Does enemy damage really need to scale infinitely?

[Hypermega]

OK, this turned out to be a doozy so apologies in advance, Im open to criticism and counter points as iv been making many to keep myself playing but i might not respond if i think you only read the TLDR despite how valid or cutting your response is (assuming anyone responds at all i mean look at that wall of nonsense!! Il say this though if you don't play the game for it's horde modes then might wanna give it miss. 

Iv always considered myself in a minority of players who considers soloing endless runs for over an hour and playing this game for it's horde modes almost exclusively but i cant help but notice a pattern to my approach which has happened as a result of the game. see if im going to mot or selkie, im not taking anything that cant altogether circumvent damage. this game has all manor of ways for surviving including damage reduction, parrying, healing, the list goes on but anything that takes even a tick of damage is meaningless since at a certain level and up, one tick of damage from any enemy will kill you instantly. 

Now iv a lot of methods for overcoming this, stealth, volt shield, Molt, radiation but most of my frames simply have no place in a horde game as they are forced to "face tank" eg excal needs only to have a napalm or bombard missile hurled at him by a level 100+ enemy and he is deleted, ash needs only to be seen recasting stealth by level 60+ and he is hitscanned out of the game, (il make a note now that iv seen ash players on console get away with this i have no idea how) 

On my builds that do break past 60 minutes its enemy numbers and survivability that that causes me to turn away and extract because i can no long keep up with the objective, or become overwhelmed, is this not challenge enough? its not that enemies do too much damage for me, iv just learned to undermine it altogether out of necessity but now im asking why have parrying, lifestrike, frost bubbles, health, damage reduction, etc? if none of these things are viable where they are needed IE they don't scale. in warframe your either running to get ahead of your team hoping to kill something before they do, or sitting in stealth because god forbid you get seen for a second by a corrupted crewman or bombarded. No delay, no miss the first shot. they are like tobjiorn's turret they shot you before the animation of them doing so started so not even flipping and flopping like a space ninja works, IE the game isn't even built around the movement of a warframe we just get pelted until one hit is enough to kill you 100 times over and still keeps scaling beyond that WHY? 

The other side is game modes. excavation, defense eventually the objective gets one shot and only certain frames can protect it. enter limbo lol but eventually if you dont have limbo or volt one shot is all it takes for mission failure, that isnt challenging that is denying 99% of the game's build options i don't get that.

The way i see it is if enemy damage started to plateau around level 80-100 (not that it should necessarily im not an expert of tuning numbers) depending on faction that wouldnt mean i can go further but instead mean i can utilize other warframes and playstyles. i want to get good at using a high parry melee weapon and positioning and combos, or dodge bullets, these styles as well as others do work to a point but its a horde game they should work indefinitely as long of the player's skill measures up! i know about 3 combos lol, shouldnt that be the more viable playstyle? the one takes more skill?

TLDR im bored of playing the horde modes with the mindset that enemies cant be allowed to land a single hit on me, i know there are ways (i use them) but 99% of playstyles which id like to explore simply dont scale because if your survive long enough enemies can hit you for a billion, a trillion, a quadreducuilian per tick and you either dont hit at all whatsoever or you die.

Other notes, yes enemy health and armour should also get a diminishing return (or same problem) albeit much later on than damage and these statistical increases should be replaced by more aggressive AI, more enemies, modifiers, bosses! think stalker, zanuka, grustrag 3, why not build them into the horde modes? and other things that someone who is paid to think of these things should dream up. It doesn't just have to be straight health and damage increase this is boring! 

 

 

 

[CaptainMinty]

Scaling is part of a problem that involves our own power. We destroy everything virtually instantly. In order for enemies to be effective, they have to either smack us to the floor repeatedly, or kill us with their sneezes.

As for how to balance things without causing a huge ruckus within the community? That I cannot answer. Preferably I'd like to make enemies tougher without making them so deadly. Heavier enemies that don't quite hit as hard. That way it encourages us to focus fire properly and pick proper targets, instead of just nuking an entire map.

[Tinklzs]

2 minutes ago, CaptainMinty said:

Scaling is part of a problem that involves our own power. We destroy everything virtually instantly. In order for enemies to be effective, they have to either smack us to the floor repeatedly, or kill us with their sneezes.

As for how to balance things without causing a huge ruckus within the community? That I cannot answer. Preferably I'd like to make enemies tougher without making them so deadly. Heavier enemies that don't quite hit as hard. That way it encourages us to focus fire properly and pick proper targets, instead of just nuking an entire map.

