Time to BALANCE Warframe! (May Trigger Players)

[ShinTechG]

I have been playing Warframe for a while now and I have read and given a lot feedback for improving this game. I spend several hours testing all mechanics of the game including Warframes, weapons, abilities, Operators & Focus, etc. What I wanted to do today with this post is share my views on some things that I believe are holding this game back, and give possible solutions to them. Please keep in mind this is just my opinion based on my experience.

 

Warframe Powers

A major problem is see with Warframe is how unbalanced this game is with the power players have. In the past, I have made many suggestions on giving enemies certain enhancements, increased level scaling and health, etc, hoping that would finally give players' loadouts a challenge.  What I have come to realize is that no matter what level enemies you put, or how "challenging" you make enemies, a major problem still remains. This problem is the broken, and unbalanced Warframe powers in the game. Let's take for example the recent Profit-Taker fight. I have done the fight solo with various Warframes. Right now, I think it is pretty safe to say Chroma is the most used Warframe on that fight. Why is that? Well, a Warframe that can achieve over 1000% damage in buffs would probably cause that.  Why should one Warframe in the game have so much damage? Why should players even bother to use other Warframes at this point? Yes, you get a longer fight and more of a challenge for those that prefer if you use other Warframes but still, what do you get for that? That's right, absolutely nothing.

This is not an attack on specifically Chroma. Several other Warframes that completely remove armor, increase damage enemies takes etc, along with the damage multipliers and scaling is just utter nonsense. Please read on to see why

 

Weapons

A lot of weapons in this game are fine but there are just a few that are have some damage numbers that seemed like they were just picked from a random number generator. For this post, I specifically want to use the Lanka and Velocitus as examples. I get that the game will have weapons that are better than others. I get that there will always be a weapon that is "most powerful" but combining the already overpowered base damage of these weapons with some Warframe abilities is just insane. Oh my, I am not even counting rivens here. 

 

The Problem this Creates

Players should not have this much power because now you are stuck with the question: How do you balance the game around this? Don't even bother saying higher level enemies or faster scaling because look at the videos out there for yourself. Whether it is level 200, 300, or 1000 enemies, they can just be blown up easily with the right combos that are really not that hard to do. 6x3 Eidolon runs in one night cycle?! Really, no one sees the problems this creates? A perfect example of problems this is creating is those invulnerability phases so many players complain about. A lot of you do not want the devs to add invulnerabity phases to enemies but what choice do the devs have left when you got players doing 1 million+ damage in one shot

I strongly believe this is why we get a lot of rewards that are worthless to a lot of players, especially veteran players. The developers themselves know how easy it is for players to cheese content so they hold back on putting really good rewards. The amount of cheesing that can be done within just 12-24 hours of content releasing should not be a thing! 

 

Conclusion & Possible Solution

Well. Hate it or love it folks but you probably knew I was going to say this. Massive adjustments should to be made to a few Warframes and weapons. By adjustments, I do mean nerfs to those broken items, and slight buffs to some others. But hold up, before you bite my head off, I am aware that some nerfs will kill the fun for a lot of players but, I am not suggesting to just nerf players favorite tools and leave things as it is. I am just trying to point out that some things in this game are just too overpowered. If some things were toned down a bit, this would be a good start to work on making the overall game experience better. I really hate to use other games as an example but, take a look at games like, Destiny 2, & Anthem. Whether or not you think they don't stand up to Warframe or how trash you think they may be, look at the power players have vs enemies. No player is stupidly overpowered and one shots bosses and the fights are 10x more engaging and rewarding. I guess part of that is due to how player levels match the content difficulty. When you one shot everything, all the enemy AI designs are just wasted because there are hardly chances for them to be shown. This RUINS the true combat experience that was intended.

What triggered me to write this post was mostly the Profit-Taker fight. In my opinion, this was the best boss fight and challenge the developers brought to the game. In fact, looking back now, a lot of enemy AI in the game is actually well designed and fun. Too bad most of it is ruined due to some overpowered Warframes and items and how unbalanced the game is overall.

