How would you react to the end of power creep?

[Learicorn]

Ppl really consider gram and galatine prime the strongest of melee weapons?

Seems like they haven't experienced the kripath yet

[Cubewano]

7 hours ago, Neuerwinter said:

I’d say add diversity back to the game more than nerfing stuff, if you nerf x weapon or x frame there will always be another one to take the spot and the cycle never ends.

-So make healer,support and CC roles actually useful, I used to like more support/healer roles but in this game feels more like covering a lack of proper building on the other players part than actively supporting and adding value to the team

-give CC a reason to exist again, which means creating situations where it’s smarter and faster to stall the enemy than having an higher DPS output, point in case Nox Bursas and Nullifiers, they are failed attempts at this as you can brainlessly force your way through them for how busted the DPS is

-again add diversity to the enemies too, make units that can parry every melee, ones that can absorb bullets around them,  as a way to balance the gap of benefits between guns and melee combat. Rework the armor scaling and that brainlet thing they call AI

-Remove the stupid invincibility phases, the immunity to warframe powers, the silly knockback spam. Those are just symptoms of poor game design and inability to properly address the current powercreep situation, as they dont promote variety but kill it. They strip the players of choice, no matter what frame or build they choose, turning the game in a generic no-name shooter, robbing ‘frame’ from Warframe

-Give a rebalance to those lame AOE nuke skills, and the sick “damage ticks in the distance on the enemies you’re not even aware of” STRAT. Either by reworking the range in a LOS, or adding counters to it i.e. enemies capable of discharging on the ground volt’s electicity around them. Or leave em nukes as they are, but add a requirement to charge the skill before launching it and a CD to reuse it , in a way to prevent spam

-Also making loadouts less dependable on core mods, they could take away mods as Serration and the likes since they are a given, and maybe people would start to consider as a viable option those niche mods DE is handling out by a year or so, adding even more variety to each warframe’s build.

You'd have to nerf stuff, or adversely buff everything that isn't us (indirect nerfs more or less) to achieve most of that list. 

CC/Support used to be extremely high value roles in missions because survivability wasn't a given in all content into infinity, now that all players are effectively immortal with numerous high percentile defensive tools and spammable iframes/heals/panic buttons there is little to no reason for support roles. Supports are valuable because they augment your abilities in combat, when all players operate at maximum levels on all fields there isn't anything left to need or even want augmenting further and in turn nothing left for Supports to be wanted or needed for. Us being overwhelmingly powerful to the point of godhood makes  Support/CC meaningless, we have to have vulnerabilities for support roles to matter. 

See above

This falls under indirect nerfs, instead of bringing our level down we just bring everything else's levels up resulting in the same balance situation just through different optics. I have no objection to more intricate enemy designs, but that would be a much larger and difficult endeavor to pursue than just nerfing the players tools, and could clash against the theme of the game as a horde slaughter type game and potentially change the feel of combat. With slower combat and a more tactical feel it'd definitely work to instill better balance to the game though if that's a route DE would want to explore. (this game was a bit more tactical in its earliest days)

They are symptoms of the games poor balance as a result of power creep, as we have become the ultimate cheese machines it is in kind the only way to counter our unquestionable power by using cheese methods as well. Remove those aspects and every boss would be an instant ko.

Nukes are pretty much the embodiment of this games power creep, as are most methods of aoe dps. They were not so common in the past, and whats nukes did exist had restrictions or limited scaling/damage potential so they wouldn't completely bust game balance as they do today, at one point DE  was even actively removing ability nukes until they abruptly did a 180 and started buffing their potential on remaining and new frames.

I believe most people agree on this notion, including DE openly. Why they've never acted on it however is beyond me. (note: and when i say agree, people agree high value/mandatory mods should not be tied to the modding system in just re-purposed into alternate systems where they don't intervene with build creativity)

 

Edited July 2, 2019 by Cubewano

[Firetrucksrule]

I'd quit immediately. What's the point in a loot shooter grind fest if there's actually no good loot to be had? Why would I go grind out new gear so I could be exactly as strong as I already am? Ending power creep also effectively ends any further progression, why would an endless looter shooter ever end progression? It would be like WoW releasing a new expansion that brings the level cap back down to 60. This game's biggest problem isn't our power creep, it's the lack of the enemy's power creep. We don't need to get weaker we just need actual content that's leveled to challenge our ever increasing strength. 

