About Ember and Damage Reduction

[PortalsFTW]

Hello my salty forum-going friends,

I've seen a few posts recently discussing a much needed buff for ember. Among these posts, I have seen several suggestions for giving ember a damage reduction function. However, as many have pointed out on said posts, back in the day ember had such an ability, overheat, which gave ember a damage reduction while active. This ability was replaced with accelerant in update 11.5. This was done due to DE's concept on what ember's theme should be: they envisioned a glass-cannon berserker who dives into crowds and survives by killing everything in the room before she is killed. For this reason, DE has stated that they refuse to give ember the ability to reduce incoming damage to herself. This looks good on paper, but I hope to demonstrate that in practice this concept does not work. I also hope to demonstrate that giving ember a damage mitigation function might provide her with the ability to go for that dive-in-and-kill-stuff play style while remaining effective (i.e. not dying constantly).

So why does DE's concept of ember as a glass-cannon berserker not work? There are a couple of reasons. Firstly, the tactic of diving into a crowd of enemies and killing them before they kill you requires that you can actually kill said enemies before they fire back. As it is now, ember can easily do this to low level mobs but her fire-based abilities' damage output quickly drops as enemy levels increase, especially if they are armored. Making matters worse, ember's main damage dealing ability, world on fire, can only effect 5 targets at a time. This means jumping into a crowd of 6 or more high level enemies is not viable, as at least some of said enemies will not be dying, but rather be downing ember in a single shotgun blast. Fire blast is capable of effecting more than the 5 target maximum of world on fire, but its damage is negligible and its energy cost is inexplicably high. So what we are left with is a glass-cannon berserker who cannot kill enemies fast enough to prevent her own death. So if you can't kill enemies fast enough, why not use stuns? This brings us to our second problem, ember's inability to consistently stun enemies.

Most ember mains will tell you that the best way to avoid unexpected death is to cast accelerant before entering a room, as it will cause effected enemies to stagger for a few seconds while also making them more vulnerable to heat damage. However, this means that in order to consistently survive, ember must constantly cast accelerant whenever new enemies show up, resulting in a large amount of energy consumption. Ember's other tools for stunning multiple enemies, world on fire and fire blast, are inconsistent (world on fire has a measly 35% heat proc chance per second at neutral power strength) and also become energy intensive as they now must be recast periodically thanks to that nerf back in February. Use of the firequake mod can somewhat mitigate the low heat proc chance from world on fire to produce stuns, but the 5 enemy limit still exists and the augment simply acts as a band-aid mod for ember's significant design flaws. So now what we are left with is a glass-cannon berserker who cannot kill enemies fast enough OR effectively stun enemies without quickly running out of energy. Notably, ember cannot even effectively recover her lost energy as abilities that give energy (energy vampire, zenurik school, energy pizzas) will not effect ember while world on fire is active, which it should be most of the time as it is her main damage dealing tool. Another thing to note is that a lot of enemy types (ospreys, turrets, certain pseudo-bosses, bosses) are completely unaffected by all of ember's stuns, allowing them to destroy her with little effort. This is in a game with abilities like radial blind, avalanche, stasis and so many more abilities that can completely shut down all enemies in a massive area. Meanwhile, the frame that needs effective stuns most to survive due to her squishiness and short abiltiy range can only inconsistently stun enemies for a few seconds at best.

For all of the aforementioned reasons, DE's vision of ember as a glass-cannon berserker is full of flaws and does not function in high level gameplay. With recent "high level" content focusing on killing everything as fast as possible (ESO: ember can only deal with one grouping of enemies at a time, not nuke rooms like other damage frames) and not dying (arbitration: ember is very bad at this), there isn't really a role that ember excels at other than low level farming (in which case an amprex functions just as well). So how could we improve on DE's concept of what ember is supposed to be? Take out the glass-cannon part of her identity. Ember does not work as a glass cannon as she does not deal enough damage and her stuns are too inconsistent/costly. Ember's role has always been a mix between damage and crowd control but you can't effectively control a crowd as a frame like ember, who has short range abilities, without being able to survive in a crowd. To DE, I ask that you please reconsider the stance you have taken on not giving ember a form of damage reduction for the above reasons. I believe that ember would be able to perform a lot better in high level content if she simply had a way to avoid instant death.

Perhaps her lackluster passive could be replaced by one that gives her a damage reduction based on how many nearby enemies are fire proc'd? Perhaps fire blast could be replaced by some sort of fire shield similar in function to overheat, giving her damage reduction? As all of ember's abilities currently become useless as soon as she uses up her energy (effects on all abilities are either instantaneous, use energy over time or are negligible), replacing fire blast with a duration based ability would also help her in this regard.

Or perhaps DE could ignore all of this and just give ember to Pablo for a proper rework.

Sorry for the long post, thanks to everyone who stuck around to read it.

TL;DR: DE's vision of ember as a glass-cannon berserker does not work as she cannot survive in the crowds she is supposed to be diving into. Making her less of a glass cannon by giving her a form of damage reduction would solve this.

 

Edited November 16, 2018 by PortalsFTW

[Airwolfen]

A idea I had originally still stands for me.

Adding a part of Overheat into WoF. Mainly in the way that as the range decreases and the drain goes up, a damage reduction component starts building up as well.

[catalyst22]

Great post! Back in the overheat days Ember was my 2nd favorite frame for a long time and although you're absolutely right that she needs a defensive tool i don't think that a mitigation buff it the way to go. 

There has got to be a way to give her a defensive ability, that is in tune with the whole jumping in and killing before you get killed theme in spirit and game-play without actually requiring you to kill everything immediately.  Maybe something like this:

New passive: Overheat

Ember goes through periodical cycles of heating to the temperature of a star and cooling back down to just your friendly neighborhood bonfire. While heating up each enemy on fire within Xm of Ember increases the speed of her heating up by X₂ %. Once she reaches max temperature she gains the Ifrit buff and super cooling begins. While cooling enemies on fire within Xm of Ember take X₃ % increased fire dmg and increase the speed of her cooling down by X₂ % as heat is vented through them. If Ember would die during heating Phoenix activates.

