whether it was ready to ship. AFAIR it's the only time in the game's history that the devs publicly went on record warning players to avoid the update's new content if they weren't prepared to deal with bugs.

I should note that I was mostly just throwing ideas out with regards to Saryn. I was actually aware of that mechanic, my thinking was that there could be another limiting factor on top of that one. Another idea that just came to mind is to turn Miasma into a channelled ability with a reduced range. Any spore-afflicted enemies that expire within the radius while it's active will spread sores to others, any who are outside that radius when they die won't spread the effect.

Well said, good points all around. Perhaps make it so that spores that are beyond a certain distance from Saryn decay and stop effecting enemies after a few seconds? Or make it so that each spore has a timed life rather than sticking to the enemy indefinitely, so players need to make sure to re-infect enemies regularly to keep the ability going. I dunno, I kinda like Saryn's ability to spread her plague long distances, so I'd rather make her upkeep more difficult to manage than reduce her effective range outright. As a Gauss main (albeit one who doesn't abuse TS), I agree, though I do wonder how drastic the change would need to be. As far as I'm aware the imbalance in this case is caused by an interaction between Archon Vitality and a hidden mechanic in TS' heat blast (a double cast effectively works like an amped up Expedite Suffering for Heat procs specifically, which is further amped by Archon Vitality's double proc), so just removing that interaction might be enough to fix that particular issue.

Have I tried soloing the endgame activity, that was specifically designed to be played by full squads of players using the strongest builds they could muster? No, can't say I have. Nor can I see how that is in any way relevant to "Dark Souls difficulty".

Where, at any point in the game's history, has this been the case?

Y'know, you could just answer the question if you actually thought I was wrong, because regardless of how many times you reiterate them, none of the things I quoted there were actual answers to it. I'll put it here one more time for ease of reference: If DE truly always listen to the players who want nerfs, how is the average player power so much stronger than it was back in 2013 that we've gone from level 40 being the peak to level 9999? If your next response isn't an answer to this very simple question, then I will take it as you conceding the point.

Isn't the only asymmetrical part of Lavos' design his helmet? And even then it's only his default.

It's a contradiction in what you are saying. According to you, DE is simultaneously trying to deliberately make things suck while at the same time also trying to make things not suck. These two ideas cannot both be true. Nice attempt at pathologising me though. Really helps to show the kind of mindset you're approaching this discussion with.

In other words, you don't have an answer. Which is to be expected, because you're trying to reconcile a belief with a reality that does not support it.

No, you did not. You did not in any way address the fact that player power is exponentially stronger today than it was in the past (again, we went from a game where level 30 enemies were tough, to one where some players regularly fight enemies at level 9999), which is the exact opposite of what would happen if your statement about DE "always listening to the nerf crowd" were true. It would be more accurate to say that the "no nerfs ever" portion of the community has a long history of going into hysterics over the slightest reduction to their power, claiming that whatever got nerfed is suddenly "useless" even when it literally does the exact same amount of damage as before the nerf. Considering the aforementioned increase in our average power levels, I find it hard to sympathise. Except they don't do it on impulse. They literally have criteria that they have publicly stated for what it takes for a tactic to end up on the chopping block, and in all but the most extreme cases they tend to leave OP items untouched for months, if not years. So which is it? Do DE nerf against the wishes of the community, or do they always listen to the "nerf crowd" which, like it or not, is part of that community.

I looked before I posted that. The most active threads are the ones opposing nerfing him, and the most vocal players are the same. To be frank, "high level content", at least as defined by the community right now, doesn't really matter to the discussion. Only a minority of players actually sticks with runs that long, and the game never requires it, so balance discussions should be focused on the level ranges that the game is actually built around. Because, once again, Dante is the recent addition. Players aren't unaware of those other examples, they just know it's not as productive to talk about them when DE's attention isn't on them.

Sometimes, these things become clear pretty quickly once they're put into players' hands. AC6 had a weapon called the Therapist that got buffed in a balance pass, then nerfed a few days later when it turned out that the buffs made it broken in AC vs AC fights. There is exactly one thread suggesting that Dante may be too powerful, vs at least three saying that he should be left as is. And for the record, there were plenty of posts about Mesmer Skin's rework/augment back when they happened. Are you really that surprised that the more recent addition is the one that's getting more discussion now?

