The Scaling Renaissance

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

But there is no reason to implement your change at this stage yet. Your proposal makes it harder for enemies to scale when they're already weak against us, and is redundant in the face of simple level range adjustments that could be made even now. Meanwhile, the changes I am proposing, while drastic, are by no means an overhaul of the game's fundamental design, yet would cleanly address many current problems with our scaling. Removing Serration or Split Chamber from the game may affect the meta, but would not in fact change the game's core design, as the entire game is not designed around multishot. Similarly, changing elemental damage mods from addition to conversion would similarly not require an overhaul of the whole game. Reworking crit and status may take more time for sure, but that is precisely why I proposed addressing those later, and first going for quick wins on other damage mods. If my change makes players weaker (and it will for sure), the simple solution is to reduce enemy level ranges. Once more, enemies scale exponentially for a reason right now, and even with their ridiculous stats, they are complete pushovers. We need to address the problem at the source, or we will not be able to address the problem at all. Done wrong, the situation may even worsen, which is why ordering here is crucial, even if that means implementing tougher changes first.

I guess I should let something slip now. The motive behind creating this thread was not to simply change enemy values, but to address multiple issues that I personally kept experiencing during normal gameplay. These are a handful of things that inspired me:

• Corrosive/Slash build guides: No matter what weapon I looked up, people always recommended the same build. Weapons that didn't have Slash were looked down upon, simply because of its lack of procs. When Hunter's Munitions came out, every crit weapon build had it on there. The monochromatic builds are annoying to say the least.
• Self-damage: Weapons such as the Tonkor and Ogris are capable of dealing self-damage. This self damage is basically always lethal due to these weapons dealing tens of thousands of damage, while Warframe's health dwell in the mere hundreds. Even with the mod Cautious Shot, the self-damage is easily enough to kill.
• Confusion: If a large group of enemies become confused and engage in friendly fire, it does little in the way of DPS as the do so little against damage each other. However if a player becomes confused, they have to pray their teammates don't use an AoE attack which will nearly always down them.
• 90%+ damage reduction: It ends up being very little in the later levels. Mesa's Shatter shield for example, even when maxed, only extends her survivability by a couple hits at higher levels. Even Adaptation only remain viable on Warframes with already extreme armor and/or healing capabilities.
• Grineer vs Corpus: Grineer are almost always regarded as the tougher enemy to kill, simply because of how armor scales compared to shields. This relates back to the Corrosive/Slash argument. Even with exponential scaling, the Corpus remain irredeemably squishy.
• Corpus vs Fortuna Corpus: A cruel exception to the previous point. By spiking the Fortuna Corpus' base stats, these enemies now scale at an ungodly rate. To have tougher enemies is one thing, but to openly use the flawed scaling system to create absolute monsters in an early accessable open-world area is uncalled for.

What I'm trying to say is that purely altering enemy stats and/or altering weapon stats was never my goal. My goal is to put everything on the same scale. While making the argument for "realism" is typically looked down upon, there still needs to be a coherent link between Warframe stats and enemy stats. To make them abide by different logics is what causes the above issues. How endgame and weapon balancing are handled is not my primary concern. What concerns me is that everything uses a similar scaling logic.

[Teridax68]

1 minute ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

I guess I should let something slip now. The motive behind creating this thread was not to simply change enemy values, but to address multiple issues that I personally kept experiencing during normal gameplay. These are a handful of things that inspired me:

Indeed, all of those features are what also made me realize how broken scaling is in Warframe.

1 minute ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

What I'm trying to say is that purely altering enemy stats and/or altering weapon stats was never my goal. My goal is to put everything on the same scale. While making the argument for "realism" is typically looked down upon, there still needs to be a coherent link between Warframe stats and enemy stats. To make them abide by different logics is what causes the above issues. How endgame and weapon balancing are handled is not my primary concern. What concerns me is that everything uses a similar scaling logic.