[(XBOX)Knight Raime]

I think just stopping would kill the game.  If DE were to stop going in an upward spiral they'd have to start repairing all the things mucked up from power creep too.  I dream of a day where missions have multiple things to do beyond "make enemies irrelevant."  Where warframes actively complimented and synergized with each other.  Where it was less of a horde based shooter and more of an emphasis on gun and melee and powers merely complimented the gameplay.

To get there DE would basically have to reboot the entire game.  AI would have to be significantly improved upon.  Scaling would have to be addressed instead of (yeah we don't care about things past x point.)  Mission structure would have to be entirely redone.  etc.  etc.  I don't think DE is going to move away from it's current itteration.  And to be fair rivens more than make up for bringing older weapons up to snuff for pretty much any content worth doing.  We could have an entire debate about the pros and cons of those skinner boxes but my point still stands.  Everything is technically usable and viable in any relevant content.

Min maxing really only comes into play for a player when their level of care increases.  If you're a player that just hops on a few times a month to slowly work away at something then having better stuff is nice, but it won't exponentially help you get whatever you're chasing faster.  If you're a player that absolutely has to get everything as soon as possible because the fun for you comes from seeing how much you can change a weapon or a frame to make some interesting setups then yes.  Having to regrind for the new bestest thing so you can stay at that level is tiresome.

But personally speaking I don't think DE promotes people gobbling content.  I think that's why arcanes have become more prominent for new content.  Why your spooky space child is the grindiest thing to exist (because they literally break the game.)  etc.  I know that even at the level I play I can't be asked to play the game day in and day out everyday.  It's what killed my desire for the game and put me on a 3 month hiatus.  And it's what is wearing me down again.

[George_PPS]

That Warframe can make players feel so powerful and eliminate enemies so fast is the envy of many other video game designers and players. It’s the best thing about Warframe. 

 

There is no power creep. Warframes and their weapons are supposed to be this great and are supposed to be extremely powerful with too modding. If you feel this way, that is because you may need to try something new. 

 

The nearly limitless options to mod warframes and weapons to god like power and status is what rewards players to work on their loadouts since day one - which is great for new players and any players who are still working hard daily to make their gears better. 

We need ZERO nerfing. If anyone thinks the enemies are too weak, the player can always equip just 7 or 6 mods on their weapons and 1 or 2 fewer mods on their warframe to experience the difficulty they want to feel again as they started the game out as new players. Or they can stay in missions longer to meet challenging enemies if they want to play it hardcore. 

[TARINunit9]

26 minutes ago, George_PPS said:

There is no power creep.

Even with your lore-based excuse, this is objectively false.

26 minutes ago, George_PPS said:

We need ZERO nerfing. If anyone thinks the enemies are too weak, the player can always equip just 7 or 6 mods on their weapons and 1 or 2 fewer mods on their warframe to experience the difficulty they want to feel again as they started the game out as new players.

To break my neutrality for a moment, this excuse is inherently flawed. It was already iffy in Dark Souls when people say "oh you can decide the level of difficulty for yourself by spamming magic to make it easier or taking off all your armor to make it harder". In Warframe it just flat-out does not work, because the entire game is based around you NOT doing that

I've been coaching a new player recently. With his collection of weaker gear and un-upgraded mods, his situation is less "more challenged" and more "completely locked out of most missions, even among the set of stuff he's technically unlocked"

Edited July 3, 2019 by TARINunit9

[(PSN)Mono-Pop]

On 2019-07-02 at 9:45 AM, TARINunit9 said:

I don't really have much of a poetic lead-in to this topic and the question therein. It started with me looking at the recent Prime Access weapons and thinking to myself "Tipedo and Akjagera Primes? Zhuge and Ninkoni Primes? Funny, those are a lot weaker than the twin saints of Power Creep that are Rubico and Galatine Primes (and the sidegrade Gram Prime)". I then started reading articles on power creep and how, historically, it's both decried as lazy game design in retrospect and also very common regardless. Then I noticed I was starting to veer toward "snobbish" again and started revising my train of thought to try and consider people who aren't myself. To that end, I figured I would try to have some fun and actually ask the question rather than just think about it:

How would you, personally, the person reading this sentence, react if today was the end of power creep in Warframe? If this was as strong as our gear was going to get? Warframe takes the Pokemon Route to balance: new pokemon have tweaks, might be more specialized or less specialized than existing pokemon, and might have entirely new roles and archtypes, but overall Game Freak tries to create a world were old and new are both potentially powerful and they don't create another Gen1 Mewtwo (despite that one time they made Mega Rayquaza). Thus in Warframe, we might get cooler gear, or more "gimmicky but still useful" gear, or upgrades to our QoL in our gear, but never any more explicit power? We might get weapons with more focus on burst damage, or better sustained DPS, but our overall TTK against a pack of level 200 Bombards won't change all that much?