I think it might be a balance of both. Perhaps having some tougher enemies (more health armor, borderlands style) and some cannon fodder 'storm trooper' enemies that are easy to sneeze and kill 500 of them.

In another thread revolving around power creep, mini-bosses were spoken of. I think that could be another way to help add some difficulty and spice up gameplay. And I mean real mini-boss, not wolf mini-boss (also redesign wolf a bit).

 

[Lutesque]

I can't tell you why it was designed like this.... or why the rewards don't scale along side the enemies' level.... DE Says they don't want you to pay those modes for too long...... but they too much of a chicken to just outright cut you off after an hour so they just break the enemy scaling in the hopes that will force you to leave....

Now.... prepare yourself for a bunch idiotic "Git Gut" type of responses.... because some people just gotta stroke their Egos...

[(PSN)Dishinshoryuken]

Look at it the way I do-

 

The enemies are not scaling up, our frames are getting tired and our powers are doing less damage to them. By the time you are hitting something and the numbers coming off are red and in the millions....what does that mean? Are we getting that number in credits from the enemy? Do they drop a multiple of resources that match those numbers for us to collect?

So if they are dropping the same things and all we are doing is spin-to-win or sitting in stealth with a Ancient specter while the horses keep coming at us.....is it any different than the first few modes without using Adaption and all these other mods to stay alive?

If you are having fun with big numbers on the same enemy you killed 200+ times in the same mission, Kool. But we should all ask ourselves is it really a challenge when we use the cheese in the game instead of the ability to survive?

I know the first time I saw this was when I wanted to Melee with one of the Melee units (Grinder Butcher) and the first time I tried, I got KOed. When I got my frame and weapons stronger, it was the opposite for that melee unit, he died with one strike...as did the others after him. And then I stopped seeing the units and started to just shoot/slash at whatever was in front of me. And we do it no matter the level because we get paired with players that don't see the enemies as worthy opponents to face but as stuff to remove to see.....??? I don't even know what reason people do long missions anymore since they already know the frames will wipe the tileset clear.

As long as some fun is had....keep on doing it guess

 

 

 

 

 

[NekroArts]

27 minutes ago, Hypermega said:

TLDR im bored of playing the horde modes with the mindset that enemies cant be allowed to land a single hit on me, i know there are ways (i use them) but 99% of playstyles which id like to explore simply dont scale because if your survive long enough enemies can hit you for a billion, a trillion, a quadreducuilian per tick and you either dont hit at all whatsoever or you die.

Other notes, yes enemy health and armour should also get a diminishing return (or same problem) albeit much later on than damage and these statistical increases should be replaced by more aggressive AI, more enemies, modifiers, bosses! think stalker, zanuka, grustrag 3, why not build them into the horde modes? and other things that someone who is paid to think of these things should dream up. It doesn't just have to be straight health and damage increase this is boring!

Considering we're both too versatile and (in a way) too powerful, scaling might be our only limiters. I mean they're endless missions, we bring our best to go as far as we can until our best can't handle it anymore. So then what is the fair way to make us say "we should leave, this is as far as we can go"? The things you suggest as replacements are iffy, you're going to have to go more into detail such as aggressive AI, the closest thing we have to that are the Infested and maybe the Manics as a reference. And the bosses, honestly it might feel like the bonus mission of Proxy Rebellion: it's going to feel difficult but not enough to be a threat.

[taiiat]

Snowglobe and Damage Reduction doesn't scale? uwot.
those are some of the strongest scaling things in the game.

 

but anyways, it sounds like you're complaining about Level Scaling. either have them Level Scale, or don't. don't add special exclusions and create inconsistent rules. if you want Enemies to present difficulty in a different way, then have them do just that.

14 minutes ago, Tinklzs said:

I think it might be a balance of both. Perhaps having some tougher enemies (more health armor, borderlands style) and some cannon fodder 'storm trooper' enemies that are easy to sneeze and kill 500 of them.

we have a mix already, technically. it's just like 90% pointless Trash that exists to soak one bullet and 5% or less of actually relevant Enemies that have EHP that means anything and/or do more than just stand there and plink a basic Gun at us.
yno, most of the Enemies that are shooting back at us, is just the same Lancer with a bb gun as always. each Faction has a lot more variety than that to offer, but it's held back so much that we don't really get to see much of it.