I can agree with this reasoning, but once again, the reason why enemy health is disproportionately large relative to our own is because our own damage is disproportionately large relative to the enemy's. We therefore need our own damage to go down if we want enemy health to go down, especially because whereas enemy levels can be dialled up or down on demand, our own damage is tied to mods, and so cannot be adjusted as easily. I am fully with you on equalizing stats across the board, which is one of the reasons why I want to put an end to power scaling altogether, but in order to do this we need to attack the rigid systems, i.e. our own power, before overhauling system that can do just fine with tweaks in the short term, i.e. enemy levels and stats.

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

3 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Indeed, all of those features are what also made me realize how broken scaling is in Warframe.

I can agree with this reasoning, but once again, the reason why enemy health is disproportionately large relative to our own is because our own damage is disproportionately large relative to the enemy's. We therefore need our own damage to go down if we want enemy health to go down, especially because whereas enemy levels can be dialled up or down on demand, our own damage is tied to mods, and so cannot be adjusted as easily. I am fully with you on equalizing stats across the board, which is one of the reasons why I want to put an end to power scaling altogether, but in order to do this we need to attack the rigid systems, i.e. our own power, before overhauling system that can do just fine with tweaks in the short term, i.e. enemy levels and stats.

And again this is why we should simply nerf damage mods for a short time. This actually rounds back to my "experiment" regarding Serration. By fighting enemies between levels 1 and 20, I found that Serration is largely unneeded so long as there is proper elemental typing. Even when adding crit and/or status procs, the damage was still comparable to a Warframe's health. However simply by adding an unmodded Serration, my TTK shrunk dramatically. Warframe's damage system is funky in that raw damage mods essentially turbocharge any other damage percentages. Because of this, I believe simply nerfing raw damage mods would dramatically reduce our weapon's capacity to scale exponentially. To this end, higher level enemies would indeed similarly remain tough, but their overall health values would be more comparable to our own.

[Teridax68]

9 minutes ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

And again this is why we should simply nerf damage mods for a short time. This actually rounds back to my "experiment" regarding Serration. By fighting enemies between levels 1 and 20, I found that Serration is largely unneeded so long as there is proper elemental typing. Even when adding crit and/or status procs, the damage was still comparable to a Warframe's health. However simply by adding an unmodded Serration, my TTK shrunk dramatically. Warframe's damage system is funky in that raw damage mods essentially turbocharge any other damage percentages. Because of this, I believe simply nerfing raw damage mods would dramatically reduce our weapon's capacity to scale exponentially. To this end, higher level enemies would indeed similarly remain tough, but their overall health values would be more comparable to our own.

Indeed, which is precisely why I proposed the removal of base damage mods altogether: in their current state, so long as they exist in the current state of the game, they will be mandatory, and as you said, they are a direct contributor to the discrepancies between enemy health and our own. Nerfing the mod to undesirability could be an alternative, but outright removal would prevent it from creating a trap choice for new players.

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

1 minute ago, Teridax68 said:

Indeed, which is precisely why I proposed the removal of base damage mods altogether: in their current state, so long as they exist in the current state of the game, they will be mandatory, and as you said, they are a direct contributor to the discrepancies between enemy health and our own. Nerfing the mod to undesirability could be an alternative, but outright removal would prevent it from creating a trap choice for new players.

Well as the math works now, it needs to still exist in some form. Perhaps capping it at +50% would be ideal. Its also unwise to outright remove the mods as they took a large amount of resources to max in the first place, thus drawing the ire of nearly every player.

There is also the question of multishot. It compounds with base damage to create also create exceptional bonuses. Not surprising as it basically gives free bullets. Again we can't remove it because of player ire, and the fundamental mechanics of shotguns. It could be reverted back to its "intended" role of giving more DPS at the cost of more ammo. It could also be redesigned to divide the shot's damage, but with the added benefit of giving more status/crit chances. Its really a tricky thing to fix as it makes no sense to begin with.

[Teridax68]

16 minutes ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

Well as the math works now, it needs to still exist in some form.

Why?

16 minutes ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

Perhaps capping it at +50% would be ideal. Its also unwise to outright remove the mods as they took a large amount of resources to max in the first place, thus drawing the ire of nearly every player.

In that case, why not just refund the Endo and Credits used to max it out?

