PROteinxstack
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Posts posted by PROteinxstack
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5 hours ago, BlackCoMerc said:
This is a perfect summation of how to address the endless power creep. Well said.
Thanks! Feel free to comment on my thread about the solutions I have thought up!
https://forums.warframe.com/topic/631495-enemy-ai-spawns-alert-levels-armorweapon-balancing-thread
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15 minutes ago, Fifield said:
I really like the story-fication. However, you've got to be careful. When we first started playing this game, we moved slowly, we had the opening quests and it was great. When you get into a clan or group missions though, everyone just speeds through as quickly as possible.
If you put in story that slows them down, I think it'll annoy them.Thanks for replying! I should clarify a bit more of what is meant above by "speed trap". Right now, the lock-down mechanic of a room forces the player to stop what they are doing, and hack a console to open the door, allowing them to proceed. I do not think this works well with how modern Warframe players operate. As you have said, everyone speeds through as quickly as possible. I think the game should coordinate enemy AI to know your objective, know your path of travel, and anticipate your arrival by setting up a roadblock (passable, but with a large force that is at weapon-ready) when a mission gets locked-down. Once the player comes to said roadblock, the door opens, and they get a bullet shower (I picture on the grineer side, many blunts already setup, a relatively large contingent of grineer forces with their guns trained on the entryway which the player is anticipated to come through) or they use some of those nice rabbit holes that the map designers have so lovingly setup, where you can avoid the main route and take a side path to get to the next room (you know, the ones with the white paint on them; the parkour routes). The player COULD try to speed through that, but there is so much firepower being thrown their way (especially if there is a rampant trained on them), there is a larger risk of failure, it might be better to slow it down, pick off some enemies, or take an alternate route. If said player dies in one of these "speed traps", they just revive and try again, no different from the current modus operandi. The only considerable change in how a player would be penalized is if they are held up while an enemy kill/rescue team is on-route. Then, if you are getting slowed down, you time would be running out before very powerful reinforcements arrive. You could be in for some punishment (beatable yet difficult, and enemy reinforcements would continue to queued and deployed at greater levels with more enemies if the player continues to defeat them).
Regarding the EHP aspect of enemies at higher levels, if there are enough enemies present that can take down a player in short work, the 1 shot 1 kill method will only be effective to a certain extent before the player is overwhelmed by the other enemies. Scaling enemy EHP via logarithmic means has not worked well with this game since our damage and abilities do not scale the same way. I do not believe that at any level should the player be able to stand still in the midst of low level grunt enemies and be able to shrug off their attacks due to negligible damage amounts received. The lower level enemies / grunts should always be a relative threat to the player. No aspect of the game should be trivialized at lower levels. Some examples of how grunts would be upgraded at higher levels that does not grant blanket increases to EHP or damage: faster reaction time, greater accuracy, more frequent use of cover, more frequent use of grenades, flanking maneuvers, different weapons that cause status effects on the player, greater teamwork, etc. Conversely, this would mean that at lower levels, enemies would: have slower reaction time, have less accuracy, stand out in the open, not use grenades, run straight at you rather than flanking, not have any utility use, not use teamwork. The two experiences can be vastly different and not use stat increases to achieve diversity.
There are so many more things the developers can do with mods, it opens a huge world of customization that does not have to be limited to how much more damage a weapon can do or even affect the base stats of the weapon! There are so many mods that people are pressured to forgo because damage is more important: silencers, zoom levels, ability modifiers on event, etc. Under barrel mounts could be so good: blinding laser sights, smoke grenades, tazers, decoys, the list is endless. We as the players should have more choice to be creative with how we solve enemy encounters, give us tools and options to work with so we can pave new routes in gameplay.
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I've made a solutions thread for this topic:
https://forums.warframe.com/topic/631495-enemy-ai-spawns-alert-levels-armorweapon-balancing-thread
The problem has multiple layers. Rather than scaling enemy levels to increase difficulty, many have noted that the current system artificially increases difficulty by scaling armor, health, and damage. This can only work up to a certain speed before the inconsistencies in the tracks of the game cause it to derail. There should be a scaling method that allows for imperfections in the game design and still results in a smooth ride.