Arca Plasmor, Tonkor, Tiberon Prime, Galatine and Gram Primes, Rakta Cernos, Rubico Prime, Pyrana Prime, Staticor, and so on and so forth. They become the new standard for our gear. We would get new gear, but if you have the old stuff you can still at least compete?

  Reveal hidden contents

As a follow-up question, how would you feel if DE went past the Pokemon Route and full-on into the Team Fortress 2 Route of reverse power creep? How would you feel if we got full-on rollbacks of power back to a perceived golden age? Arca Plasmor and Rubico Prime and Galatine/Gram Primes nerfed to levels of the Hek, Vectis Prime, and War/Paracesis. Maiming Strike nerfed from +90% to flat 90%. Blood Rush nerfed to +100%. Gara's Splinter Storm/Vitrify combo is given a hard cap. Other such nerfs to bring us down to roughly pre-ESO levels of power

 

Baruuk showed us what the end of power creep looks like.

 

Extremely damn boring.

[Ikyr0]

I would react very positively. I wouldn't mind using weapons other than my Zaw and kitguns. DE have a lot of work to do. D2 is also around the corner, and Bungie seems to handle endgame a lot more thoughtfully (as opposed to lazily). 

[(PSN)yassin_st09]

Lol

[(PSN)Mono-Pop]

3 minutes ago, Ikyr0 said:

I would react very positively. I wouldn't mind using weapons other than my Zaw and kitguns. DE have a lot of work to do. D2 is also around the corner, and Bungie seems to handle endgame a lot more thoughtfully (as opposed to lazily). 

D2s end game is exclusive to like 3% of their playerbase though. The vast majority aren’t anywhere near engaged enough to actually get that far.

[Ikyr0]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Mono-Pop said:

D2s end game is exclusive to like 3% of their playerbase though. The vast majority aren’t anywhere near engaged enough to actually get that far.

WF is the only looter/shooter on the market without scaling difficulty and rewards. It's downright pathetic. Sign me up for that 3%.

Edited July 3, 2019 by Ikyr0

[(PSN)Mono-Pop]

6 minutes ago, Ikyr0 said:

WF is the only looter/shooter on the market without scaling difficulty and rewards. It's downright pathetic. Sign me up for that 3%.

Destiny doesn’t have scaling difficulty or rewards either.

 

sure, you can choose to do a nightfall instead of a strike, but it’s still the same content. Reward pools are very similar.

 

The alternative isn’t actually better imo, just different.

Edited July 3, 2019 by (PS4)Mono-Pop

[(PSN)Mono-Pop]

1 hour ago, TARINunit9 said:

Even with your lore-based excuse, this is objectively false.

To break my neutrality for a moment, this excuse is inherently flawed. It was already iffy in Dark Souls when people say "oh you can decide the level of difficulty for yourself by spamming magic to make it easier or taking off all your armor to make it harder". In Warframe it just flat-out does not work, because the entire game is based around you NOT doing that

I've been coaching a new player recently. With his collection of weaker gear and un-upgraded mods, his situation is less "more challenged" and more "completely locked out of most missions, even among the set of stuff he's technically unlocked"

If taking a few mods off would make you have more fun, it’s your own fault for not.

The game isn’t designed around not having fun, and being too strong for the entire game to challenge you isn’t fun.

 

But yeah, modular difficulty. It’s not iffy at all, hundreds of people worked for years to enable that to be a thing in the dark souls games.

Edited July 3, 2019 by (PS4)Mono-Pop

[MirageKnight]

My reaction?

"It's about damn time!"

[taiiat]

well, without Stat increases for no reason and serving no purpose, that could leave room for Stats that are things you opt into that make you pick what things you're going to specialize in and push to extremes while intrinsically sacrificing some other things to get to such extremes. or you pick more towards the middle.

and then the game could even focus on providing things for Players to actually do, rather than Timers to sit around for waiting for Stats. because when that's all we're doing, are we even Players of the game anymore? it's kinda hard to say, because we're not really playing it anymore so maybe we aren't.... Players.
so, focusing on that new cool looking art that the game pushes periodically actually providing Players with something to do, rather than it being a filler of Timers.
as, not everything has to be a Timer i just wait for... stuff can still be spread out to get people to play in other ways too.

 

go right ahead really, since i have all of these numbers falling from the sky that i tape onto my stuff, but i'm still doing the same things with that stuff that i was 5 years ago anyways so it didn't change anything.
if i really wanna boil it down to it - Warframe stopped in 2015 because that's when new things to do that changed the game in some way... stopped happening.