16 minutes ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

There is also the question of multishot. It compounds with base damage to create also create exceptional bonuses. Not surprising as it basically gives free bullets. Again we can't remove it because of player ire, and the fundamental mechanics of shotguns. It could be reverted back to its "intended" role of giving more DPS at the cost of more ammo. It could also be redesigned to divide the shot's damage, but with the added benefit of giving more status/crit chances. Its really a tricky thing to fix as it makes no sense to begin with.

I proposed to remove multishot outright, and if there's a compensation issue, then players should have the Endo and Credits put into multishot mods refunded. It would be more complicated than base damage, as guns would have to have their status chance adjusted, which is why I think it should take second priority after the removal of base damage mods, but it's still feasible. Also, when was multishot ever intended to make weapons deal more damage at the expense of ammo?

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

5 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Why?

In that case, why not just refund the Endo and Credits used to max it out?

I proposed to remove multishot outright, and if there's a compensation issue, then players should have the Endo and Credits put into multishot mods refunded. It would be more complicated than base damage, as guns would have to have their status chance adjusted, which is why I think it should take second priority after the removal of base damage mods, but it's still feasible. Also, when was multishot ever intended to make weapons deal more damage at the expense of ammo?

Well +damage needs to exist in some form because pure elemental mods and crit mods don't cut it in the long haul. Even with linear scaling, most weapons simply do not have the base damage required to reach effective numbers. At the rate of scaling I proposed, a potential level 30 lancer would have roughly the same effective health as a current level 12 lancer. Going further a level 50 lancer would have the same EH as a current level 16, and a level 100 would be as tough as an ~level 23. To remove damage mods would make these levels exceptionally difficult.

-Is what I was going to say until I double checked my math in the Simulacrum. Turns out even at these levels enemies are a cakewalk without Serration. Really there would be no need for it. Heck I'd even argue that the base elemental and crit mods could use a small nerf as well. Hmm... This requires further study.

[Teridax68]

18 minutes ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

Well +damage needs to exist in some form because pure elemental mods and crit mods don't cut it in the long haul. Even with linear scaling, most weapons simply do not have the base damage required to reach effective numbers. At the rate of scaling I proposed, a potential level 30 lancer would have roughly the same effective health as a current level 12 lancer. Going further a level 50 lancer would have the same EH as a current level 16, and a level 100 would be as tough as an ~level 23. To remove damage mods would make these levels exceptionally difficult.

-Is what I was going to say until I double checked my math in the Simulacrum. Turns out even at these levels enemies are a cakewalk without Serration. Really there would be no need for it. Heck I'd even argue that the base elemental and crit mods could use a small nerf as well. Hmm... This requires further study.

Even if they weren't, why would we need enemies at those levels? In a world without Serration, why not simply squish enemy level ranges? If level 50 enemies suddenly become as difficult as level 100 enemies before, why not adjust level ranges on high-level missions accordingly?

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

2 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Even if they weren't, why would we need enemies at those levels? In a world without Serration, why not simply squish enemy level ranges? If level 50 enemies suddenly become as difficult as level 100 enemies before, why not adjust level ranges on high-level missions accordingly?

Well for one: difficulty scaling. Compression leads to hyper-acceleration. But that's a different discussion altogether.

I actually just concluded my testing, and think I found a happy medium. I propose simply tripling my initial scaling rate. Basically a level 30 lancer would have the same EH as a current level 22(1200 EH), level 50 compares to level 27(2000 EH), and level 100 compares to level 36 (4000 EH). This way +damage mods can be removed, but other mods would not need a hefty nerf. Test it for yourself and see if that is comfortable.

[Tzolkat]

I'm not going to pretend to have fully read all 4 pages of debate on this, so it may have been addressed already.

The most problematic enemy units in terms of scaling are armored. Currently, as far as I know, armor scales on an exponential curve, requiring weapons and powers to scale on a similar curve to be effective. At present most weapons will eventually fall off in damage and become ineffective, requiring us to directly counter the armor itself through repeated corrosive procs, auras, or some other means.