[Hypermega]

2 hours ago, CaptainMinty said:

Scaling is part of a problem that involves our own power. We destroy everything virtually instantly. In order for enemies to be effective, they have to either smack us to the floor repeatedly, or kill us with their sneezes.

As for how to balance things without causing a huge ruckus within the community? That I cannot answer. Preferably I'd like to make enemies tougher without making them so deadly. Heavier enemies that don't quite hit as hard. That way it encourages us to focus fire properly and pick proper targets, instead of just nuking an entire map.

 

Totally get this and its one of the things iv been telling myself, frankly everything said is what iv been telling myself lol but i think there is call for more effort in the horde modes, there i certainly no shortage of creativity that can be applied to it and that's what annoys the most is that lack of aftercare and attention to detail. i see Vodyata (if i got that right) as a good indicator of where enemies should stop scaling in stats and begin ranging in tactics. i have few frames that can safely solo this but rathuum and index elite units are the answer to scailing in the horde modes in my opinion because then you have to think instead of just employing cheesy camping tactics lol. but again its not for me to hurl out ideas its DE's job to do that and its the fact they dont that annoys me as this is their most challenging and sustainable content in my opinion.

[Lutesque]

4 hours ago, taiiat said:

but anyways, it sounds like you're complaining about Level Scaling. either have them Level Scale, or don't. don't add special exclusions and create inconsistent rules. if you want Enemies to present difficulty in a different way, then have them do just that.

Cranking up arbitrary numbers has got didly squat to do with Difficulty.... its just a gear check. And your gear will always lose to enemy scaling....

 

[Hypermega]

4 hours ago, NekroArts said:

The things you suggest as replacements are iffy, you're going to have to go more into detail such as aggressive AI, the closest thing we have to that are the Infested and maybe the Manics as a reference. And the bosses, honestly it might feel like the bonus mission of Proxy Rebellion: it's going to feel difficult but not enough to be a threat.

 I don't like to suggest things, simply because im not being paid to design DEs game and everyone has a different idea of what should be so i defer to the professionals, i can give lose examples but only as a means of pointing out the flaws, or attempting to do so at least. like i said every argument made is things i tell myself. probably yours more than any other but its besides the point. DE have been sitting on this horde mode for years and not adjusting it to reflect the way the game has evolved in terms of player power. just setting it to ramp up in damage and health has stagnated and worse still is DE is making the game more like destiny here, GTA there, tony hawks the other etc etc and none of it works because this is a horde shooter it cant be scaled the way destiny is because we dont have levels like those games. the enemies do but we dont thats the difference and im starting to feel like DE have forgotten this and the game is starting to spin out of control because of how nebulous and missmatched the overall balance is.

As an example i suggest you go take a base over on fortuna and stay there while corpus continue to swarm in they will go up in level endlessly or at least to a point but they attack in veriaty of different ways and its quite interesting its not perfect but shows me DE can do it when they want to.

[NekroArts]

14 minutes ago, Hypermega said:

As an example i suggest you go take a base over on fortuna and stay there while corpus continue to swarm in they will go up in level endlessly or at least to a point but they attack in veriaty of different ways and its quite interesting its not perfect but shows me DE can do it when they want to.

Even though they look different they hurt the same way, it's the cc ones that many pay attention to. My 2 biggest gripe are those corpus units that has a 2-part cc - stagger if you get hit with their flying-charge attack and aoe knockdown effect (spreading like a bubble) when they land & the one that fires a small projectile (that really has a large hit box) that can block shots and can cause knockdown to anyone within its blast radius.

Those would be fine if there weren't excessive amounts of them.

Edited July 28, 2019 by NekroArts

[Hypermega]

27 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

Cranking up arbitrary numbers has got didly squat to do with Difficulty.... its just a gear check. And your gear will always lose to enemy scaling....

 

in a way you are right my friend but its not so much a gear check (we dont have gear or levels just options) more like a DPS or KPS and suvivability check. the difference is we deal in lateral percentages and not straight increases in stats like wow etc. and yes we will always lose to scaling enemies if these are the only things that are being scaled. Im asking at what point have these things passed the test and what other things can be checked instead. I mean if your surviving level 300 mot enemies it should be safe to say enemy damage is irrelevant at that point and other options should be explored.

Edited July 28, 2019 by Hypermega

[ant99999]

Damage numbers themselves are not as much of a problem (although they are a problem) as how enemies deal this damage and how we are supposed to counter it.