Ifrit - Ember burns incredibly hot and ranged attacks from more than 5m away turn to nothing before they reach her. Additionally she burns all armor and shields of enemies within 5m of her, her parkour velocity, energy efficiency and casting speed are increased by 10%. Lasts for the entire cooling period.

Phoenix - Ember super heats prematurely. Ignore the lethal damage, heal X₆% of your missing health and immediately transition into the cooling period with current heat-X₇%. 

 

The idea is that you play safe and spread fire proccs to speed up the heating. When you're about to enter cooling you want fewer enemies to be on fire and then slaughter as many as possible as fast as possible during her cooling period.

[Teridax68]

Is it Ember's glass cannon fantasy that doesn't work, or just the glass cannon fantasy in general in the game's current state? As it stands, frames that lack durability or invisibility, such as Banshee or Titania, often suffer in higher levels, because enemy scaling means often a shot or two is enough to kill these frames, even with Quick Thinking. The fact that enemies are often sent out in hordes compounds the issue. If we were to take the OP's reasoning to its logical extreme, then it wouldn't be hard to see that the glass cannon fantasy simply doesn't work at all right now, and not just for Ember. Rather, this stems from the game's current balancing, rather than any real dysfunctionality to those particular frames (though Ember, Titania, etc. do have some dysfunction), and I feel giving every frame damage reduction just to have them not get one-shotted at higher levels just risks making for some very boring, cookie-cutter design, which we've already experienced with many frames receiving ridiculous durability effects for no real reason (e.g. Mesa's Shatter Shield, Revenant's Mesmer Skin, etc.). Because of this, while I do think Ember needs a rework, I also think she needs to remain a glass cannon, and instead we should be reworking enemy scaling, which is already broken for a host of different reasons, so that frames don't need to feel like they need 90% damage reduction just to be able to play adequately at higher levels.

 

Edited November 16, 2018 by Teridax68

[catalyst22]

44 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

so that frames don't need to feel like they need 90% damage reduction just to be able to play adequately at higher levels.

I've been thinking about that and i don't think that the scaling is the main issue here(but yes it's broken and all that). For a long time new challenges in Warframe have punished the same type of ability. Let's say there are for different classes of abilities:

"deployables" (Vauban, Frost Globe, Volt Shield)

buffs (Rhino Roar)

debuffs (Sonar, the cc part of things like Mag 3&4)

"straight damage" (Short dots and big dmg numbers)

Since Nullifiers or so (honestly it has probably been going on for a long time just not as extreme) these classes have been treated very differently especially buffs and debuffs. Debuffs are extremely unreliable from a purely mechanical point of view and buffs are the exact opposite: 1. No Frame is immune to his own buff. 2. You have decent control over sustaining said buff. (No Arbitration-drone is gonna strip your buff and don't run into Nullis) 3. They work against almost any target and get ignored by almost no attack.

Deployables and straight damage sit sort of in between and can be ignored compared to the buff-debuff discrepancies.

So what we need is reliable buff-stripping for every faction.

I think the immediate problem for squishy frames can be fixed with a mod:

Definitely not Mesmer Skin

Surround yourself in a shroud of Sentient energy that reflects 1 / 2 / 3 incoming enemy attacks; attackers receive 100% of the reflected damage and Status Effects, while you become immune for 1 second. One charge refreshes every 20 seconds.

This would be minimal effort on DEs part, be useless to tanks, increase squishy survive-ability and keep their current play patterns intact.

 

 

Edited November 16, 2018 by catalyst22

[Teridax68]

1 hour ago, catalyst22 said:

I think the immediate problem for squishy frames can be fixed with a mod:

Definitely not Mesmer Skin

Surround yourself in a shroud of Sentient energy that reflects 1 / 2 / 3 incoming enemy attacks; attackers receive 100% of the reflected damage and Status Effects, while you become immune for 1 second. One charge refreshes every 20 seconds.

This would be minimal effort on DEs part, be useless to tanks, increase squishy survive-ability and keep their current play patterns intact.

Is this really the most efficient solution, though? Sure, you could very well add a band-aid mod that, if strong enough, every squishy frame would equip instead of QT or the like, but is that really what's going to solve things in the long-term? The net result to this would be that, if this mod were good, every squishy frame would be equipping it to not die at higher levels, which means there'd be one less slot for actual customization, and the game would then have to factor in this very specific mechanic into consideration when tuning damage against warframes. We have tons of band-aid mods already, and they've all become either too niche to be worth using at all (e.g. Cautious Shot), or so good that they're mandatory (e.g. Vacuum/Fetch). Because of this, I think the most direct solution really should be to nerf enemy damage scaling, and then consider nerfing or removing survivability on current frames where it's excessive (and there's plenty to nerf). 

[Arcira]

The reasons why glass "cannon" Ember doesn´t work currently is because she is glas without a cannon.

I know de isn´t good at balancing but ability damage is a joke. Fireball does 400 damage with a 1sec cooldown between casts. With 200% power strength I have 0.8% (or 4% with Accelerant) of my weapons damage (~100k dps). Might just be me but I think thats a tiny little bit low. Even the weakest weapons in the game can get 50k+ dps easily

Other reasons are more and more mechanics that add ability immunities and the open world areas. Even without the range nerf over time enemies can shoot you from far away.

On the other hand if these things change she could be overpowered. After all spamming abilities is the reason these mechanics exist. In addition a lot of people would complain about a specific number in the mission report.

At this point I prefer the tank Ember solution because obviously it´s impossible to get (fire) caster in a viable state without changing some core aspects of the game. Aso I want to get ride of that stupid QT mod already because apparently this random death stagger is far to important to get removed.

Edited November 16, 2018 by Arcira

[PortalsFTW]

2 hours ago, Arcira said:

The reasons why glass "cannon" Ember doesn´t work currently is because she is glas without a cannon.