But what if instead, armor scaling was logarithmic? Designed correctly, it would give you close to linear or a little faster scaling up to a point, then begin to suffer diminishing returns. I think this would better simulate the way armor works, since there is only so much an entity could don before it would become impractically heavy, large, or both, necessitating heavier classes of enemies if you wanted something tougher.

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

1 minute ago, Tzolkat said:

I'm not going to pretend to have fully read all 4 pages of debate on this, so it may have been addressed already.

The most problematic enemy units in terms of scaling are armored. Currently, as far as I know, armor scales on an exponential curve, requiring weapons and powers to scale on a similar curve to be effective. At present most weapons will eventually fall off in damage and become ineffective, requiring us to directly counter the armor itself through repeated corrosive procs, auras, or some other means.

But what if instead, armor scaling was logarithmic? Designed correctly, it would give you close to linear or a little faster scaling up to a point, then begin to suffer diminishing returns. I think this would better simulate the way armor works, since there is only so much an entity could don before it would become impractically heavy, large, or both, necessitating heavier classes of enemies if you wanted something tougher.

Well we've kinda already settled that bit. We've agreed armor should remain largely static relative to the specific unit. That way, be it level 1 or level 100, the enemy will always have the same damage reduction.

That said, we've now got a couple more issues. Mainly we've pinned down that +damage mods, like Serration, are a leading culprit in our weapon's extreme scaling. So now we're fiddling with seeing how well builds can be without it. Overall I'm mostly satisfied with simply removing +damage mods, leaving the other mods alone, and tripling my initial linear scale rate.

You could actually help with this. Mod your favorite weapons without +damage mods and fight enemies at these levels: 22, 27, and 36. From my math, these enemies would have effective health similar to levels 30,50, and 100 on my proposed linear scale. Then give feedback if this challenge was too hard or too easy.

[Tzolkat]

47 minutes ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

Well we've kinda already settled that bit. We've agreed armor should remain largely static relative to the specific unit. That way, be it level 1 or level 100, the enemy will always have the same damage reduction.

That said, we've now got a couple more issues. Mainly we've pinned down that +damage mods, like Serration, are a leading culprit in our weapon's extreme scaling. So now we're fiddling with seeing how well builds can be without it. Overall I'm mostly satisfied with simply removing +damage mods, leaving the other mods alone, and tripling my initial linear scale rate.

You could actually help with this. Mod your favorite weapons without +damage mods and fight enemies at these levels: 22, 27, and 36. From my math, these enemies would have effective health similar to levels 30,50, and 100 on my proposed linear scale. Then give feedback if this challenge was too hard or too easy.

So you deny me a seat at the table in this discussion and then expect me to run errands for you? I'm not your secretary, go test it yourself.

[Teridax68]

2 hours ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

Well for one: difficulty scaling. Compression leads to hyper-acceleration. But that's a different discussion altogether.

Why does it lead to hyper-acceleration? If enemies scale too fast, why not simply make them gain levels slower? These are very simple changes, so I don't see why shortening enemy level ranges would be unfeasible when they have already been extended in the past.

Quote

I actually just concluded my testing, and think I found a happy medium. I propose simply tripling my initial scaling rate. Basically a level 30 lancer would have the same EH as a current level 22(1200 EH), level 50 compares to level 27(2000 EH), and level 100 compares to level 36 (4000 EH). This way +damage mods can be removed, but other mods would not need a hefty nerf. Test it for yourself and see if that is comfortable.

But why? Again, why can we not just halve the rate at which enemies gain levels, or apply some similar modifier, in view of removing base damage mods?

1 hour ago, Tzolkat said:

But what if instead, armor scaling was logarithmic? Designed correctly, it would give you close to linear or a little faster scaling up to a point, then begin to suffer diminishing returns. I think this would better simulate the way armor works, since there is only so much an entity could don before it would become impractically heavy, large, or both, necessitating heavier classes of enemies if you wanted something tougher.

I personally think it is good to reduce armor scaling, though if the scaling is logarithmic, that raises the question as to why it should even scale at all: armor acts as a multiplier to health, and as you said, different armor classes generally suggest different weight and size types, so it may be better to keep armor static, and instead give more armor to visibly tougher enemies. Grineer would then scale at the same rate as other units, and avoid becoming too spongy.