For example: The enemies should scale with intelligence, quantity, and unit variation. The individual attributes of the enemy should only scale slightly with level. It should be a realistic progression so that an enemy is not made of paper and shoots cardboard at level 1 and made of asteroids and shoots moons at level 100, but rather is made of metal and shoots bullets at level 1 and made of stronger, thicker metal and shoots bigger, hotter rounds at level 100. Our weapons must have similar progression. Take away the damage mods, make the weapons themselves inherently strong, and make the mods we place in them increase the utility, versatility, and overall effectiveness to counteract the increase in enemy numbers, complexity, and intelligence.
By changing the system by which we upgrade our equipment to allow for player creativity when solving the increasingly complex problems of enemy volume and tactics at greater levels, the game play will become more rewarding for the player; through a victory the player will know that they won the battle through ingenuity rather than merely brute force. This results in greater load-out customization and less reliance on obtaining the most damage absorbing/inflicting gear.
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18 hours ago, Phatose said:
Eh, sounds like you want Warframe to be an action game with RPG elements, not an RPG with action elements. No thanks - that's a different game.
Great point!
When leveling up in Warframe, what happens? Mod points are unlocked allowing warframe and weapon customization. This allows you to place more mod cards into your equipment. Currently, the only stats that help in end-game content are effective HP and Damage. This narrows the focus of your build to only increase these stats or the end-game content becomes unplayable. If the goal is to only increase these two stats, I would venture to say that Warframe is really just an action game with RPG elements.
Yet, if Warframe changes to eliminate this forced style of gameplay, then the player is open to make even more choices with their characters, allowing for further customization with their builds. I argue that making the changes in the original post would make Warframe more of an RPG game than ever before. The player is given more choice with their mod selection which results in a deeper immersion and adds much needed room for growth.
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Good Afternoon Everyone!
Long time player here that went inactive for a bit due to burnout. Thankfully since the new warframes, parkour 2.0, and weapons have greatly improved the quality of life for Warframe, I'm back! I want to give a quick shoutout to DE_Steve and the UI team for listening to the community’s groaning about an option to disable the damage/affinity numbers about a year or so ago. I can’t tell you how much more I enjoy the game because of that. As per my usual self, I have many ideas to help the community and the developers to imagine the game in new ways for more fun. As a disclaimer, this is not an exhaustive post (though it may be exhausting to read it), so please use your imagination and be creative when reading and replying.
Let’s talk about the current state of Warframe's weapons vs enemies. As current high level / highly modded players navigate through low level content, no matter how many enemies/enemy types are on screen, enemy weapons do little damage and players do insane amounts of relative damage in return. This trend continues until around level 50, where you start to notice that enemies do slightly more damage and take more than one shot to defeat. At level 75, enemies start to become bullet sponges. As you go along each encounter takes significantly longer to finish, resulting in a very slow experience and the player becomes very brittle. The temperature of the game begins to drop drastically. Whereas at lower levels, everything was very fast paced and fun, now it becomes slow and unbearable. In addition, enemies spawn quickly and never deplete in supply. How can we fix this? In what ways would a high level player still find challenge and a fresh experience in both high level and low level content equally? First, the enemies and enemy placement play a large role in balancing the game.
Since maps are dynamically arranged using preconfigured tilesets and enemies are randomly spawned, we have to use that current system and tweak it. All current mission types aside from exterminate and defense missions contain an infinite amount of enemies in the level. This does not make much sense in terms of gameplay balancing, lore, or immersion. My thought is that every mission aside from survival, interception, and extraction (which should have their own mechanic for deploying endless enemies) needs to have a finite amount of enemies in it with additional events that can trigger more challenge for the player (boss type enemy/enemy groups). Exterminate missions would also have to be reworked in order not just have an objective of wiping out the enemies on a map, but also render the area completely sterile. How would finite amounts of enemies and reinforcements work?
Each mission would have a set number of enemy spawns per tileset. Once most of these spawns are depleted (a random number chosen based on the total number of enemies on the map), the player has a set amount of time to complete their objective before a search party is deployed by the faction's command to find out why communication with the node has stopped. If alarms are also triggered and not reset, rather than a lockdown occuring like it does right now, a timer starts that counts down until reinforcements are called in to help the faction deter the player. What would happen to the current alert/lockdown system?