So the damage dealt to us is not something you can mitigate by maneuvering, as it should be ideally, it is just a circumstance that is always present. You can't avoid it, enemies spam bullets all over the place, so you will get damaged eventually.

Now what about how we can mitigate it. Either by straight forward damage resistance from ability or armor. There is no mechanic that allows for a mistake on squishier frames, they are just get instantly one-shotted. Only the tanks can survive... to a point in time, where they are also have half of the health depleted in a shot.

On top of that our current variety of tanking methods fails to mitigate damage spikes completely. This means that a gunner isn't even a fracture of a threat that is a bombard, because bombards deal damage in spikes, but such things as shields, Adaptation, passive health regeneration completely fail to mitigate those. We have Quick Thinking that was supposed to tank spikes, but in reality it just doesn't work and gets you killed indefinitely by stunlocking you till the energy is gone.

All that I've just said translates into only a tiny fracture of frames rooster being able to survive without any help from a eHP buffer like Trinity. And some of the ones that do survive do it more effectively than the others depending on what mechanic they are using to do so.

This could be countered by introducing a constant mechanic that allows to survive the initial damage blast to give us time to counter act (like shield gating which is unfortunately a meme by now).

[Cubewano]

I'm not entirely sure I see the problem here, if you're struggling against entirely optional levels of enemy difficulty from a mission going on too long, just reset the mission. Some people find the allure of endless to be the infinite scaling, and the concept of endless in general is to facilitate endless scaling, otherwise they'd just end after a full rotation and tell you to join again, if you don't like that style of play you don't have to do it, it is like entirely optional with zero impact on how you progress. You don't have to stick to that specific session for hours to keep that content going, or get what rewards you are looking for, no reason to strip out an option of play just because you don't want to use the easily manageable tools you have to get around it. 

[taiiat]

46 minutes ago, Lutesque said:

Cranking up arbitrary numbers has got didly squat to do with Difficulty.... its just a gear check. And your gear will always lose to enemy scaling....

 

maybe yours does, but we've presented that if we really want to, 5 digit Enemy Levels are doable, even in Survival where TTK is important. granted a lot of things do start to fall off entirely somewhere between lv3000 and lv5000, yes.

[kwlingo]

Well an idea I have for end game going along with this topic would be better rewards with scaling and no mods equipped mod. But then they would have to change the mods settings because the only way this would work is if there are random mod drops with random stats therefore there would be an endless number of mods. This would change how the entire looter system for warframe though. In the end they cannot make everyone happy. Its just impossible. Because better mods would make the enemies too easy in the end. Therefore the scaling would be needed.

[taiiat]

4 minutes ago, (XB1)GaussPrime said:

Well, let me add that high lvl nullifiers don't give a damn about quick thinking.. got one shot through a lot of energy multiple times.. only was able to capture it one time..

well ofcourse. that high Level Spike Damage Enemy is just a league above your Energy Pool, so it can't save you. all you can do then is Armor/DR stack your QT, to make the bar longer.

Edited July 28, 2019 by taiiat

[Hypermega]

4 minutes ago, ant99999 said:

Damage numbers themselves are not as much of a problem (although they are a problem) as how enemies deal this damage and how we are supposed to counter it.

So the damage dealt to us is not something you can mitigate by maneuvering, as it should be ideally, it is just a circumstance that is always present. You can't avoid it, enemies spam bullets all over the place, so you will get damaged eventually.

Now what about how we can mitigate it. Either by straight forward damage resistance from ability or armor. There is no mechanic that allows for a mistake on squishier frames, they are just get instantly one-shotted. Only the tanks can survive... to a point in time, where they are also have half of the health depleted in a shot.

On top of that our current variety of tanking methods fails to mitigate damage spikes completely. This means that a gunner isn't even a fracture of a threat that is a bombard, because bombards deal damage in spikes, but such things as shields, Adaptation, passive health regeneration completely fail to mitigate those. We have Quick Thinking that was supposed to tank spikes, but in reality it just doesn't work and gets you killed indefinitely by stunlocking you till the energy is gone.

All that I've just said translates into only a tiny fracture of frames rooster being able to survive without any help from a eHP buffer like Trinity. And some of the ones that do survive do it more effectively than the others depending on what mechanic they are using to do so.