 

Edited January 19, 2019 by ShinTechG
Added points to section "Problems this creates"

[CorpusCrewman]

If they nerf insta-kill player equipment, there still be a insta-kill  enemies. MANY insta-kill ENEMIES. Most frames and weapons are hardly usable because when you go higher its about kill or being killed. There is no "middle" where warframes is equal to enemy. You want to see an interesting AI, but with scaling right now its just a charged up one shot, invulnerability state, stun/stagger/knockdown, energy draining and abilities disable.

Edited January 13, 2019 by CorpusCrewman

[(PSN)TONI__RIBEIRO]

I'm triggered and didn't even read your wall of text.

 

[-Sentient-]

OHK?

3 minutes ago, CorpusCrewman said:

If they nerf OHK player equipment, there still be a OHK enemies. MANY OHK ENEMIES. Most frames and weapons are hardly usable because when you go higher its about kill or being killed. There is no "middle" where warframes is equal to enemy.

 

[CorpusCrewman]

1 minute ago, -Sentient- said:

OHK?

 

Foreign terms, dont bother. Fixed.

[IceColdHawk]

2 minutes ago, -Sentient- said:

OHK?

One-Hit Kill

[LSG501]

Sorry but I hate nerfs.... but I do agree with some things needing to be balanced, mainly on the weaker weapons/weapon types and enemy scaling. 

I prefer a system that brings everything UP to parity/balance (well or close to it) rather than nerfing things so they do less damage etc.  

 

In essence you post could also be put down as 'I want a challenge' type post that seems to be popping up a lot right now and the usual response to that (which I agree with) is to just take some mods off your weapon(s) or frames.....

 

Why do I say the above, because there is a subset of the player base that does not play this game 'as a challenge', they just come to game for some mindless killing and WANT to feel overpowered etc. 

[ShinTechG]

1 minute ago, LSG501 said:

In essence you post could also be put down as 'I want a challenge' type post that seems to be popping up a lot right now and the usual response to that (which I agree with) is to just take some mods off your weapon(s) or frames.....

Taking off mods of Warframes and weapons? Challenge yes, but this is about creating balance in order to improve other areas of the game (especially rewards). 

How exactly would taking off mods that solve that issue here?

[(PSN)TONI__RIBEIRO]

8 minutes ago, LSG501 said:

Sorry but I hate nerfs.... but I do agree with some things needing to be balanced, mainly on the weaker weapons/weapon types and enemy scaling. 

I prefer a system that brings everything UP to parity/balance (well or close to it) rather than nerfing things so they do less damage etc.  

 

In essence you post could also be put down as 'I want a challenge' type post that seems to be popping up a lot right now and the usual response to that (which I agree with) is to just take some mods off your weapon(s) or frames.....

 

Why do I say the above, because there is a subset of the player base that does not play this game 'as a challenge', they just come to game for some mindless killing and WANT to feel overpowered etc. 

All i want to do is blow up  stuff.

And look fashionable will doing it 

Edited January 13, 2019 by (PS4)TONI__RIBEIRO

[ExcaliburUmbra]

If you want to “experience the AI” and enjoy the Profit Taker fight, why not just run it solo? People group up to achieve things faster; no one wants a 50 minute Profit Taker fight especially not with the current rewards.

Besides Profit Taker is the entry level Orb Mother encounter. I imagine the other Orb fights will be harder similarly to how Eidolons work now.

[Loza03]

Has it occurred to you that, whilst we are indeed very powerful, the enemies we fight are also generally speaking abysmally weak? Very few if any have abilities that mean a damn which means they only ever actually get 'difficult' once the scaling arbitrarily decides that 1 mistake = death. Several of those are limited by tileset - a few more are executed poorly due to some mechanic or another (Nullifiers with Spawning mechanics and OV enemies with enemy ability mechanics) and a couple are just designed awfully to encourage the cheese-based gameplay (Bombard and their universal effectiveness at both attack and defence at most ranges). Exacerbating this, most objectives were designed back when we were far, far weaker than we are now, and are thus inadequate to provide challenge. Notably, defence missions are designed with the idea that four players are required to actually maintain a defence, whereas only one is, and Interception missions have enemy aggro mechanics that also assume that players can only adequately defend one location at a time.

