How would you react to the end of power creep?

[RX-3DR]

50 minutes ago, BETAOPTICS said:

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.

One of the key reasons why a Radial Disarm was such a valuable asset back is tied to sustainability. Compared to most CC abilities, Radial Disarm would neuter the threat levels of everything for the rest of its lifespan. Chaos was also heavily favored for its lengthy duration. In contrast, even if you could nuke enemies for 1/3 of their health with other Radial abilities, you would only be able to keep it up for so long, especially before Corrupted mods where the ceiling for the meta was a lot more controlled.

People simply couldn't afford to chase for damage because there was a significant risk of running out of Energy. Trinity's Energy Vampire was also slow, which meant that even coordinated groups needed to pay more attention than staring at some numbers go up and down while pressing a single button. Sustainability and reliability was such a big factor then that you had to knock damage chasing down your list of priorities.

[BETAOPTICS]

5 minutes ago, RX-3DR said:

One of the key reasons why a Radial Disarm was such a valuable asset back is tied to sustainability. Compared to most CC abilities, Radial Disarm would neuter the threat levels of everything for the rest of its lifespan. Chaos was also heavily favored for its lengthy duration. In contrast, even if you could nuke enemies for 1/3 of their health with other Radial abilities, you would only be able to keep it up for so long, especially before Corrupted mods where the ceiling for the meta was a lot more controlled.

People simply couldn't afford to chase for damage because there was a significant risk of running out of Energy. Trinity's Energy Vampire was also slow, which meant that even coordinated groups needed to pay more attention than staring at some numbers go up and down while pressing a single button. Sustainability and reliability was such a big factor then that you had to knock damage chasing down your list of priorities.

Exactly and when people started to be able to afford it, like corrupted mods and energy plates, the moment the significance of utility began to gradually decease in favor of effectiveness. So it was never that players would not have sought that damage element, that is why we are where we are now, but because back then to be most efficient the group had to consider other elements to be as efficient as possible. Guest for damage was always there.

[bibmobello]

Weren't the riven supposed to balance the game? I think it's not so hard to take few beta testers, lets them play with top tier weapons and crappy weapons and balance them accordingly to who kill more or less enemies.

Edited July 3, 2019 by bibmobello

[KIREEK]

I have been here since banshee received a range nerf because her ability became to big with stretch equiped, STRETCH

Back then there were no operators that could heal you or hold enemies in place, weapons like the despair were the best things ever, we didn't have corrupted mods, let alone the 4 or so range mods we have now, we didn't have augments that would increase banshee range and power every second, enabling her to kill enemies in entire maps (not going to lie, repeating sortie levels just for the farm was great)

You're talking about weapons, as impressive that sounds power creep began a long time ago.

[HorridaMessor]

to putit simpy, OP

 

[(NSW)FlameDivinity]

17 hours ago, Blatantfool said:

 You've either speedread my post or missed my point. The forums here move fast sometimes so it's a habit I even fall into sometimes. I can't blame you.

 What I'm saying is that you can't have one and not the other. You 'balance' weapons without bringing the baddies down too and the game will play like crap. You 'balance' the enemies and don't bring the weapons in line and the game will play like crap.

 The weapon balance conversation and enemy scaling conversation are directly related. That is why I mention the loop of "Weapons are bad because enemies are too beefy!" followed by "Enemies are too beefy because weapon dps is too high!"

 Both need to be addressed simultaneously as they are issues so closely tied together that the health of the game hinges on the two points working together.

 You've never seen a game die because it's weapons and enemies were balanced, if the two were in harmony the game wouldn't be unhealthy. You've seen a game die to power creep, the process of the balance between player ability and enemy ability spiraling upwards forever. I never implied power creep was a good thing. I am simply arguing that the power creep issue is bigger than guns.

Sorry, I should've made it clear I was trying to make a point of your first 2 paragraphs. Wasn't saying that's what you said. I just saw those and was like, "Well given that someone finally mentioned this, I should actually do something so others, who think that's a good idea, can take a step back and possibly reconsider." I was using some of your statements as an example, not putting words in your mouth. Sorry for the lack of clarity. I actually agreed with the rest of your post.