This could be countered by introducing a constant mechanic that allows to survive the initial damage blast to give us time to counter act (like shield gating which is unfortunately a meme by now).

 

absolutely right! every word. The solution im suggesting is as iv said to put a a soft cap on enemy damage and resort to other methods of difficulty. an easy way would be to cap spike damage based on max health, say no more than 90% of calculated EHP per hit and then the damage reduction from rolling etc would stack with that affording us a chance to fight indefinitely so long as we utilize these gameplay mechanics as well as things like kiting enemies and keep them from overwhelming us which is easily done if champions like you see in rathuum or index and even fortuna are able to sidetrack us from dealing with the hordes at large.

[kwlingo]

4 minutes ago, taiiat said:

 granted a lot of things do start to fall off entirely somewhere between lv3000 and lv5000, yes.

Holly molly how long does that take? lol Im good at the 170-200

[goatwin]

Im no expert in number chrunching to find a solution, though I can talk mechanics. The viable way of doing endless missions is to cheese and sit in a corner somewhere spamming abilities. To me, this is not fun. But getting one shotted out of nowhere is less fun. An overhaul of the interactions and mechanics between health, damage, and enemies would be needed. Shadow of mordor seems to be a good example of having a mix between horde fighting, tactical gameplay, and scaling enemies without feeling overwhelmed. 

[ant99999]

56 минут назад, Hypermega сказал:

absolutely right! every word. The solution im suggesting is as iv said to put a a soft cap on enemy damage and resort to other methods of difficulty. an easy way would be to cap spike damage based on max health, say no more than 90% of calculated EHP per hit and then the damage reduction from rolling etc would stack with that affording us a chance to fight indefinitely so long as we utilize these gameplay mechanics as well as things like kiting enemies and keep them from overwhelming us which is easily done if champions like you see in rathuum or index and even fortuna are able to sidetrack us from dealing with the hordes at large.

Generally these all are good things. However, let me add a bit.

First of all when thinking of shield gating as opposed to damage cap you proposing, the former also takes care of shields. Right now shields are flat out useless, except from some frames deliberately made for making them seem viable. If we introduce a competently made shield gating, which applies invulberability time depending on how much shields were taken out before depleting, it can make shields actually matter, whereas damage cap still being a good solution does nothing to solve shields problem.

The second is about rolls and damage mitigation in general. If you are proposing the idea of being able to last indefinitely long provided you have some skill, then having only resistanses as a universal mitigation method is simply not enough. We need invulnerability frames. The most conventional way is to add them to rolls Nier Automata style. Along with shield gating invulnerability time it will truly give us a chance to survive both damage spikes by rolling in advance and constant damage streams by relying on shield gating to react and apply crowd control.

P.S. I know about Rolling Guard mod as well, but as with many mechanics right now it was introduced as a band-aid, poorly designed and not really changing anything, this mechanic should be redesigned and introduced universaly, and the mod can be remade into having different effects.

Edited July 28, 2019 by ant99999
Clarification on Rolling Guard

[Dama73]

The biggest issue with enemy scaling in warframe is the lack of rewards for taking on high level enemies,

Do they drop more resources or rare items the higher level they get?

No, we just get the same horrible drops that we get from fighting a level 1.

 

Right now there is little incentive for players to take on high level enemies outside of the mission rewards.

[Corvid]

2 minutes ago, Dama73 said:

The biggest issue with enemy scaling in warframe is the lack of rewards for taking on high level enemies,

Do they drop more resources or rare items the higher level they get?

No, we just get the same horrible drops that we get from fighting a level 1.

 

Right now there is little incentive for players to take on high level enemies outside of the mission rewards.

I see no problem here. Taking on high-level enemies is your choice.

[GABRIEL0296]

i dont mind damage scaling.. true problem is armor scaling... i think enemy armor and shield should stop scaling after a certain point

but their health should scale indefinitely 

[BDMblue]

I don’t think the problem is people being 1 shot. The problem is how fast it goes from can’t hurt me to dead. 

Ive watched a lot of YouTube with people playing war frame and they say “got 1 shoted......” yet if you watch the video they took damage for 3 seconds from the guy before they dropped.

Before that guy started to hit them no one else even scratched them. They would lose 10 hp a hit then one guy is doing 100-150 a hit and they don’t notice till they drop. 

 

I think ink if we got a light red flash at 75% hp darker at 50% and dim at 25% people would at lest know they are getting hurt. We really lack a visual cue we are ding.