I know de isn´t good at balancing but ability damage is a joke. Fireball does 400 damage with a 1sec cooldown between casts. With 200% power strength I have 0.8% (or 4% with Accelerant) of my weapons damage (~100k dps). Might just be me but I think thats a tiny little bit low. Even the weakest weapons in the game can get 50k+ dps easily

Other reasons are more and more mechanics that add ability immunities and the open world areas. Even without the range nerf over time enemies can shoot you from far away.

On the other hand if these things change she could be overpowered. After all spamming abilities is the reason these mechanics exist. In addition a lot of people would complain about a specific number in the mission report.

At this point I prefer the tank Ember solution because obviously it´s impossible to get (fire) caster in a viable state without changing some core aspects of the game. Aso I want to get ride of that stupid QT mod already because apparently this random death stagger is far to important to get removed.

Agreed on all points, well said.

[catalyst22]

12 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I think the most direct solution really should be to nerf enemy damage scaling, and then consider nerfing or removing survivability on current frames where it's excessive (and there's plenty to nerf). 

Why not just throw armor on all the frames that lack it?... The reason i suggested what i did is that it won't completely #*!% low-level content; it scales perfectly with enemy level instead of once again just pushing us even farther on the low end while doing practically nothing on the other end.

[Teridax68]

6 hours ago, catalyst22 said:

Why not just throw armor on all the frames that lack it?... The reason i suggested what i did is that it won't completely #*!% low-level content; it scales perfectly with enemy level instead of once again just pushing us even farther on the low end while doing practically nothing on the other end.

I feel the problem with giving all frames armor is that it does, in fact, affect frame durability at all levels, when the problem specifically lies at one end of the scale. Armor is a multiplier to health, and unless you're proposing to have some scaling mechanic on it per enemy level, it's going to remain the same in all missions, so your frame is going to have the same amount of EHP against level 1 enemies as it will against level 100 enemies. Thus, if these frames will have enough armor to survive level 100 damage, they're going to be even more untouchable below that, and the net result will simply be mass power creep and tankier frames across the board.

This is why I'm suggesting to nerf enemy damage scaling, because that I think is the core of the problem: at level 1, enemies are obviously not a threat to most players, and in fact most enemies at levels 1 through 50 are generally pretty manageable. Past that threshold, however, things start to get dicey, because enemy damage reaches a point where a small number of stray shots, which would normally just ping a player's shields, can suddenly become lethal. It is at that point where enemy damage starts to break the game, and because of this I think we need to nerf that scaling, or simply cap it past a certain level. More generally, Warframe's current method of increasing difficulty primarily through increased damage and health is fundamentally conducive to poor gameplay past a certain point, because dealing with bullet sponges that can also one-shot frames is obviously just going to push players to try to cheese these enemies, or demand more ways of cheesing them. Nerfing enemy damage could be a start, though after that DE should take a look at the underpinnings of the game's current power creep, e.g. damage and durability mods, as well as enemy durability scaling (especially armor scaling).

[catalyst22]

4 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This is why I'm suggesting to nerf enemy damage scaling

 

4 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

though after that DE should take a look at the underpinnings of the game's current power creep, e.g. damage and durability mods

It feels to me like your just going in circles. 

 

4 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

This is why I'm suggesting to nerf enemy damage scaling

I think this supposed to be a feature. It makes balancing wayyy easier, is a low cost way to increase difficulty and keeps most endless runs short. From DEs perspective we're probably in a decent spot in that regard; most things are kept in check by the scaling and people that specifically hunger for long endless can still do it. To me the big problem are: 1. Enemy armor scaling, because it warps all other systems 2. The inability of frames without tank stats and strong defensive abilities to keep up with the rest.

Edited November 17, 2018 by catalyst22

[Teridax68]

1 hour ago, catalyst22 said:

I feels to me like your just going in circles. 

Going in circles how? Do you feel I am repeating the same arguments, or that the solution I am proposing is circular?

1 hour ago, catalyst22 said:

I think this supposed to be a feature. It makes balancing wayyy easier, is a low cost way to increase difficulty and keeps most endless runs short. From DEs perspective we're probably in a decent spot in that regard; most things are kept in check by the scaling and people that specifically hunger for long endless can still do it. To me the big problem are: 1. Enemy armor scaling, because it warps all other systems 2. The inability of frames without tank stats and strong defensive abilities to keep up with the rest.

But it doesn't make balancing easier. Like you yourself said in this very response, armor scaling is single-handedly warping balancing a ton, and the entire reason for this discussion is that the game is not well-balanced around squishy frames. Sure, increasing the game's difficulty is just a matter of increasing a few numbers, and that's simple, but that implementation has deceptively complex consequences, side-effects and long-term costs, which have brought us to the messy state of balance we're in now. DE needs to find another way of increasing the game's challenge, even if it's a more complicated solution to implement, because the current version simply doesn't work, again as noted by this very thread.

[catalyst22]

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

Going in circles how?

The latter, but not quite. After they're done with all those things the end result would probably look just like buffing base armor of everything but tanks (and Saryns...) plus slowing the level increase in endless.

 

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Like you yourself said in this very response, armor scaling is single-handedly warping balancing a ton,

I meant enemy armor specifically, sorry. Just a decrease to that scaling and smaller amount of hp increase would fix that.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

But it doesn't make balancing easier.

Having enemies that are all over the place make it so that they never really have to hit right number, if they scaled in a traditional fashion the discrepancies between abilities weapons etc., that are hidden or just not an issue right now, would become incredibly glaring.

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

the game is not well-balanced around squishy frames

Well, certain types of squishy frames, but that's probably what you meant anyway. I'm not sure that we agree on the way in which it isn't well balanced. I find the "squishyness" itself acceptable in theory, you can still get a decent level of survive-ability with parkour, but as enemies scale a single pellet/bullet means game over, which is a problem in a game as fast as Warframe.