Furthermore, you have to keep in mind what Overpowered actually means in a PvE setting - just because something's powerful doesn't make it OP. Compare Tigris Prime, Strun Wraith and Arca Plasmor for regular missions. Tigris Prime is undoubtably more damaging but forces a push-and-pull combat loop due to it's 1-magazine setup, and combined with its tight spread means that even with punch-through it's only really effective on one or two enemies at a time, at least in most situations. Strun Wraith is similar in terms of raw power, but instead 'stores' that downtime, enabling more time in combat at the expense for more out of combat.  Arca Plasmor spreads that damage to more enemies and has much less downtime than either. In terms of effectiveness in standard gameplay, Arca Plasmor is OP because it's a very good option in many situations, wheras Tigris Prime and Strun is among the best in only a few. The same applies to Warframes - more enemies need to be implemented that engineer situations that make our OP state useful.

Balance is a see-saw. You don't just have to change one side. Buffing and improving the enemies and objectives - aka what we're pitted against - would be a far more effective (and far less controversial) way to balance the game in the short term and hopefully acclimatise players to prepare for longer-term balance addressing Warframes.

[(PSN)chubbslawson]

I don’t think that they should ever nerf anything. Make the enemies stronger, and smarter 

[RedDirtTrooper]

Warframe is not Destiny. Warframe is basically Third Person Shooter Diablo in Space. It has more in common with Dynasty Warriors than Destiny and Anthem. A player vs horde game has different balance concerns. I don't disagree with the fact that it can cause balance issues in some fights, especially regarding bosses, but you have to face that balancing concern from the proper perspective.

[MasterBurik]

42 minutes ago, (PS4)TONI__RIBEIRO said:

All i want to do is blow up  stuff.

And look fashionable will doing it 

Why would Warframe want to be like the worst version of CSI?

^{(Criminal Minds better than all CSI)}

Edited January 13, 2019 by MasterBurik

[Gabbynaru]

[DerGreif2]

17 minutes ago, (PS4)chubbslawson said:

I don’t think that they should ever nerf anything. Make the enemies stronger, and smarter 

But he is right... it dose not matter if the enemy's are level 100 or 3000 for some frames. And for other some level 50er are a problem (like Ember). And its also pretty hard to improve an AI. We need to kill some power to make the game challenging again.

 

14 minutes ago, RedDirtTrooper said:

Warframe is not Destiny. Warframe is basically Third Person Shooter Diablo in Space.

It SHOULD be like Diablo. In Diablo you have something like 15 difficulties or more WITH SCALING REWARDS you can choose from. In Warframe you have to wait 60 min to get some challenge in in survival and the rewards are still the same... like I said it SHOULD be more like Diablo.

[ShinTechG]

2 minutes ago, Gabbynaru said:

 

Nice feedback. Now let's hear your better solution to the problem

Edited January 13, 2019 by ShinTechG

[Proffebolter]

Much in the points that you have given are right.

hace 1 hora, ShinTechG dijo:

I have been playing Warframe for a while now and I have read and given a lot feedback for improving this game. I spend several hours testing all mechanics of the game including Warframes, weapons, abilities, Operators & Focus, etc. What I wanted to do today with this post is share my views on some things that I believe are holding this game back, and give possible solutions to them. Please keep in mind this is just my opinion based on my experience.

 

Warframe Powers

A major problem is see with Warframe is how unbalanced this game is with the power players have. In the past, I have made many suggestions on giving enemies certain enhancements, increased level scaling and health, etc, hoping that would finally give players' loadouts a challenge.  What I have come to realize is that no matter what level enemies you put, or how "challenging" you make enemies, a major problem still remains. This problem is the broken, and unbalanced Warframe powers in the game. Let's take for example the recent Profit-Taker fight. I have done the fight solo with various Warframes. Right now, I think it is pretty safe to say Chroma is the most used Warframe on that fight. Why is that? Well, a Warframe that can achieve over 1000% damage in buffs would probably cause that.  Why should one Warframe in the game have so much damage? Why should players even bother to use other Warframes at this point? Yes, you get a longer fight and more of a challenge for those that prefer if you use other Warframes but still, what do you get for that? That's right, absolutely nothing.