39 minutes ago, (PS4)Mono-Pop said:

Baruuk showed us what the end of power creep looks like.

how, exactly?
since Baruuk brought in a whole new Tier of 'tank' that had never existed in the game before (or hadn't existed in many years, if we don't include that Baruuk is immune to Nullifiers).

Edited July 3, 2019 by taiiat

[(PSN)Mono-Pop]

4 minutes ago, taiiat said:

well, without Stat increases for no reason and serving no purpose, that could leave room for Stats that are things you opt into that make you pick what things you're going to specialize in and push to extremes while intrinsically sacrificing some other things to get to such extremes. or you pick more towards the middle.

and then the game could even focus on providing things for Players to actually do, rather than Timers to sit around for waiting for Stats. because when that's all we're doing, are we even Players of the game anymore? it's kinda hard to say, because we're not really playing it anymore so maybe we aren't.... Players.
so, focusing on that new cool looking art that the game pushes periodically actually providing Players with something to do, rather than it being a filler of Timers.
as, not everything has to be a Timer i just wait for... stuff can still be spread out to get people to play in other ways too.

 

go right ahead really, since i have all of these numbers falling from the sky that i tape onto my stuff, but i'm still doing the same things with that stuff that i was 5 years ago anyways so it didn't change anything.
if i really wanna boil it down to it - Warframe stopped in 2015 because that's when new things to do that changed the game in some way... stopped happening.

how, exactly?
since Baruuk brought in a whole new Tier of 'tank' that had never existed in the game before (or hadn't existed in many years, if we don't include that Baruuk is immune to Nullifiers).

By being instantly forgotten.

What new kind of tank?

He doesn’t do anything new besides get locked out of his ultimate.

[taiiat]

4 minutes ago, (PS4)Mono-Pop said:

What new kind of tank?

He doesn’t do anything new besides get locked out of his ultimate.

uh, by being immune to Nullifiers and when Abilities are more and more often being locked out, that Baruuk is then the most durable Warframe in the game since (well, almost, still has an EHP Ability but has EHP without Abilities)everything Baruuk gets in EHP is completely passive, can't be Nullified, and that Enemies can't bypass it.

it'sjustmath.jpg

Edited July 3, 2019 by taiiat

[(PSN)Mono-Pop]

3 minutes ago, taiiat said:

uh, by being immune to Nullifiers and when Abilities are more and more often being locked out, that Baruuk is then the most durable Warframe in the game since everything Baruuk gets in EHP is completely passive, can't be Nullified, and that Enemies can't bypass it.

it'sjustmath.jpg

“Uh,” if only his abilities did anything 🤷🏻‍♂️

I’ve literally NEVER ONCE seen baruuk in game, the only time I’ve ever seen him is when I myself play him.

He has a janky kit that does nothing special, and without power creep that’s all we can hope for.

Amisusedmeme.png

Edited July 3, 2019 by (PS4)Mono-Pop

[MirageKnight]

20 hours ago, (PS4)Onder6099 said:

You should first change the players mindsets

Whelp, good luck with that.

A fair chunk of players tend to be incredibly stubborn, opinionated, and unreasonable. That same chunk is going to be extremely resistant to any change that takes away the ridiculous power fantasy that they feel they're entitled to anyway. So you know what? I say let there be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

At least changing balance to something more sane and reasonable would also have the benefit of getting some of the more noxious and undesirable elements of the Warframe player community to leave and infest some other game.

Warframe had an arguably better community and gameplay experience when it didn't try to appeal to so many people and had better, more nuanced balance and pacing.

[TARINunit9]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Mono-Pop said:

But yeah, modular difficulty. It’s not iffy at all, hundreds of people worked for years to enable that to be a thing in the dark souls games.

It's not an iffy concept in a vacuum, but it sure doesn't exist in Warframe

This is because Warframe does not reward skill. Warframe rewards preparation and grinding. Now, this SOUNDS like it would be great for modular difficulty, but Warframe doesn't go that route. Because your reward for your preparation isn't winning. Your reward is the chance to compete in the first place

If you handicap yourself in Warframe, you aren't making the game harder for yourself in the sense you're thinking of. You're just temporarily locking yourself out of certain content

[(PSN)DARK_WIZARD999]

At this point I wouldn't really care, modding is pretty easy, even lame weapons can be strong. Plus if you're not a knuckle-dragger you can move around quickly and avoid getting shot while gorilla tactic killing mobs. This is even more evident if you start a new account, and use your knowledge of the game to play with a lato or burston and a starter frame. What I want is more weird weapons, with weird effects. Like the peculiar mods but crazier and innate to the weapon. 