 

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Sure, increasing the game's difficulty is just a matter of increasing a few numbers, and that's simple, but that implementation has deceptively complex consequences, side-effects and long-term costs, which have brought us to the messy state of balance we're in now.

I mean you're right, but at the same time this one of these creeping problems that just keep piling on and at this point the clean way of fixing them doesn't seem feasible to me. It would also necessarily mean reworking like half the kits.

 

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

DE needs to find another way of increasing the game's challenge, even if it's a more complicated solution to implement, because the current version simply doesn't work, again as noted by this very thread.

Yeah, the ever elusive endgame... sigh. You're right of course ramping up levels or removing revives(big yikes) is a terrible way of increasing the difficulty (for anything other than endless) going forward. Creating enemies that have unique strengths is much better, but kinda falters because of broken Warframe abilities. "Fixing" high-level Warframe by a giant rebalancing act is just not feasible imo. An easy way to create actual endgame would be to look at what every other part of Warframe and the play patterns it naturally produces + the different sub activities/communities that have been created and structure your endgame as natural extension to that. I have a whole system planned out for that, but that would kind go beyond this thread.

[Teridax68]

20 hours ago, catalyst22 said:

The latter, but not quite. After they're done with all those things the end result would probably look just like buffing base armor of everything but tanks (and Saryns...) plus slowing the level increase in endless.

I don't really agree with this, because I feel the end result should have players taking more damage relative to their health at lower levels, at least compared to now, and significantly less damage relative to their health at higher levels. By contrast, raising armor on squishy frames will just make them take less damage relative to their health at all levels, when they really don't need that additional durability at lower levels. Basically, the problem right now is that Warframe's spread out across too wide a band of stats (lower levels are a pushover, higher levels lead to some pretty ridiculous and frustrating situations), and so needs to be equalized, whereas simply raising armor doesn't really have that inbuilt equalizing function on its own.

20 hours ago, catalyst22 said:

I meant enemy armor specifically, sorry. Just a decrease to that scaling and smaller amount of hp increase would fix that.

Indeed, enemy armor scaling is the problem, which is what I was also pointing to. Having armor scale at all is what makes armored enemy EHP scale quadratically, which in turn causes enemies to turn even more quickly into bullet sponges. Effectively, rather than test the player's skill on their movement, evasion, quick thinking, imaginative use of powers, etc., the game raises its difficulty by making enemies take flat-out more damage to kill, which in turn leads to some pretty unsatisfying gameplay at times (enemies are often ignored in high-level missions where killing enemies isn't required). It's not good for balance either, because it pushes players even more towards BiS weapons and always-on Corrosive Projection/Corrosive damage to be able to deal with armored enemies.

20 hours ago, catalyst22 said:

Having enemies that are all over the place make it so that they never really have to hit right number, if they scaled in a traditional fashion the discrepancies between abilities weapons etc., that are hidden or just not an issue right now, would become incredibly glaring.

What would be "a traditional fashion" in this case? Because generally, the "traditional fashion" of scaling difficulty is precisely to reduce damage taken by enemies, and increase the damage they deal, which in a game with infinite difficulty scaling is precisely what causes design flaws to become even more glaring. Suddenly, weapons that are just a little bit underpowered, though still fun, aren't picked because they simply aren't viable for the "endgame", and frames balanced around an older damage cap suddenly can't function in an environment with more durable enemies, unless they too are given a way to scale even harder. It is precisely the current environment, where enemies have no set amount of stats, that make balancing the game difficult, because even though it's generally acknowledged that there's a "sweet spot" where gameplay is very enjoyable, that spot is only reached in some small instances, whereas the rest of the game is either too easy or too cheesy.

20 hours ago, catalyst22 said:

Well, certain types of squishy frames, but that's probably what you meant anyway. I'm not sure that we agree on the way in which it isn't well balanced. I find the "squishyness" itself acceptable in theory, you can still get a decent level of survive-ability with parkour, but as enemies scale a single pellet/bullet means game over, which is a problem in a game as fast as Warframe.

I feel we're in complete agreement on this: by all rights, parkour should be the way frames, especially squishy frames, avoid damage, but as it stands that doesn't work in an environment where even a squishy frame doing parkour at all times (which isn't really possible, considering how many animation locks and airborne casting restrictions are in the game) can still get hit with a couple of stray bullets or some room-filling AoE, which is itself enough to down them. Because of this, we need to limit the damage enemies can deal, we need to let players cast abilities without CCing themselves, and we need to prevent situations from happening where the player is forced to take damage due to some excessive AoE, excessively accurate hitscan weaponry, and the like.

20 hours ago, catalyst22 said:

I mean you're right, but at the same time this one of these creeping problems that just keep piling on and at this point the clean way of fixing them doesn't seem feasible to me. It would also necessarily mean reworking like half the kits.

I feel there are workable solutions, though, and even if it doesn't have to be this monolithic single update, there's still room for it to happen over the course of multiple smaller updates, each of which could address a specific balance problem. On one hand, I feel most warframes need kit updates anyway, because there's almost invariably at least one ability that's hardly used on every frame, and at least one ability that's intrinsically uninteractive, but on the other I don't feel warframes themselves would need to be the focus of any such balancing update. Targeting near-mandatory mods like Vitality, Serration, etc. could smooth out the extremes, so that there isn't such a huge rift in raw statistical power between different players, which in turn would allow for a more level playing field when balancing enemies.

20 hours ago, catalyst22 said:

Yeah, the ever elusive endgame... sigh. You're right of course ramping up levels or removing revives(big yikes) is a terrible way of increasing the difficulty (for anything other than endless) going forward. Creating enemies that have unique strengths is much better, but kinda falters because of broken Warframe abilities. "Fixing" high-level Warframe by a giant rebalancing act is just not feasible imo. An easy way to create actual endgame would be to look at what every other part of Warframe and the play patterns it naturally produces + the different sub activities/communities that have been created and structure your endgame as natural extension to that. I have a whole system planned out for that, but that would kind go beyond this thread.