Edited February 13, 2019 by Teridax68

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

2 hours ago, Tzolkat said:

So you deny me a seat at the table in this discussion and then expect me to run errands for you? I'm not your secretary, go test it yourself.

Well geez. I just wanted some more feedback.

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Why does it lead to hyper-acceleration? If enemies scale too fast, why not simply make them gain levels slower? These are very simple changes, so I don't see why shortening enemy level ranges would be unfeasible when they have already been extended in the past.

But why? Again, why can we not just halve the rate at which enemies gain levels, or apply some similar modifier, in view of removing base damage mods?

That's a good counterpoint, but in the end that's just creating more work on DE's part. Ideally we want a compromise where there is minimal change on the surface and DE themselves could readily whip it up in about a month should they choose to accept it. Basically it is feasible, but to outright change the star map's levels may cause some headaches. It could also be argued that it has already been done once when Damage 2.0 rolled out. The current level 50 enemies had a similar difficulty to the old level 100 ones. Apparently reviews were mixed over that change.

As for the modifier idea: That's basically what I've been trying to fine tune via the rise of the linear scale. I want to find a good middle ground where multiple mods don't need to be nerfed into the ground (or outright removed), while still keeping the enemy's total health values within range of a Warframe's own. I'm alright with them going higher than our own numbers, so long as its not an excessive multiple.

[Teridax68]

27 minutes ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

That's a good counterpoint, but in the end that's just creating more work on DE's part. Ideally we want a compromise where there is minimal change on the surface and DE themselves could readily whip it up in about a month should they choose to accept it. Basically it is feasible, but to outright change the star map's levels may cause some headaches. It could also be argued that it has already been done once when Damage 2.0 rolled out. The current level 50 enemies had a similar difficulty to the old level 100 ones. Apparently reviews were mixed over that change.

But redoing enemy scaling entirely would be just as much work, if not more, so out of the two options, what I'm proposing would be more economical for the purposes of the change. At the end of the day, DE is going to have some amount of work on their plate if they ever try to solve Warframe's scaling problem, so there's no sense in trying to boil the whole thing down to a single set of whichever minimal set of changes, as those are likely to be minimally effective.

27 minutes ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

As for the modifier idea: That's basically what I've been trying to fine tune via the rise of the linear scale. I want to find a good middle ground where multiple mods don't need to be nerfed into the ground (or outright removed), while still keeping the enemy's total health values within range of a Warframe's own. I'm alright with them going higher than our own numbers, so long as its not an excessive multiple.

Okay, but simply slowing down the rate at which enemies gain levels (which, again, approaches what's been done before, and has been widely accepted despite whichever insignificant amount of inevitable complaints) is a simpler solution here that achieves the same results in the short-term. Once again, when a major part of the problem with Warframe is precisely the fact that we have mods to increase our damage in layers, it is not reasonable to expect to fix the game's problems with scaling and also not lose those damage increases. You cannot have your cake and eat it too, and trying to compromise here with some middle solution is unlikely to actually address the issues at hand.

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

3 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

But redoing enemy scaling entirely would be just as much work, if not more, so out of the two options, what I'm proposing would be more economical for the purposes of the change. At the end of the day, DE is going to have some amount of work on their plate if they ever try to solve Warframe's scaling problem, so there's no sense in trying to boil the whole thing down to a single set of whichever minimal set of changes, as those are likely to be minimally effective.

Okay, but simply slowing down the rate at which enemies gain levels (which, again, approaches what's been done before, and has been widely accepted despite whichever insignificant amount of inevitable complaints) is a simpler solution here that achieves the same results in the short-term. Once again, when a major part of the problem with Warframe is precisely the fact that we have mods to increase our damage in layers, it is not reasonable to expect to fix the game's problems with scaling and also not lose those damage increases. You cannot have your cake and eat it too, and trying to compromise here with some middle solution is unlikely to actually address the issues at hand.