This is not an attack on specifically Chroma. Several other Warframes that completely remove armor, increase damage enemies takes etc, along with the damage multipliers and scaling is just utter nonsense. Please read on to see why

 

Weapons

A lot of weapons in this game are fine but there are just a few that are have some damage numbers that seemed like they were just picked from a random number generator. For this post, I specifically want to use the Lanka and Velocitus as examples. I get that the game will have weapons that are better than others. I get that there will always be a weapon that is "most powerful" but combining the already overpowered base damage of these weapons with some Warframe abilities is just insane. Oh my, I am not even counting rivens here. 

 

The Problem this Creates

Players should not have this much power because now you are stuck with the question: How do you balance the game around this? Don't even bother saying higher level enemies or faster scaling because look at the videos out there for yourself. Whether it is level 200, 300, or 1000 enemies, they can just be blown up easily with the right combos that are really not that hard to do. 6x3 Eidolon runs in one night cycle?! Really, no one sees the problems this creates? A perfect example of problems this is creating is those invulnerability phases so many players complain about. A lot of you do not want the devs to add invulnerabity phases to enemies but what choice do the devs have left when you got players doing 1 million+ damage in one shot

I strongly believe this is why we get a lot of rewards that are worthless to a lot of players, especially veteran players. The developers themselves know how easy it is for players to cheese content so they hold back on putting really good rewards. The amount of cheesing that can be done within just 12-24 hours of content releasing should not be a thing! 

  

Conclusion & Possible Solution

Well. Hate it or love it folks but you probably knew I was going to say this. Massive adjustments should to be made to a few Warframes and weapons. By adjustments, I do mean nerfs to those broken items, and slight buffs to some others. But hold up, before you bite my head off, I am aware that some nerfs will kill the fun for a lot of players but, I am not suggesting to just nerf players favorite tools and leave things as it is. I am just trying to point our that some things in this game are just too overpowered. If some things were toned down a bit, this would be a good start to work on making the overall game experience better. I really hate to use other games as an example but, take a look at games like, Destiny 2, & Anthem. Whether or not you think they don't stand up to Warframe or how trash you think they may be, look at the power players have vs enemies. No player is stupidly overpowered and one shots bosses and the fights are 10x more engaging and rewarding. I guess part of that is due to how player levels match the content difficulty. When you one shot everything, all the enemy AI designs are just wasted because there are hardly chances for them to be shown. This RUINS the true combat experience that was intended.

What triggered me to write this post was mostly the Profit-Taker fight. In my opinion, this was the best boss fight and challenge the developers brought to the game. In fact, looking back now, a lot of enemy AI in the game is actually well designed and fun. Too bad most of it is ruined due to some overpowered Warframes and items how unbalanced the game is overall.

 

 

I agree.

 

From my point of view, no one deserves a nerf is but needs a recalibration of skills of all warframes from my point of view. Let's look at the Chroma case, very used. The most used skills are 2 and 3. The 1 and 4 are not used at all. What is needed is that the 2 and 3 nerf the skills but at the same time buff the skills 1 and 4, or even rework ability 4. As an example.

The change in the weapons of Oneshot that now takes the "META-GAME" very boring by the way, which are the fault of 2 factors.

-1º For the Rivens, I think it has been a tremendous mistake, it is true that the vast majority of weapons have stopped being dead to be used a lot, which has given more life. But that implies that the more OP weapons, are going to be more even more powerful.

The solution from my point of view was to create a progressive improvement system. The idea is: if you like a weapon use it, with it you can improve it with time, making it more powerful. But as always if you want to improve it you will have to invent resources and money. And there, that idea could work. If a weapon is used a lot, you can do several things. Nerf the statistics of the weapon, which can not be improved so that other weapons can compete, or reduce the rate of improvement.

 

-2nd "Meta-Critical" This is because if you combine the Multi-Shoot with the CC + CD, it becomes a powerful combination, making the rest of the stats unusable in most cases.