I can agree with much of this. Even in a perfectly balanced Warframe, I don't think there would ever be such a thing as a single endgame, because there is such a variety of gameplay to be had that there is a plethora of different challenge types to give to veteran players. I also agree that the challenge should come from giving enemies interesting gameplay of their own, rather than just loading them with stats, and that the game will only be challenging once we update the broken, uninteractive parts of current warframes. I can agree that it wouldn't be feasible to do all of this in one single update, but I feel that in itself is a flawed way of scoping the changes that need to happen, which I think would absolutely be feasible if they were broken down into a much more reasonable set of smaller milestones (e.g. reworking frames and enemies one-by-one).

[catalyst22]

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

(enemies are often ignored in high-level missions where killing enemies isn't required). It's not good for balance either, because it pushes players even more towards BiS weapons and always-on Corrosive Projection/Corrosive damage to be able to deal with armored enemies.

Enemies are usually ignored where possible though? It hasn't been a high-level thing in my experience.  And the Corrosive/Slash meta that grows out of it is the real problem imo. I really don't see the scaling itself as a massive issue i don't think DE want any mission to take more than 40min. and the imbalance between bis weapons and everything else is kind of a separate issue.

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

What would be "a traditional fashion" in this case? Because generally, the "traditional fashion" of scaling difficulty is precisely to reduce damage taken by enemies, and increase the damage they deal, which in a game with infinite difficulty scaling is precisely what causes design flaws to become even more glaring. Suddenly, weapons that are just a little bit underpowered, though still fun, aren't picked because they simply aren't viable for the "endgame", and frames balanced around an older damage cap suddenly can't function in an environment with more durable enemies, unless they too are given a way to scale even harder. It is precisely the current environment, where enemies have no set amount of stats, that make balancing the game difficult, because even though it's generally acknowledged that there's a "sweet spot" where gameplay is very enjoyable, that spot is only reached in some small instances, whereas the rest of the game is either too easy or too cheesy.

Scaling, but slower. I think the extremes hide way more than "actual" balance and i don't see way to get to a kind of game that you describe without straight taking away some of the more extreme things, that people come to Warframe for.

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Because of this, we need to limit the damage enemies can deal, we need to let players cast abilities without CCing themselves, and we need to prevent situations from happening where the player is forced to take damage due to some excessive AoE, excessively accurate hitscan weaponry, and the like.

Interesting, but if that is the case my band-aid + compensation for the lost slot should be close quality of play to the complete re-balancing while being n* times more economical? I wanna stress that i really care about the practicality in a world where DE has infinite resources i would agree with you.

5 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I feel there are workable solutions, though, and even if it doesn't have to be this monolithic single update, there's still room for it to happen over the course of multiple smaller updates, each of which could address a specific balance problem. On one hand, I feel most warframes need kit updates anyway, because there's almost invariably at least one ability that's hardly used on every frame, and at least one ability that's intrinsically uninteractive, but on the other I don't feel warframes themselves would need to be the focus of any such balancing update. Targeting near-mandatory mods like Vitality, Serration, etc. could smooth out the extremes, so that there isn't such a huge rift in raw statistical power between different players, which in turn would allow for a more level playing field when balancing enemies.

I'm worried that you'd start at one point and negative consequences would spread immediately. Maybe you have a more concrete example of something that would be a significant move in the right direction without breaking things? Targeting the stat differences between a Mr.20 and Mr.5 player sounds like it would be a lot of trouble in terms of starchart balance, player progression and progression pace. I remember a lot of people complaining about DEs tendency to just throw things out and then moving on to the next thing as early as a month or two after close beta. The recent Saryn rework has shown how they feel about non interactive abilities, so i just don't see it.

[Teridax68]

13 hours ago, catalyst22 said:

Enemies are usually ignored where possible though? It hasn't been a high-level thing in my experience. 

From my own experience, players at least try to kill enemies as they pass through them, because combat is intrinsically fun even if it's not key to mission completion. It's when the combat becomes less fun, i.e. when enemies are too difficult to kill, that players really don't try.

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And the Corrosive/Slash meta that grows out of it is the real problem imo. I really don't see the scaling itself as a massive issue i don't think DE want any mission to take more than 40min. and the imbalance between bis weapons and everything else is kind of a separate issue.

That's not quite true now that Arbitrations are a thing, and scaling is a commonly cited issue across all Warframe player discussion spaces. I can agree that the fact that weapons are imbalanced is separate from scaling, but the issue is nonetheless worsened by scaling, which makes those differences far more meaningful than they need to be.

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Scaling, but slower. I think the extremes hide way more than "actual" balance and i don't see way to get to a kind of game that you describe without straight taking away some of the more extreme things, that people come to Warframe for.

Which extremes that players come for, exactly? I don't think any Warframe player plays the game specifically to get one-shot, or to roll over current level 1 enemies. As it stands, these extremes are widely criticized, not praised as a feature, and the results can also be seen in a Star Chart that is largely seen as so unchallenging that it's only worth going through for the sake of extrinsic rewards.

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Interesting, but if that is the case my band-aid + compensation for the lost slot should be close quality of play to the complete re-balancing while being n* times more economical? I wanna stress that i really care about the practicality in a world where DE has infinite resources i would agree with you.

Again, band-aids may offer short-term relief, but at a deceptively large long-term cost, and it's precisely a policy of quick fixes that has gotten us to the current state of balance. We don't need more band-aids, we need to rip the band-aids off and enact larger work for the sake of the game's longevity. Sometimes, things just take that little bit of extra work to be done right, and as tempting as it sounds to go for the easy way out, the net result of it is a much less easy situation in the long run, which isn't what you'd want from a game you'd want to last for a long time.

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I'm worried that you'd start at one point and negative consequences would spread immediately. Maybe you have a more concrete example of something that would be a significant move in the right direction without breaking things? Targeting the stat differences between a Mr.20 and Mr.5 player sounds like it would be a lot of trouble in terms of starchart balance, player progression and progression pace. I remember a lot of people complaining about DEs tendency to just throw things out and then moving on to the next thing as early as a month or two after close beta. The recent Saryn rework has shown how they feel about non interactive abilities, so i just don't see it.