[(NSW)FlameDivinity]

17 hours ago, VentiGlondi said:

Oh that already exists, but it's not as common.

They put it on the open world bosses

I'm well aware, but I meant with every enemy, though I know you know that and are just trying to add a helpful tidbit 😁

[(NSW)FlameDivinity]

17 hours ago, VentiGlondi said:

Oh that already exists, but it's not as common.

They put it on the open world bosses

Oh I see a good Nezha main. Did I have to buy the deluxe bundle to get the glyph or does it come somewhere else? I was unaware there was a bundle and I only bought the skin.

[844448]

What I can see is people calling everything as mastery fodder. Not sure though, I think I should check the other path where people are grateful about this

[MirageKnight]

19 hours ago, bibmobello said:

Weren't the riven supposed to balance the game?

Not in the slightest. They're doing exactly what they're meant to do: Distract players from the problem of power creep and poor balance by getting them to grind particular game modes and spend insane amounts of Plat. That and excuse DE from having to actually sit down and work on balance and admitting they messed up.

Rivens are nothing more than slot machines fueled by grind, kuva and plat, with the reward being more power creep to trivialize enemies with.

Edited July 4, 2019 by MirageKnight
Bad grammar. D'oh!

[Blatantfool]

2 hours ago, (NSW)FlameDivinity said:

Sorry, I should've made it clear I was trying to make a point of your first 2 paragraphs. Wasn't saying that's what you said. I just saw those and was like, "Well given that someone finally mentioned this, I should actually do something so others, who think that's a good idea, can take a step back and possibly reconsider." I was using some of your statements as an example, not putting words in your mouth. Sorry for the lack of clarity. I actually agreed with the rest of your post.

 It's all good. I've been standing on my soapbox yelling about this specific topic for a long time.

 It is my opinion that it is a mistake to try to break power creep down into parts when you talk about it. I think people need to abandon treating the situation like it's effective only one or two systems of the game and not all of them. Power creep is a massive topic and when you hyperfocus on a part of it conversation is messy.

[Zeclem]

21 hours ago, TARINunit9 said:

Staying as neutral as I can, symptoms of power creep are evident in DE's approach to boss and enemy design. Even when you strip off level scaling and compare base stats, new enemies in new content are objectively more powerful and durable, to combat how the players are more powerful and durable. In addition, many more enemies are immune or resistant to Warframe powers as well as possessing independent damage reduction not reliant on the Armor mechanic

This has come to a head in the Disruption game mode, when the Demolysts have ridiculous levels of tankiness, nullification properties, immunity to all forms of incapacitation, immunity to status procs, etc. that necessitate bringing high-level meta weapons (such as maxed-out Rubico Prime or other such guns) just to get to the first C rotation

Also, power creep dropped Nyx from God Tier to Low Tier without a single nerf to her kit

I wasn't lieing about the "Staying as neutral as I can" bit. Someone like you could argue that power creep being restricted to later missions such as Disruption, Tier5 Bounties on the Vallis, and the upcoming Tau Ceti system could be used as a measure of player progression in order to keep the damage of power creep away from new players. I kept that in mind when I made this thread

having stronger enemies dont really do much when you consider even in tier5 bounties the enemies arent really stronger than a sortie level enemy. and sorties are as far as we go in enemy scaling in relevant content. and as for bosses, their design was always bad and limiting in this game, powercreep or not. its nothing particularly new. 

21 hours ago, VentiGlondi said:

Player is so powerful the only way enemies can challenge them is to either remove the margin of error (you mess up once and you're completely dead), disable them completely, or take away their power. Things either pose no threat or instakill you.

Difficulty curve doesn't exist, instead we got a difficulty step function.

which levels are you playing at that there is no margin of error? not even sortie levels have that kind of problems.

21 hours ago, VentiGlondi said:

Can I have your Kraken build?

no but you can have my mk-1 bo build. 

[(XBOX)Calliber]

I'm all for the end of power creep, cap it and make us start utilizing skill over numbers.  (Yes I could self-handicap I know).