[TARINunit9]

4 minutes ago, (PS4)DARK_WIZARD999 said:

This is even more evident if you start a new account, and use your knowledge of the game to play with a lato or burston and a starter frame. 

I've actually found this to not be all that true. Once you get to roughly Jupiter and the enemies start spawning in proper groups, your level of success is determined less by skill and more by how many ranks you can afford in Serration, Fever Strike, and Vitality. Because the enemies will just spawn behind you and eventually surround you, and you need to kill them quickly if you don't want to get pinned down in a locker room by the ever-respawning horde

[taiiat]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Mono-Pop said:

He has a janky kit that does nothing special, and without power creep that’s all we can hope for.

does most of the few things that Players would want when facing high Level Enemies. extreme durability, and CC. doesn't feature any sort of Damage Buff but that's ok, Baruuk has the two other sides of the 3 legged chair there (Damage Buff, Durability, CC).

that you don't see Baruuk in some random Public Mission is irrelevant. in those low Level Missions the only things that matters is having the widest >0 Damage AoE since the Mission basically wins itself while you pick your nose. in those Missions it basically doesn't matter what your Equipment is, because you're just standing around waiting anyways while you go watch TV or something. blistering Gameplay.

[(PSN)Mono-Pop]

2 minutes ago, taiiat said:

does most of the few things that Players would want when facing high Level Enemies. extreme durability, and CC. doesn't feature any sort of Damage Buff but that's ok, Baruuk has the two other sides of the 3 legged chair there (Damage Buff, Durability, CC).

that you don't see Baruuk in some random Public Mission is irrelevant. in those low Level Missions the only things that matters is having the widest >0 Damage AoE since the Mission basically wins itself while you pick your nose. in those Missions it basically doesn't matter what your Equipment is, because you're just standing around waiting anyways while you go watch TV or something. blistering Gameplay.

Low level missions?

Jesus okay, thought we were talking about warframe but you seem to just want to talk about me.

He’s not a popular frame, sook about it if you want. But this is what happens when new content doesn’t ascend up the power creep scale.

We get new stuff that’s completely dropped while it’s still warm.

Edited July 3, 2019 by (PS4)Mono-Pop

[BETAOPTICS]

23 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

This has actually seen a reversal in Warframe's lifetime. When I started playing Warframe (five years ago), frames like Equinox and Gara would have been looked down on for petering out. The meta was Frost/Nekros (for Defense and Survival respectively), Trinity (to make the team invincible), and two support frames between Nyx, Loki, Nova (including Speedva), Vauban, or Rhino -- not to kill the enemy, but to freeze them in place. Mesa and Saryn were also popular, but stacking them two to a team was considered bad composition

It's only within the last 30 months or so that raw damage entered the meta -- not coincidentally, after Maiming Body Rush was added to the game and after Saryn was reworked a second time to allow infinite damage that also stripped armor. The invention of the Arca Plasmor just cemented the process and made players re-evaluate Maimquinox

I have been in this game ever since open beta so 6-7 years, way back then supports were useful because the game was way harder. Back then when Vauban first came out, he was a monster killing machine, his Vortex pretty much instantly killed anything that came to contact with it. Nova was another one that started to change the meta gradually away from support Warframes and other changes at that time period started to change the way the core game functions (you no longer had limited lives, enemies became more numerous but not as tough as they used to be) and so on so forth.

I do remember back then that Warframes like Loki were more popular (Nyx a bit more popular than now but not a whole lot, she has always been a bit of a niché) because of Loki invisibility and how powerful of an ability it was in a meta that saw enemies tougher and the gameplay phasing much slower, so in comparison he was a fast damage Warframe with 3 utility abilities but where he was used mostly as he is today, his 2nd invisibility and his 4th disarm. Disarm was more frequently used and needed back then to be fair, due to current damage meta abilities like that are pretty pointless as the enemies die on mass in few seconds anyway, but back then it served more of a purpose. He was semi-support-semi-damage.

You are right that back then damage Warframes were not regarded as highly but that was because the way the games core mechanics worked and players simply did not have tools to do damage like they do now. It was never because players did not value damage but because in order to do sufficient damage back then players needed utility as we were far less powerful, enemies were tougher and the phasing of the game was far more methodological and slow in comparison to what we have now. The moment you saw first effective damage Warframes emerge, the meta started its gradual shift to where we are now.
 

Edited July 3, 2019 by BETAOPTICS