How about we start at the root of this, and examine why you'd think the game would break immediately: what specific situation did you have in mind? What prior experience or evidence do you have to justify this fear? What you are telling me is that, without me even going into a single specific suggestion, you are already in the mindset that any long-term change I'd propose would break the game, which I don't think is particularly true or fair to the discussion.

For the sake of giving out specifics, though, one good way to start could be to prevent armor from scaling at all, and see where Grineer need base health increases to compensate. Following that, another good step forward could be to nerf damage, mainly by targeting base damage mods like Serration, Hornet Strike, Pressure Point, and so on, and lower enemy levels in higher-level missions. In-between, the formula for enemy damage scaling could be altered to either scale slower, or cap out after a certain level is reached. In turn, once damage levels are okay for squishier frames, tankier frames could be targeted to be more vulnerable, and durability mods like Vitality, Redirection, etc. could themselves potentially be nerfed to be less mandatory on most frames. There are more points that could be targeted (elemental damage mods should likely convert existing damage to a type, instead of adding extra damage, for example), but as you can see, there are plenty of more modular aspects of Warframe's balance that can be targeted and fine-tuned, so that you wouldn't have to update every aspect of the game in one go.

[catalyst22]

22 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

weapons are imbalanced is separate from scaling, but the issue is nonetheless worsened by scaling, which makes those differences far more meaningful than they need to be

I guess it depends on perspective. I don't think the whole everything works argument would be as popular, if there was actual balance and challenge. If you do more than like 20min of the high end stuff the huge imbalance becomes extremely obvious, but before that it feels kinda fine, because the complete lack of difficulty. 

22 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I don't think any Warframe player plays the game specifically to get one-shot, or to roll over current level 1 enemies. As it stands, these extremes are widely criticized, not praised as a feature, and the results can also be seen in a Star Chart that is largely seen as so unchallenging that it's only worth going through for the sake of extrinsic rewards.

Yeah, i agree with that, but i nonetheless stand with my original statement. You don't want to actually play these missions, but they serve a purpose by mere existence and for progression purposes. When progressing through the star-chart they give a very strong sense of progression and after the help sustain the power fantasy. Having said that huge parts of the game being essentially meaningless is pretty bad for the game.

22 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

What you are telling me is that, without me even going into a single specific suggestion, you are already in the mindset that any long-term change I'd propose would break the game, which I don't think is particularly true or fair to the discussion.

  I just could't think of any place to start that wouldn't break things. I get that that seems like  toxic attitude, but it's not quite what i believe. Some things can be fixed (see next point) and should be. The scaling itself could use some adjustments especially as DE extends the lvl range they want us to be facing, but the stupid scaling itself is (imo) part of the very identity of Warframe. 

22 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

For the sake of giving out specifics, though, one good way to start could be to prevent armor from scaling at all, and see where Grineer need base health increases to compensate.

Yeah 100%, that should have been done years ago.

22 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

nerf damage, mainly by targeting base damage mods like Serration, Hornet Strike, Pressure Point, and so on, and lower enemy levels in higher-level missions

And this is where the ripple effects start to come in:

-flatter progression and less grind

-crit and status get buffed indirectly 

-all damage sources unaffected by these mods get buffed indirectly

-weaker power fantasy

-having to fix all powers that do/don't scale as a feature

and sure all these can be fixed, but then you once again have to deal with the effects of those fixes. 

22 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

band-aids may offer short-term relief, but at a deceptively large long-term cost,

DE seems to struggle with what they have on their plate just in terms of new content. I'd rather they give us a band-aid and fix the new problems when they have time (never) than not give us band-aid and fix the original problem when they have time (never). Again i get that is not them most positive (;)) picture i'm painting here, but just look at:

1. The reaction to this years content drought

2. The resources they've currently dedicated to touch-ups (melee 3.0)

and then entertain the thought of pulling more from new content and putting it into a bigger non new content project.

Edited November 20, 2018 by catalyst22

[Teridax68]

5 hours ago, catalyst22 said:

I guess it depends on perspective. I don't think the whole everything works argument would be as popular, if there was actual balance and challenge. If you do more than like 20min of the high end stuff the huge imbalance becomes extremely obvious, but before that it feels kinda fine, because the complete lack of difficulty. 

Sure, and one of Warframe's strengths is that, as a PvE game, it doesn't really have the strictest balance requirements. To a certain extent, even in a very challenging environment, it shouldn't matter all that much if there weren't perfect balance, so long as every frame, weapon, etc. had a fair chance at viability there. The problem is simply that the gaps right now are so wide, and the current difficulty is so dependent on cheese mechanics, that it makes balance at those extremes very brittle, because often you need broken frames and weapons just to be able to deal with broken enemies.

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Yeah, i agree with that, but i nonetheless stand with my original statement. You don't want to actually play these missions, but they serve a purpose by mere existence and for progression purposes. When progressing through the star-chart they give a very strong sense of progression and after the help sustain the power fantasy. Having said that huge parts of the game being essentially meaningless is pretty bad for the game.

Okay, I think we're in agreement on this. My point here is that it would be much better if the whole game were meaningful, as opposed to the current state of the game where only a relatively small amount of content is at this ideal balance. As long as players and enemies are allowed to become several times more statistically powerful than earlier versions of themselves, or downright broken past a certain point, this problem will continue.

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  I just could't think of any place to start that wouldn't break things. I get that that seems like  toxic attitude, but it's not quite what i believe. Some things can be fixed (see next point) and should be. The scaling itself could use some adjustments especially as DE extends the lvl range they want us to be facing, but the stupid scaling itself is (imo) part of the very identity of Warframe.