The current lockdown mechanic is ok, but the enemies are then locked out of their own rooms, and the player is relatively safe by themselves until they unlock the room. Imagine, as the player, gliding into an "locked down" room where grineer blunts are setup, electricity mines are deployed, drone swarms are called in, and enemy presence is increased to the point of being overwhelming, continuing to call reinforcements from neighboring tiles until the alert is turned off or all grineer threats are neutralized. This can be pictured similar to how police would setup a roadblock for a runaway criminal in a car chase. If the player threat still persists, the enemy faction will call in a rescue team from neighboring planetary nodes and scramble dropships which will begin deploying higher level enemies or deadly kill teams (this will take a significant amount of time to receive said reinforcements, giving players precious time to complete their objective unhindered, but not too long). This scenario sets the player up for an exciting overture of action, rewarding the player for clearing out enemy squads yet punishing them if they take too long in a mission after depleting said natural enemy supply. It also creates a terse environment, pushing the player to hurry with their mission.
Currently, regardless of enemy level, the game spawns a lot of enemies. This should be scaled down for lower level content and scaled up for higher level content. Something warframe does right in this aspect is that it spawns beefier enemies (bursas, bombards, gunners, napalms, etc) the higher level the player goes. What does not make sense is that a lower level regular grineer soldier can have vastly more HP, armor, and damage at level 50 than level 1. They look the same, sound the same, use the same weapons, etc. What would make more sense is if enemy scaling were toned down and the same grineer soldiers at level 1 were very close in HP, armor, and weapon damage than at level 50-100, yet more of them with different weapons, more variety in their heavier counterparts, and greater AI capacity would be present at higher levels. A few things needed to be managed before balancing stats and spawns.
-Tone down damage mods. Rather than blanket increases in damage, allow base damage, multishot, and critical chance/damage mods to have amazing utility. This will reduce the disparity in player experience when comparing low vs high level content.
*Serration type mods cause a small fragmentation explosion on headshot kills, damage radius, and amount of shrapnel increase with mod upgrade. Blast would be the shot’s base damage divided evenly and cause stagger for enemies that are very close.
*Multishot mods cause last bullet to split into multiple fragments on kill, taking base damage of shot and dispersing it like a shotgun blast horizontally, punching through the enemy, splitting, and hitting those behind it. Amount of fragments increase with mod upgrade (combining serration and split chamber would be very satisfying and encourage players to keep the mods equipped, but would not be necessary). The possibility for cascading kills is likely using these mods in concert (even more so with punch-through mods).
Note: Serration and Multishot would not proc themselves subsequent times on cascading kills.
*Crit chance mods would increase the chance a shot will disable a joint or vulnerable area on non-boss type enemies. Critical damage results in enemies: becoming temporarily disarmed (shoulders), getting dazed (head), gasping for air (neck), or would force them to their knees / do a faceplant (kneecaps). Infested/Sentient/Robotic weak points would look differently than Grineer/Corpus ones. Red crits would triple the amount of time disabled and cause a more powerful effect after the initial proc (dislocated arms [shoulders], stumbling concussion [head], choking [neck], limping / crawling [knees].
*Crit Damage mods would allow players to see enemy joints as weak spots when aiming via faint highlights, maiming them on critical chance when hit. Mod upgrading would allow for more weak points to be highlighted at once, at max mod level, all weak points on an enemy are highlighted. After time these mods would no longer be required to hit these spots, as players would learn over time enemy anatomy.
*Elemental mods should not affect enemy health or cause extra damage aside from enemy resistances/vulnerability, but rather should affect status chance, duration, and effectiveness as elemental mods stack. This change infers that status procs would scale in potency and would eliminate current status duration mods.
*Add mods that configure aiming down sights (aiming should already cause the player model to become slightly translucent, warframe models constantly block player view in this game, especially Rhino/Rhino P. Allow a custom option to determine opacity of player model when aiming.). Mods that customized reticles, strong laser sights that can burn and blind enemies (great for stealth gameplay: blind from a distance without detection, less effective as enemy level increases due to better equipped enemy soldiers), side/under barrel attachments that do fun things like tazers, smoke grenades, cryogenic grenades, incendiary, flash bangs, etc. Add more utilities to the weapon to give players more creativity in solving a node.
-Don’t make enemies more resilient to damage; make them smarter and better equipped (not more armor, unless when spawning heavier units. Elemental Status/Critical resistances would be ok). Make them better soldiers, not more armored and just as dumb. Integrate squad tactics into their AI, allow them to use teamwork. Make the game more challenging and encourage teamwork or individual creativity at higher levels. Balancing enemy HP/Armor scaling would also allow warframe offensive abilities to scale better at higher/lower levels. Rather than being OP at low levels and barely effective at high levels, they would remain stable throughout the game.