I think the only really decent argument against that is it would "de-sync" Warframe's level progression. As Warframes and their weapon cap at level 30, we typically view that as the end of the "basic game" where you don't really need higher end mods, forma, and potatoes to get the job done. Everything after that is what demands genuine grind (this actually reflects in the current scale, as the exponents jump just past level 30). There isn't too much wrong with it in practice, but it would throw off the "feel" of the current progression design.

As for not wanting to modify the mods, its really just for the sake of being less invasive overall. Outright removing +damage mods already downgrades weapons by a massive margin. To nerf a bunch of other stuff as well without proper testing may bring about unforeseen issues.

Really though so long as no random enemy reaches over 10,000EH at level 100, it would still be a largely viable model. Enemies could still be susceptible to friendly fire without having insane general damage output.

Sidenote: It's a bit tricky to get precise measurements in the game. With a linear scale, Lancers would have an EH of ~106 at level 8, which is when Heavy Gunners start spawning. Level 8 Heavy Gunners have an EH of 800, meaning their level 30 EH on my scale would be 3000. Unfortunately, the current Heavy Gunners reach ~3000EH at level 20, two levels earlier than the control for the Lancers.

[Teridax68]

4 hours ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

I think the only really decent argument against that is it would "de-sync" Warframe's level progression. As Warframes and their weapon cap at level 30, we typically view that as the end of the "basic game" where you don't really need higher end mods, forma, and potatoes to get the job done. Everything after that is what demands genuine grind (this actually reflects in the current scale, as the exponents jump just past level 30). There isn't too much wrong with it in practice, but it would throw off the "feel" of the current progression design.

I don't really see how my proposal to remove mods like Serration, Hornet Strike, etc. would change that: you'd still be leveling frames to 30, applying Potatoes, Forma, mods, and so on, so that progression model wouldn't change at all, at least with respect to that specific change.

4 hours ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

As for not wanting to modify the mods, its really just for the sake of being less invasive overall. Outright removing +damage mods already downgrades weapons by a massive margin. To nerf a bunch of other stuff as well without proper testing may bring about unforeseen issues.

Sure, some testing might be in order, as should be the case for literally any change to the game, but the advantage to removing these +damage mods is that their effect is very predictable: if you're going to be removing Serration, a mandatory mod for every non-Shotgun primary weapon, you're going to be dividing the damage of almost all of those weapons by 1.65. Apply this to some given average number of elemental damage mods, multishot mods, etc., and you'd be able to predict exactly by how much you're dividing your damage, as these mods tend to be extremely consistent in their usage. As mentioned above, the exact damage numbers for these weapons is not meaningful, so long as they're matched according to their targets: it does not matter whether you're dealing 1 damage to a 10 health enemy, or 1 million damage to a 10 million health enemy, the end result is you're killing them in the same number of hits. 

4 hours ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

Really though so long as no random enemy reaches over 10,000EH at level 100, it would still be a largely viable model. Enemies could still be susceptible to friendly fire without having insane general damage output.

Sure, but what I am proposing is the only real way this makes sense. If you lower the health of enemies to some arbitrary number, but keep damage the same, the end result will simply be that enemies will die even quicker than before, when they already die too quickly. What is important here isn't simply health, but relative health: it is important to measure our enemies' health against our own damage, and this measure can be boiled down to the number of hits or shots needed to kill said enemies. Enemy damage is a factor as well due to friendly fire effects, which is why we should be equalizing our damage and health across the board, but that's nonetheless secondary to our own damage output.

4 hours ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

Sidenote: It's a bit tricky to get precise measurements in the game. With a linear scale, Lancers would have an EH of ~106 at level 8, which is when Heavy Gunners start spawning. Level 8 Heavy Gunners have an EH of 800, meaning their level 30 EH on my scale would be 3000. Unfortunately, the current Heavy Gunners reach ~3000EH at level 20, two levels earlier than the control for the Lancers.

I don't really think it's that tricky when enemies scale along a consistent formula, whether that formula is exponential or linear. Enemies certainly have their EHP differences widen when both their health and their armor increase, but that difference is nonetheless perfectly predictable on a mathematical basis.