First of all, you can't say it "objectively" has any effect on the fun of an experience, given that fun itself is a subjective term. Furthermore "Power Fantasy" doesn't just mean "I'm an unstoppable god that obliterates everything that dares to oppose me". In many cases, it actually means the opposite, giving the player the chance to overcome challenges where the odds are stacked against them and feel powerful that way. Going to a game that I played fairly recently for an example, Armored Core VI is a power fantasy. You're a 10-metre-tall flying death machine that can use all manner of awesome weapons while dancing circles around enemy projectiles. However, you also need to be careful because playing recklessly (especially against bosses) will result in you taking hits that you may not be able to survive. You feel powerful when you complete that game specifically because it tested you (either your ability to navigate the hazards of the mission, or having the knowledge to create a build best suited to cheesing those hazards). Now, I'm not expecting DE to change Warframe to be more like AC6 (though I think it would be cool if they took inspiration from some of the bosses in that game. The idea of a fight between a Warframe and a boss similar to BALTEUS or IBIS CEL 240 gives me chills), since this game has its own style of power fantasy. My point is that reducing the power of an outlier doesn't diminish Warframe's ability to provide said fantasy. Regardless of all of the above, Dante will likely still be powerful post-nerf, given that DE have specifically stated that they don't want to be too heavy-handed with the nerfs.

Because they want to add cool stuff to the game, and don't always realise just how broken some of that cool stuff can get. Incarnons were originally meant to be balanced out vs AOE by the fact that you couldn't get 100% uptime for the stronger mode. Evidently some of them need some tuning on that front, so I wouldn't be surprised if we see a balance pass for Incarnons later down the road. Hell, the fact that they've been so powerful for so long proves that DE don't just wave the nerf hammer haphazardly. Ultimately it boils down to not wanting the game to become stale. If one tactic and/or build becomes completely dominant over the game it will lead to monotony. Are you really unable to see the contradiction here? "DE want everything to suck... except when they add systems that make things not suck!". Perhaps wait to see what the changes will actually be before claiming that they're taking the fun away?

So... in each and every one of these cases they provided their reasoning, including when they felt the need to revise things later on when the meta shifted. In other words, none of these nerfs were to things that "didn't need" it.

When? Because from what I've seen, every single time they've done even the slightest thing to rein in our power, DE have provided clear reasons for why they felt the change was needed.

So... are you going to address my actual point? Because pointing to the Helminth as something that got nerfed when it is yet another system that contributed to that exponential power increase that I mentioned is, to be quite frank, laughable. Especially since the power reduction, as you yourself said, happened before it was added to the game.

If that's the case then why are we still exponentially stronger than when the game first started out? If the "nerf crowd" really always got what they wanted, you would expect overall player power to either remain static or decline, yet we've gone from a game where level 30-40 was considered challenging to all but the strongest gear, to one where an item is considered useless if it can't be used to clear enemies at the level cap. It's almost like DE tend to avoid nerfing things unless they deem it absolutely necessary, with specific criteria that they use to determine what tactics need to be reined in (those being dominance, automation and disruption, with the first being the justification in this case).

Taking into account the fact that that there are currently at least two threads from players who are up in arms about the mere idea of a Dante nerf (something which, for the record, there has been no official announcement of as I am writing this), I'm sure you can only imagine the uproar if DE were to attempt a game-wide balance pass. Even without that, considering the sheer number of variables that would need to be adjusted on both the player and enemy ends, I'm not sure such a pass is even feasible at this point.

Which only applies for as long as enemies remain within the radius (as in they will get all of their defences back the moment they step out of it), on a frame that has no innate grouping tools. Which require a fairly hefty investment into range to get coverage. Requires time to ramp up their damage and is fairly energy hungry to maintain, with that ramp up quickly resetting to zero if you fail to keep it spreading. On a frame that becomes a glass cannon at higher levels due to a lack of shields. So long as you agree to be quiet if he does end up getting nerfed.

Only if your accounts were made after the listed date. If you made your accounts before then, you'll still be eligible. Edit: To clarify, if you make a PC account today, you'll be able to link it to your PS4, you just won't be able to merge the two. Merge: All items from both accounts are kept, with the exception of a few that are meant to be one-per-account. Link: One account takes priority. Anything that isn't in that account will be lost upon connection.