-Set more enemy placed traps for the players. Make traversing the environment a bit more hazardous for players so they have to be more careful when rushing to objectives. Encourage more wall running and staying in the air. Create dead-ends where players find themselves tricked and surrounded by enemy forces, thereby creating drama and urgency.
-Diminish Vitality / Shield Mods and Warframe Defense Abilities. These are not so bad but can be balanced to match the new enemy damage levels.
Making these changes would encourage players to diversify their weapon builds, and seek weapons which cater more toward their individual play style rather than those which can scale with higher level content. It also allows the developers more creativity when guiding players along the new user experience. As players begin their journey, the starter warframes and equipment can still remain efficient at higher levels. Yet, purchasing new weapons and warframes inherently adds the utility that the operator had to mod into the starting gear initially. As the player progresses, more favorable stats are added to the weapons (more stock ammo, larger mag size, faster fire rate, more accuracy, greater base damage). This encourages players to swap their old weapons for new ones which they can mod to greater customization. It also makes the player more powerful since they have more tools at their disposal.
Please comment below and provide your take on these ideas or anything else you would like to add. One thing is for sure, high level content in Warframe needs to be refreshed in order to stay relative. That means the foundation Warframe is built upon is not stable, it needs to be expanded in order to support the weight of vertical growth. Thanks for reading!
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Could we please have an option to disable draw damage numbers? The HUD scaling really causes them to be too big (not to mention with continuous fire weapons, they are still obstructing the player's vision when fighting higher level enemies with lower level weapons. Plus using higher damage weapons causes the numbers to be HUGE. So, an option to either scale or disable draw damage numbers and experience points after defeating an enemy would be great!
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+1, more hud options!
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The hud scaling option is a great idea! What we need next is to have additional options for refinement:
-Scaling for draw damage+experience number size OR an option to turn draw damage+experience numbers off.
-Crosshair size/color/type options.
-Map Size scaling.
On a seperate thought:
Could you replace the 4 dots under the crosshar with a bar that shows how much energy we have left? I don't think the 4 dots are necessary but the energy info is.
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YES!!! I Agree to all of this post. Please, please, please DE. I would like an option to turn off draw damage and experience numbers. Please?
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Agreed, I don't think anyone has noticed this yet: in addition to the crosshair being affected by the scaling, the damage/experience numbers get affected too. Now the draw damage at max hud scaling takes up a HUGE amount of real estate on the screen. We really need an option to turn those numbers off. I think this has been a needed function for at least a year now.
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Headshot a void corpus, the helmet will fly off revealing... another helmet!!! GASP!
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Jesus christ you can't fking be serious.
People the game need SOOO many bugfixing and SOOO many content being added.
WTF new warframe... Makes me mad reading this sh!t.
They still havent fixed the fking transmutation?!!! Why no one demanding a fking working feature that actualy do as they told us it should do?!!
Why no one demanding bugfixes?!!
I want a working fking game! Where if I host a game my fps doesn't crawl on a machine where I could host half the city's websites and sql databases while playing a game!!!
I want the fking crosshair actually be visible and not see fking numbers all over the place totally covering the fking screen, the models the enemies, the crosshair the corridor, my grenades jumping backward in my face, etc, etc!!!
I wanna see if the idiot rescue target is behind me on the floor dieing but no one cares or see because we don't actually see his/her health and that he/she is dieing?!!!!
That the only way you can sabotage an enemy ship/location is that uploading *LOTUS* into their main controll computer?!!! Nothing like sabotage the fking ammo backup, or weapon crates, or steal some armor, or anything else in the same mission type?!! F***!!!
That on invasion defense the enemy is so dumb they just come in one line and you just stand there and fking kil their S#&$ with one grenade?!!
And you have to play for 40minutes to finaly get a fking lvl60enemy who actualy can shot hard enough that your shield goes down?!! There used to be some VERY HARD mission locations in some planets now all is just a fking kindergarden and I have to sit hours and hours on front of the computer for half an hour REAL COMBAT where enemy actually does something?!! I Meam COME ON!!!