I feel the whole "it's part of the game's identity" issue to be pretty debatable on many fronts. To start, I don't think broken scaling is anywhere near Warframe's identity: Parkour, a futuristic setting, and warriors with magic powers are all what I'd call part of Warframe's identity. Beyond that, though, Parkour 1.0 at some point was "part of the game's identity" in the same vein as the current state of scaling, yet it got canned because there was just a better way to do things. A handful of people complained, but the rest happily shifted to a game state that they considered a significant improvement. This I think is a similar situation, particularly since there is a much larger number of players either criticizing the game's scaling, or otherwise asking to rework it.

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And this is where the ripple effects start to come in:

-flatter progression and less grind

Why? Where would the progression flattening come from? You'd still have eight to nine mod slots on your weapons to fill out, and I'm also not suggesting to remove those mods outright, so much as nerf them for alternatives to be viable.

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-crit and status get buffed indirectly 

Perhaps, due to the extra mod slot to use, but is that as bad as the current state of mandatory damage mods? I personally believe both crit and status should themselves be reworked farther down the line, but I also feel an interim state where players can slot one extra crit or status mod instead of Serration or the like is still better than a state in which pure damage mods are always a must-equip.

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-all damage sources unaffected by these mods get buffed indirectly

Which ones? Syndicate damage falls off relatively quickly at higher levels as well, so it's not exactly the end of the world if those kinds of weapons end up dealing comparatively more damage (and if not, it's not difficult to fix).

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-weaker power fantasy

Why? What exactly is the difference in fantasy between dealing 1 damage to 2 health enemies, compared to dealing 1 billion damage to 2 billion health enemies?

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-having to fix all powers that do/don't scale as a feature

There are two ways powers are currently made to scale: they either remove armor, in which case that scaling automatically gets nerfed when armor scaling gets affected, or they scale with weapon mods, in which case nerfing weapon damage mods will also nerf them in turn. The rest is maximum health/shields damage or finisher damage, both of which would remain at the same level regardless of enemy health or armor levels, respectively. Abilities that do not follow these models either do not scale well, or rely on some extremely niche mechanics to scale that imply some severe drawbacks elsewhere. Ember falls into this category, because she needs a very stilted Power Strength-centric build to scale to higher levels, and even then she struggles compared to most other damage frames.

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and sure all these can be fixed, but then you once again have to deal with the effects of those fixes.

Sure, and I can agree with that, but there is such a thing as a lesser evil here. Literally any design decision has consequences of some kind, so avoiding any sort of change, simply because consequences of any kind are considered bad (and so bad that it's not even worth bearing those consequences), is a recipe for failure. Some of the secondary effects you listed may indeed have some undesirable effects, but I don't think any of those is nearly as bad as the current state, where the mandatory build to any weapon is Serration + Split Chamber, or a similar equivalent for non-rifles, and only after plugging in a Catalyst does room open up for more interesting mods.

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DE seems to struggle with what they have on their plate just in terms of new content. I'd rather they give us a band-aid and fix the new problems when they have time (never) than not give us band-aid and fix the original problem when they have time (never). Again i get that is not them most positive (;)) picture i'm painting here, but just look at:

DE is struggling with what they have on their plate precisely because of all the band-aids that have accumulated over time. All new content they make has to contend with a whole bunch of systems and associated issues that were only half-addressed the last time someone paid attention to them, which I feel has slowed down the development process a fair amount. In this respect, repeating the same mistake and tacking on more band-aids is only going to slow the devs down further until the game eventually grinds to a halt. As you yourself said, new content is always in such high demand that there will always be a tempting argument to just avoid doing any in-depth work, and simply slap on one band-aid after the other, so it is precisely that kind of mentality that we should watch out for and oppose.

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1. The reaction to this years content drought

Sure, this year had a content drought, but mainly because DE focused on Fortuna, not on revamping existing content. Even with this content drought, we had an update earlier this year that rebalanced literal hundreds of weapons, and reintroduced significantly more diversity to the game, more so than some major content releases even. In this respect, I think it is absolutely a viable business decision to devote resources towards updating content, because there is plenty of room for easy wins, as the right tweaks to existing systems could provide significant relief towards players dealing with the game's high-end balance.

I also think we need to be realistic with what actually went wrong with the content drought: the reason we had a content drought in the first place was not simply because DE decided to work on Fortuna, but because they decided to work on virtually nothing but Fortuna. Such was this tunnel vision that we received very little real new content, and what new content we did receive turned out pretty half-baked (Khora and Revenant are among the most poorly-conceived frames in the game imo). Had DE devoted just that little extra manpower towards secondary pipelines, even at the cost of delaying Fortuna, the content drought could've been avoided.

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2. The resources they've currently dedicated to touch-ups (melee 3.0)

Melee 3.0 isn't a "touch-up", it's a complete overhaul of the melee system. It's a change that's calling for new gameplay systems, new visuals, new animations, plus sweeping changes to a vast number of existing weapons and mods. I don't think it should come across as surprising for such an update to take more time.

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and then entertain the thought of pulling more from new content and putting it into a bigger non new content project.

Absolutely. I think it's absolutely possible, not simply because it's a good idea, but because it's been done before, several times, and to significant success. Specters of the Rail mostly updated existing content, and remolded Warframe into a much smoother experience. Again, the weapon rebalance we received earlier this year worked wonders for diversity and quality of play. Even just the many, many visual upgrades we've received to Warframe have made a significant impact, and have been well worth the time and resources spent.

[Birdframe_Prime]

I propose this on a lot of threads about Ember, but a rework to how her power is capable of scaling, to how you get the effects she needs, basically to what Ember focuses on, is really how we should be looking at her.

Because what people are saying is right; Her ability damage has multipliers, but doesn't scale. She has CC, but it never lasts more than a stun per cast. She has no survivability and no scaling, and she has an ability that people have been abusing for years low-level, or turning into CC at higher level, is one that is such a common complain that it was so heavily nerfed in Range that the purpose it served after its damage stopped helping (the Augmented CC) stopped being effective as well.

Ember has lost that concept of what she was for, so I think some changes that use her current kit's strong points, and give her new ways to use them, is the way forward.