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

6 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I don't really see how my proposal to remove mods like Serration, Hornet Strike, etc. would change that: you'd still be leveling frames to 30, applying Potatoes, Forma, mods, and so on, so that progression model wouldn't change at all, at least with respect to that specific change.

Sure, some testing might be in order, as should be the case for literally any change to the game, but the advantage to removing these +damage mods is that their effect is very predictable: if you're going to be removing Serration, a mandatory mod for every non-Shotgun primary weapon, you're going to be dividing the damage of almost all of those weapons by 1.65. Apply this to some given average number of elemental damage mods, multishot mods, etc., and you'd be able to predict exactly by how much you're dividing your damage, as these mods tend to be extremely consistent in their usage. As mentioned above, the exact damage numbers for these weapons is not meaningful, so long as they're matched according to their targets: it does not matter whether you're dealing 1 damage to a 10 health enemy, or 1 million damage to a 10 million health enemy, the end result is you're killing them in the same number of hits. 

Sure, but what I am proposing is the only real way this makes sense. If you lower the health of enemies to some arbitrary number, but keep damage the same, the end result will simply be that enemies will die even quicker than before, when they already die too quickly. What is important here isn't simply health, but relative health: it is important to measure our enemies' health against our own damage, and this measure can be boiled down to the number of hits or shots needed to kill said enemies. Enemy damage is a factor as well due to friendly fire effects, which is why we should be equalizing our damage and health across the board, but that's nonetheless secondary to our own damage output.

I don't really think it's that tricky when enemies scale along a consistent formula, whether that formula is exponential or linear. Enemies certainly have their EHP differences widen when both their health and their armor increase, but that difference is nonetheless perfectly predictable on a mathematical basis.

I'm not disagreeing with you there. Removing +damage would overall help balance Warframe. Their removal alone takes down over half of a weapon's potential damage. If we want to lower enemy health to something similar to Warframe health, then that would be a clear choice to remove.

As for my testing: I can "simulate" an enemy's EH on a linear by finding a rough equivalent on the exponential scale. I then use use a predominant neutral damage weapon without any +damage mods to see if they die at a reasonable rate. Its not perfect, but it does help give a general idea.

[Tyreaus]

On 2019-01-31 at 5:11 PM, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

EDIT: After careful consideration, it has been decided that armor values should remain largely static to each enemy type _{(Prior scaling data updated)}. This is largely due to the fact that excessive armor scaling is a major culprit in monopolizing build types (Corrosive/Slash builds). This creates a new point of discussion: Should enemies retain the same (or similar) linear health scaling, while retaining the static armor, or should the linear scale be steeper to compensate? Please note: While the armor values would be static, they would still be larger or smaller depending on the unit. A Butcher may only have a measly 50, but a Bombard may have a whopping 600.

Admittedly I haven't been able to read the entire thread so IDK if this has been mentioned, but while static armour values would technically work and be lower on the work required scale, I think it's a bit of a bandaid fix. It doesn't really solve the prevalence of armour (i.e. the uselessness of shields) in Warframe EHP, for example.

Personally, I think making armour a self-DR overhealth-esque mechanic (maybe with the DR capped at 70-80%, or whatever is deemed appropriate given other changes) and coupling that with a non-scaling / static "toughness" DR attribute wherever it might be desired or necessary would be more effective. It's not much harder to do, either, since the mechanics behind that sort of non-armour DR already exist in things like the Nox and WF abilities.

_{As an aside: it could give the "Weaken" effect on Puncture a different use: Toughness reduction, up to inverting it into a damage multiplier.}

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

3 hours ago, Tyreaus said:

Admittedly I haven't been able to read the entire thread so IDK if this has been mentioned, but while static armour values would technically work and be lower on the work required scale, I think it's a bit of a bandaid fix. It doesn't really solve the prevalence of armour (i.e. the uselessness of shields) in Warframe EHP, for example.

Personally, I think making armour a self-DR overhealth-esque mechanic (maybe with the DR capped at 70-80%, or whatever is deemed appropriate given other changes) and coupling that with a non-scaling / static "toughness" DR attribute wherever it might be desired or necessary would be more effective. It's not much harder to do, either, since the mechanics behind that sort of non-armour DR already exist in things like the Nox and WF abilities.