WTF You want a new warframe?!!!! I'm going Francis over here for F*** sakes!!!!!
((Francis:
))Words of wisdom for the young people out there: Warframe is just a video game, it is meant for fun and entertainment. If you aren't gaining either of these you are wasting your time. You'll look back in life at this very moment and say to yourself: "Why was I upset over something so trivial?". There are so many more important things to spend your valuable time and energy on. This is meant for a way to enjoy your downtime. Get mad over things that matter.
tldr: don't be that guy, it ain't worth it.
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Hoping for better damage numbers and visual feedback/UI/HUD/BBQ!!!!
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Right click.
Thank you! This +1
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They can be avoided 100% if you slide, but the point is that those are not solutions, they are tedious workarounds.
Agreed!!!!
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Use the camera switch key and zoom, its the same thing as a cover system. Really, try it.
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Not what I meant. Survival, you rely on enemies for life support. Which means if there is only one enemy.... At most you can get one life support. If that enemy doesn't drop it... You could end up failing when you hit 4:49 ish and life support hits 0%
Oh ok, I definitely see what you mean now. The example you just gave would definitely be an exception to this rule, it would be impossible to have a single high level enemy to fight in a survival mission.
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Actually, I'd be more worried about an army of enemies than one really strong enemy.
It is why whenever the stalker comes after me, I drop an energy item and tell my party to start nuking the lesser mobs-to get them out of the way before the stalker comes.
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Also, I wouldn't want to see just one enemy during survival nightmare. It could easily make survival nightmare essentially impossible due to RNG.
Yes, this is so true. I don't want to see an enemy that one shots tenno. That is not what I'm referring to. I'd more likely enjoy a juggernaut that is very slow but does moderate damage to players and can take a bunch of punishment. Plus if it is some kind of other dimensional wraith that disappears temporarily when defeated but continues to reappear randomly until the round is over would be cool.
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Two half-level enemies is significantly less threatening than one large/high-level enemy. Even 100 lower enemies is less threatening.
I agree, the concept is to balance the amount of enemies with the expected difficulty level with a variation of high/mid/low level enemies, please consider all numbers given as ballpark figures.
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Wouldn't it just be a nightmare if #4 didn't work so well? Maybe ability strength decreases or your suit jams or something and it breaks if you use it too much.
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You were going great, until this bit.
No to that.
Alright alright, too risky, I get it. Too much risk, too little reward? I'll take it out of OP.
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Hi all,
After much self-deliberating and playing Brutal Doom (working on a mod to reduce gore), I realized one reason why Warframe's high level content and nightmare mode is lacking. There is too much consistency, you know what to expect from every enemy before you go into it. Here is my proposed, very simple fix:
-Make high level nodes have a mixture between LARGER amounts of low level enemies (think two level 25 enemies rather than 1 level 50) and SMALLER amounts of high level enemies. Yet, there should always be a balance of difficulty expected with the level of the node.
Right now high level nodes only contain high level enemies that feel the same as everything else. Mixing up the enemy level will allow for diverse gameplay and really cause the player to choose targets wisely and make tactical decisions about how to enter a tile.
How does this affect Nightmare mode?
Currently, nightmare is the same as regular with only a slight twist. Using the above method, Nightmare should be EXTREMELY unpredictable and a real gamble for players. For example, there could be 500 level 1 enemies swarming you at once, or 1 level 5000 (yes) enemy throughout the entire mapset. Also, consider the ambience that a player enters when getting into nightmare mode. It should be visibly different. What about in Star Fox when you first went into that "Out of this Dimension!" level, everything was really weird and wacked out, kinda freaky because of the unknown. That is what is missing in Nightmare. So consider this: NPC voices should be distorted (slowed down drastically during intermittent playback times), walls warping out of the corner of your eye for a split second. Hearing enemies behind you that aren't really there, minimap shows enemies that aren't really there, enemy movement is variably faster/slower, hallucinations, and more anomalies.
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Just a thought:
If Corpus are humanoid, and tenno are humanoid, aren't we eradicating ourselves over a weapon (Detron)? This makes us tenno no better than the "Corp-U.S.". So humans are destroying humans over power. At the same time, we are giving galaxy control to monsters created by humans, correct? Sounds about time for a plot twist, no?
Suggestion: Forma adding polarization instead of replacing
in General
Posted
Great Idea! I second this.