[(PSN)Onder6099]

13 hours ago, MirageKnight said:

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.

WF has, as PvE, hard position in gaming world these days, surrounded by e-peen PvP BR games where powercreep is Alfa - omega of gameplay, to attract those players you should give them power creep. Removing PC thru balance you’re forcing min 25% players, willing to pay, to leave. F2P doesn’t mean that WF is Devs hobby and they don’t need money. Tbh, I didn’t find a reason why should I care, in PvE, this or that is powercreep, except when it’s harmful for specific missions.

Edited July 3, 2019 by (PS4)Onder6099

[Cubewano]

3 minutes ago, (PS4)Onder6099 said:

WF has, as PvE, hard position in gaming world these days, surrounded by e-peen PvP BR games where powercreep is Alfa - omega of gameplay, to attract those players you should give them power creep. Removing PC thru balance you’re forcing min 25% players, willing to pay, to leave. F2P doesn’t mean that WF is Devs hobby and they don’t need money. Tbh, I didn’t find a reason why should I care, in PvE, this or that is powercreep.

Even within a pve game you should want something of a good gameplay experience, balanced game design helps with that immensely. Game balance isn't something exists just for the purposes of competitive measurements. That said, where are you getting this statistic on paying players who would leave if the game was balanced? And what's the supporting rationale behind that? 

[TARINunit9]

1 hour ago, Zeclem said:

having stronger enemies dont really do much when you consider even in tier5 bounties the enemies arent really stronger than a sortie level enemy.

You've missed the point: bounty5 enemies are level 60, yet are as powerful as level 90 sortie enemies. Tusk and Terra enemies are stronger than normal Grineer and Corpus. That's power creep

[Blatantfool]

4 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

You've missed the point: bounty5 enemies are level 60, yet are as powerful as level 90 sortie enemies. Tusk and Terra enemies are stronger than normal Grineer and Corpus. That's power creep

 Very important point here. @TARINunit9 is completely correct. Enemy power creep doesn't get talked about as much because players just assume that it's a symptom of DE reacting to weapon power creep but it's not that simple.

 DE has to invent enemies that can fight players, which means they have to get stronger with time. At this point that problem has created a situation where in some cases the level of the enemies can't even be said to be accurate because enemies from different locations scale steeper meaning lower levels can = higher levels just due to a map change.

 Then after they invent those tough enemies they have to invent weapons that feel good used against them, which normally means they're stronger weapons.

 Then they have to invent enemies that are still tough even against those weapons.

 Then they have to invent weapons for those new enemies too.

 When it comes to power creep within the weapon balance it all happens in a cycle. Some parts of power creep like Riven mods are outside of this cycle but still problematic, but the largest chunk of the power creep discussion takes place within the cycle.

[Cubewano]

10 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

You've missed the point: bounty5 enemies are level 60, yet are as powerful as level 90 sortie enemies. Tusk and Terra enemies are stronger than normal Grineer and Corpus. That's power creep

Neither are actually powerful so that feels like a spotty hill to die on. If either were imposing maybe an argument could be made for enemy balancing being a priority, but when virtually nothing in the game is a threat fixing them to be less threatening seems a tad redundant no? 

To be clear I do think enemies deserve rebalancing as well, though no I don't remotely think they have kept up to power progression of players -which is why balance has become an increasingly large issue- and scaling certainly needs some better standardizing, but they're hardly massive issues at the moment and not remotely on the scale of the player power curve. At most it would be nice for DE to pick an existing level range for typical content and balance around that, from the lower to higher tier play, and then treat everything else as excess/overkill territory where balance isn't meant to be maintained and people go just push the limits of min maxing. It was a mistake trying to make us able to scale against all enemies in an infinitely scaling game. 

[TARINunit9]

9 minutes ago, Cubewano said:

Neither are actually powerful so that feels like a spotty hill to die on. If either were imposing maybe an argument could be made for enemy balancing being a priority, but when virtually nothing in the game is a threat fixing them to be less threatening seems a tad redundant no? 