Like this;

Spoiler

Strong points of Ember's kit:

Damage, Stun CC, Single-type Status, Damage multipliers based on her single-type damage, Persistent placed objects for damage and status, Casting speed boost, Additive weapon damage buffs in her single-type damage to synergise with her multipliers, AoE damage over a duration in the burst-per-target format, Passive that potentially boosts Ability Strength.

These are things that other frames have and do well, with Volt being at the front there as an example of single-type damage with multipliers and additive weapon damage and a boosting Passive.

Weak points in Ember's kit: 

Survivability is low due to CC stun being short duration and having to re-cast to re-apply, no functional damage mitigation whether external or personal, personal damage type can be slow to secure kills without weapon intervention, the ability to sustain World on Fire through the Drain mechanic has caused more complaints and calls for nerfs than almost any other ability in the game (barring Volt’s Speed).

Other frames have Stun CC, like Banshee’s Silence, but get around it by being able to re-apply it. Other frames only get one CC effect per cast, like Excalibur’s Radial Blind, but it lasts longer than a simple stun or stagger meaning that the effect is worth more for the same cost.

So, let's switch things about a little.

What is Ember’s purpose? High damage output through Abilities, buffing damage, inflicting status and staying alive long enough to do it.

What if Ember’s damage could stack her multipliers? What if applying the Stun CC was part of the Damage, while the Buffing of damage was part of the debuffing the enemies? What if World on Fire was more powerful, but something you would choose to turn on when you could make the most of it?

Most importantly, what if Ember had a way to not take damage from sources based on casting her abilities?

Baby steps for that one, but let’s try this:

Passive: Fired Up. For every enemy with an ongoing Ignited status within Affinity Range, Ember gains 1% Power Strength, up to a limit of 35%

Why? Because being on fire herself requires taking damage, we don’t want that. Where has the energy regen gone? Don’t need it, her casts will be more effective for less spam and the Drain from World on Fire will no longer exist.

1. Fireball. Cast to deal direct damage on impact, impact creates a stationary napalm effect that is persistent for a Duration. The napalm ball has several new properties; within range, Napalm deals damage over time which increases the closer the enemies are to the ball; within range, Napalm has increased Status chance, which increases the closer enemies are to the ball. The Inner Radius of the Napalm ball’s effect increases and decreases with range, has 2x base damage and 50% Status chance per tick, both affected by Strength.

Ember can have a maximum of three Napalm balls active at once. Inner Radius of the Napalm ball’s effect redirects projectiles like Zephyr’s Turbulence, but effect is only 50% effective if Ember stands within the Inner Radius.

Why? Because a persistent source of damage and status is good, and placed shields are also good. They would provide immediate damage mitigation from up to three directions, but discourage people from throwing all three down in a Ven Diagram pattern and camping inside it by making the full effect conditional on not doing that.

2. Fire Blast. A cone-of-effect blast of pure fire that has a high chance to Ignite enemies and deals decent base damage. Deals bonus damage, to enemies that are already Ignited.

If an enemy is already ignited, status will be extended (not refreshed, actually extended beyond base Ignite status duration) and damage of the Ignite Status will be multiplied by Ember’s Ability Strength. This can be repeated to consistently raise the damage over time effect of Ignite Status effects.

Why? Fire Blast is currently low-range and the persistant ring of fire is now redundant with the new Fireball. The additive damage to weapons from the ring is being moved and the ability is now concentrated on that damage and status. The damage is being considerably increased at the cost of turning it from radial damage to a cone of effect. Natural synergy from Fireball creating lots of enemies on fire with its status, meaning Ember will often gain the bonus effects of this ability, dealing higher damage and creating more and more damage over time from the Status she deals. Plays right into the next ability!

3. Accelerant. Now a radial Aura with the same Stun on cast. Enemies in range of Ember are take bonus damage from Heat, with the same multiplier as previously possible, however there is no need to recast the ability for every enemy, marking each time, simply run in range and they are now more vulnerable. Allies in range of the ability gain Heat damage on all weapons (much like the ring of fire boost from before).

Why? Making it have the same casting process as current Accelerant with the same stun result means that the ability’s primary use in mission doesn’t change too much, however the efficiency of the cast goes through the roof due to that radial aura. This, coupled with the new direct-damage stun on Fire Blast and the new damage mitigation on your campfires, will mean that you only have to use the stun when you actually need it, not every time you see or think you’ll see an enemy.

4. World on Fire. (This is where I had a little fun, because the old World on Fire was, admittedly, actually kind of fun in a power-fantasy kind of way. I thought about how I could bring that back in a balanced fashion, but then decided that it needed to be potentially amazing, not amazing out of the box.)

Activate a short fuse and then explode. An un-modded charge period activates where all allies in range gain a 50% reduction in casting time (not, and I need to say this, a 50% increase in casting speed, which actually only reduces the time taken by 30% when you do the maths). Any fire damage dealt to enemies during the charging period charges up the damage of World on Fire’s damage stage. This includes abilities, weapons, allies, existing Fire Status damage, all of it.

World on fire then activates for a short duration (if we place it at a low start, then it can’t be abused by excessive Duration modding and ruin the game the way old WoF could) where a massive radius of enemies is affected by the World on Fire bursts over time. Damage is based on the charge and by Accelerant’s boost, and by matching the range to Accelerant you have the old World on Fire back for enough time to feel epic. Plus it’ll allow the Fire Quake augment to be buffed too.

Combine all of these together and you have a frame that you could easily take anywhere, would provide consistent team buffs, a small amount of damage mitigation that’s not just personal and other players can use, and her 4 would work even better in a team than it does alone.

Yes that would be a fairly extensive rework, but think of how much fun that would be to actually play.

What do you think?

Ember's new focus is kind of her old focus; bringing and boosting her own damage type, but being able to do it far more consistently, boost it on top of boosting it... I can only think that a well-modded Ember would be a damage monster, even if she still wasn't super-survivable.