Solution: 1º Create mini bosses, quite durable. For example: A bomber that has a rough increase in armor, life, damage. and other stats

2nd Place mobs that are resistant to critical probability and reduce critical damage, but susceptible to state effects.

 

-3rd Warframes that can not compete at high levels. And respect to their roles in the game.

The main problem is the issue of survival, look at the Warframes cases magicians (Mag, Nyx, Ember, among other Warframes that have a very low basic armor). Except for those Warframes that have invisibilities since that gives them a incredibly high defense, not being detected by the enemies. Being these warframes that use shields at high levels, the shields will not do you any good, because of 1 shot, it totally breaks the shields and in most cases they make you oneshot. See the cases of enemies of levels 150 up.

But we also have to talk about Warframes regarding their role. We all know that there are 3 roles in the game. Damage / Tank / Support, here is the problem. The game itself, people try to take the role of Damage and Tank at a time, since that allows the user to make the games very easy. See the case of Rhino / Chroma 2 warframes, which besides giving damage also tank and support. And I think here, you have to do 2 things. If you go to damage you can not tank and if you go tank it can not do much damage, but you can fulfill the role of Tank or damage along with the support. But many Warframes can not even meet the 2 or 3 roles.

 

Solution: Create a talent system independently of each warframe. The problem would take a lot of time to create.
And also solve the theme of shields / armor. The armor is having too much impact on the game, while the shields do not have much impact on the game

What is tried is either to fulfill each 1 with its role, or basically everyone has the same opportunities with their Warframes.

 

My sincere opinion

 

 

Edited January 13, 2019 by Proffebolter
more information

[Gabbynaru]

1 minute ago, ShinTechG said:

 

Nice feedback. Now let's hear your better solution to the problem

What problem? I'm here to be an unstoppable god of unlimited destruction. The game allows me to be said unstoppable god of unlimited destruction. I see no problem in this equation.

[peterc3]

1 hour ago, ShinTechG said:

I really hate to use other games as an example but, take a look at games like, Destiny 2, & Anthem.

A game that is popularly panned as bad and a game yet to actually be released.

Certainly triggered me.

[ShinTechG]

3 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

A game that is popularly panned as bad and a game yet to actually be released.

Certainly triggered me.

Whether you feel Destiny is bad, rewards and engagement still better because of power balance. As far as unreleased Anthem, if you have been following the development process and demos like I have, you will see how the reward system makes it worth it. You don't have to have the final release to tell. Several games have that progression system and it works!

None of your points change the fact of what i said.

 

[RedDirtTrooper]

5 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

A game that is popularly panned as bad and a game yet to actually be released.

Certainly triggered me.

Destiny 2 is in a really good place at the moment. Took them a while to get there, but then so did Destiny 1. Folks who are still badmouthing it at this point are either going off their initial experience and haven't bothered to go back or are so nostalgic for Destiny 1 that they can't see that Destiny 2 has now surpassed it. Anthem is, as you said, an open question.

[peterc3]

3 minutes ago, ShinTechG said:

you will see how the reward system makes it worth it.

What about 10 hours into it? 100? 1000?

[Gabbynaru]

 

On 2019-01-13 at 7:52 PM, RedDirtTrooper said:

Destiny 2 is in a really good place at the moment. Took them a while to get there, but then so did Destiny 1. Folks who are still badmouthing it at this point are either going off their initial experience and haven't bothered to go back or are so nostalgic for Destiny 1 that they can't see that Destiny 2 has now surpassed it. Anthem is, as you said, an open question.

What's the point of going back to a game that made a poor first impression? With so many great games out there just waiting to be played, the fact that Destiny 2 failed to make a good impression is no ones fault but their own. And if I'm not mistaken, getting it to "be good now" still costs about the same as a brand new game, and you know what, I'd rather get a brand new game (or more) if that's the cost of getting a shi*ty game in a decent state.

[ShinTechG]

5 minutes ago, peterc3 said:

What about 10 hours into it? 100? 1000?

Do a bit of research it for yourself. Not trying to get deep into another game's discussion on here. A lot of YouTube videos and answers from the developers are up on long-term replayability. 

Edited January 13, 2019 by ShinTechG