I would say you're missing the forest for the trees, if it weren't for your next paragraph

[(PSN)Onder6099]

42 minutes ago, Cubewano said:

Even within a pve game you should want something of a good gameplay experience, balanced game design helps with that immensely. Game balance isn't something exists just for the purposes of competitive measurements. That said, where are you getting this statistic on paying players who would leave if the game was balanced? And what's the supporting rationale behind that? 

I’m near 100% PuG player, in every PuG mission min 1 player is power creep, isn’t that 25%? Tbh, lots of players should make their personal challenge called: “My week in PuGs.”, just to see how weak and with huge lack of knowledge decent amount of playerbase is. Isn’t that main reason that balance in these days is not about power creep but about softening the content?

[Cubewano]

18 minutes ago, (PS4)Onder6099 said:

I’m near 100% PuG player, in every PuG mission min 1 player is power creep, isn’t that 25%? Tbh, lots of players should make their personal challenge called: “My week in PuGs.”, just to see how weak and with huge lack of knowledge decent amount of playerbase is. Isn’t that main reason that balance in these days is not about power creep but about softening the content?

That's not a very practical testing method for who would leave, this is a very large game with a large population, and the experiences of a single player isn't going to provide a realistic trend for all player behavior, at least not on such vague standards. How long have you been playing? How many public missions have you ran? Have you tracked which ones have meta adhering players? I'm also not sure if I'm understanding but are you assuming that just because a person is using power creep or I suppose meta gear that immediately registers them for abandon if such a standard was changed? Or likewise that they are a paying player? As those are both similarly dubious assumptions that need far more involvement to be reliable. 

[(PSN)Onder6099]

29 minutes ago, Cubewano said:

That's not a very practical testing method for who would leave, this is a very large game with a large population, and the experiences of a single player isn't going to provide a realistic trend for all player behavior, at least not on such vague standards. How long have you been playing? How many public missions have you ran? Have you tracked which ones have meta adhering players? I'm also not sure if I'm understanding but are you assuming that just because a person is using power creep or I suppose meta gear that immediately registers them for abandon if such a standard was changed? Or likewise that they are a paying player? As those are both similarly dubious assumptions that need far more involvement to be reliable. 

Everything is saved on DE’s datamines, so they know the best. It will become nonsense if they will do something which will affect their money income. Still missing a point why should be something removed or balanced which is for me power creep while for another 10 players is fun. Paradox: while in PHP Forum players recommend power creep on General Forum players complain about that.

[Cubewano]

4 minutes ago, (PS4)Onder6099 said:

Everything is saved on DE’s datamines, so they know the best. It will become nonsense if they will do something which will affect their money income. Still missing a point why should be something removed or balanced which is for me power creep while for another 10 players is fun. Paradox: while in PHP Forum players recommend power creep on General Forum players complain about that.

If they do adequate testing yes, but I'm not sure DE has done extensive testing (definitely not recently) on what would happen if they did a hard rebalance of the game. And if they somehow have, they definitely haven't leaked it to us so far as I'm aware.  And why would be as simple as believing people will ultimately have more fun after such changes go through. I know the idea of nerfing is scary to some, and highly stigmatized, but realistically it is much easier to provide a quality experience to players from a point of balance within a game than through wild thrashing.

[Chaemyerelis]

I would be amazed that a developer had the balls to end power creep. Most shy away from it because of the backlash from most players who will scream "but mah damage numbers!! Derp derp!".

[TheGrimCorsair]

Well, if our gear were to not get anymore powerful than it can be today I'd say that's fine. We already have a progression from "kind of a badass" to "unstoppable engine of destruction that obliterates everything in its path" in terms of the way the capabilities of our gear relate to the expectations the game places on players.

Mechanically speaking, there's little difficulty left in Warframe once you've assembled your arsenal of riven'd up weapons with their prime mods and supported by their heavily optimized warframe builds in conjunction with smartly chosen companion and operator active skill tree. As of yet, there isn't anything in the Origin system that'll stand in your way or threaten you, and that's kind of the point. The game is structured, intentionally or not, to bring you to the point of godhood and the mechanics support that at every turn.