_{As an aside: it could give the "Weaken" effect on Puncture a different use: Toughness reduction, up to inverting it into a damage multiplier.}

Making armor static is less about making it comparable to shields and more about allowing better type-matching. As armor cuts an arbitrary percentage of damage, extremely high values make most weapons useless. This is why Corrosion is so valued, as it can chew off this insane buffer. Its so bad that Corrosion builds have higher DPS against alloy armor than Radiation builds, despite Radiation having a +75% damage bonus.

Really though, the Corpus and their shields have an actual balanced health system. They seem squishy due to our weapon's insane damage, but really their health is much more inline with the current damage system than the Grineer (minus the Oxium Ospreys).

[Tyreaus]

3 hours ago, (XB1)alchemPyro said:

Making armor static is less about making it comparable to shields and more about allowing better type-matching. As armor cuts an arbitrary percentage of damage, extremely high values make most weapons useless. This is why Corrosion is so valued, as it can chew off this insane buffer. Its so bad that Corrosion builds have higher DPS against alloy armor than Radiation builds, despite Radiation having a +75% damage bonus.

Really though, the Corpus and their shields have an actual balanced health system. They seem squishy due to our weapon's insane damage, but really their health is much more inline with the current damage system than the Grineer (minus the Oxium Ospreys).

Oh, don't get me wrong, I understand that and agree with it. I just think the specific solution of "just make armour non-scaling", though it works for handling the problem of insane enemy armour scaling, doesn't attack a few closely related issues like how health + armour are the go-to health types for maximum EHP on players. Armour might not scale for enemies, but for players...

There's a couple of other nitpicky things too. E.g., health-only scaling on Grineer basically turns their health pools into Infested units. Slash proc efficacy would drop faster as every point increase in EHP is an increase in HP (compare Corpus where, approximately, it's 2EHP for 1HP, the other going to shields). It's not the end of the world but the homogeneity feels kinda lame, and I wouldn't be surprised if builds for Grineer and Infested started looking a little bit similar.

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

1 hour ago, Tyreaus said:

Oh, don't get me wrong, I understand that and agree with it. I just think the specific solution of "just make armour non-scaling", though it works for handling the problem of insane enemy armour scaling, doesn't attack a few closely related issues like how health + armour are the go-to health types for maximum EHP on players. Armour might not scale for enemies, but for players...

There's a couple of other nitpicky things too. E.g., health-only scaling on Grineer basically turns their health pools into Infested units. Slash proc efficacy would drop faster as every point increase in EHP is an increase in HP (compare Corpus where, approximately, it's 2EHP for 1HP, the other going to shields). It's not the end of the world but the homogeneity feels kinda lame, and I wouldn't be surprised if builds for Grineer and Infested started looking a little bit similar.

The issue there mainly comes more from how the elemental damage tables are, than anything else. The best way to handle Infested now is basically Slash, Heat, and Corrosive. These all have positive numbers on Infested and work across the board. Gas also works really well(so long as you don't mind the subpar proc damage).  Corpus have general weaknesses to Impact and Magnetic, while also juggling in Toxin, Cold, Electricity, Viral, and Radiation (As Flesh and Robotic have vastly different weaknesses).

Now you'd think the main go-getter for Grineer would be Puncture, Viral, and Radiation; seeing as how cloned flesh is universally weak to Viral, and Puncture/Radiation eats through Alloy Armor. However, Corrosion procs can remove Armor outright (plus doing a ton of damage to Ferrite). Cloned Flesh is also weak to Heat and Slash, so an armorless Grineer is really no different than in Infested. Overall I'd argue the builds are largely homogenized already. At least with armor being static, you'd have to focus on what deals the most damage rather than what removes the most defenses.

[(PSN)Spider_Enigma]

you do realize that before 60/60 mods the enemy cap was 60 right?

 

[(XBOX)Avant Solace]

4 hours ago, (PS4)Spider_Enigma said:

you do realize that before 60/60 mods the enemy cap was 60 right?

 

It's hard to get exact values on the older game model as so much has changed.