Never really liked Primary weapons. Can I have another secondary instead?

[TheMostFrench]

On 2019-08-09 at 9:05 PM, OmegaVoid said:

You do you.

I want TWO Grakata and TWO Grakata!!!

Can I get TWO MOAR Grakata instead of my melee?

I wanted something like this for Mesa, where she can use a melee stance on a secondary weapon. Each melee attack fires the gun a few times, or you just hit enemies with the gun if they are close. I guess this is why they made gun blades.

 

On 2020-06-23 at 8:25 PM, Teridax68 said:

This is something I'd personally really like to see. I don't think there's truly a point to being limited to one primary, one secondary, and one melee, particularly as the distinction between primaries and secondaries is already fairly arbitrary: secondary weapons are smaller and... that's it, really? They're equally powerful, equally fast, and often do the same things. I don't think there would be any balance problem with letting us equip two secondaries, or even two primaries, and in this respect I think one could easily pool at least our guns together, if not all of our weapons in order to let us choose freely.

One balance problem I can think of is Syndicate weapons and Syndicate weapon mods, e.g Vaykor Hek in slot 1, then Hek in slot 2 with the Scattered Justice mod. You now carry what is one giant Hek shotgun with an increased magazine capacity before mods, lots of damage and 2 syndicate procs. Then you have stuff like the Kohm which has at least 3 variants. Kohm is balanced by running out of ammo if you fire too wildly, but if you are carrying 3 Kohms it suddenly doesn't matter anymore.

On that note, I'm pretty sure you can build as many copies of any weapon that you want, like if I wanted to build 3 Ignis flamethrowers I could choose to do that, they don't have to be different variants, but that's why they added mod config slots so that you could easily switch builds, because people used to have multiple versions of the same gun depending on enemies they were going to fight.

In my opinion I don't really see primary/secondary/melee as a limitation, because there are enough different secondaries and primaries to choose from that it covers a lot of bases really well. There are a variety of decent submachine guns, the Atomos, different beam and energy weapons, thrown weapons, and one handed crossbows. But the thing is these are truly SECONDARY weapons. Like you said, they are smaller, they are not really designed to be the first choice, but there are a few that stand out - I really like the Vaykor Marelok because it does good damage and has a syndicate proc, and the Atomos is a good status weapon.

One thing that hasn't aged well is that there are so many different types of pistols from early in Warframe's life which aren't very different except for their appearance and a few stats - Lato, Lex, Vasto, Magnus, then akimbo and prime variants, so that's like 12 pistol weapons that are almost exactly the same. The Bronco is a little different because they are pistol-shotguns.

Not a balance issue, but players have to use the Xoris to complete the Deadlock Protocol quest, so that's at least on time where they must carry a melee weapon.

____________________

Adding my own thoughts:

I think it could be a good idea, but right now I personally don't think that secondary weapons are interesting enough, despite what I said about them 'covering all bases'. Based on the last few pages it sounds like most of you really want to carry three pairs of Twin Graks and to just never. stop. shooting.

I don't think that's a bad thing, but I guess it doesn't interest me that much because I prefer to chop people up, or knock them sky high with a good hammer swing! It's just my style. I also prefer sniper rifles, or guns like the Opticor which have a big windup, and vaporise the enemy. My favourite gun to spam is definitely the Kohm, or an old favourite is the Gorgon (I like the chunky sound it makes).

I'd be more interested to see what carrying multiple melee weapons would be like - especially if we could chain switch between different melee combos to extend them.

[Uthael]

9 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

One balance problem I can think of is Syndicate weapons and Syndicate weapon mods, e.g Vaykor Hek in slot 1, then Hek in slot 2 with the Scattered Justice mod. You now carry what is one giant Hek shotgun with an increased magazine capacity before mods, lots of damage and 2 syndicate procs. Then you have stuff like the Kohm which has at least 3 variants. Kohm is balanced by running out of ammo if you fire too wildly, but if you are carrying 3 Kohms it suddenly doesn't matter anymore.

- I doubt that there would be a Syndicate mods -related problem. I'm certain the multishot won't work on Vaykor Hek. The +multishot is a separate mod, just like Hell's Chamber.
- Syndicate mods aren't equippable on other weapon variants. Even if it's not a syndicate weapon. Take Furis and Furis Wrath for example.
- Sancti Tigris and Winds of Purity (the augment for Furis) have the same proc. Same mechanics, equipped twice. Does it work? I never checked. Would it be abused a lot if it does? I doubt it. Would it be fixable? Definitely. DE have shown that they're able to correct such interactions.
- About Kohm - In the current game state, the ammo pool is shared among categories. Secondary launchers deplete your primary launchers ammo. And even if you had 3 ammo pools, you'd sacrifice versatility for that. Would be fun, though.

--------------------------------
Being able to equip several builds for the same weapon does solve some problems, though. Some weapons are crit/stat, depending on fire mode you're using. Not being limited to one fire mode would be nice. As for the Ignis example, it would be good to be able to switch from fast trash clear to crowd control or armor strip when the enemies become too strong.

--------------------------------
Mod config slots sometimes aren't enough. Mostly because of the infamous D-polarity on (Primed) Cold. And sometimes because you need a "V" instead of another "-" for one specific build.
My Ignis is 7-Forma. Would be 8 if I had a riven. That's a bricked build. Having 2 is useful in this case.

 

9 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

I'd be more interested to see what carrying multiple melee weapons would be like - especially if we could chain switch between different melee combos to extend them.

The combo doesn't extend. An unfortunate example of this is de/activating Talons on Valkyr. It would be great if that got "fixed". And yes, it would be awesome to spin around, slashing enemies with dual swords, build up your combo, switch to a heavy Zaw, bullet-jump up, throw a Contagion at a Heavy Gunner and heavy slam on its face. Boom! Mission complete xD

[Teridax68]

23 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

One balance problem I can think of is Syndicate weapons and Syndicate weapon mods, e.g Vaykor Hek in slot 1, then Hek in slot 2 with the Scattered Justice mod.

One is already capable of equipping a Syndicate weapon in every weapon slot, and no balance problem has come out of it.

23 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

You now carry what is one giant Hek shotgun with an increased magazine capacity before mods, lots of damage and 2 syndicate procs.

That you have to manually switch through.

23 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

Then you have stuff like the Kohm which has at least 3 variants. Kohm is balanced by running out of ammo if you fire too wildly, but if you are carrying 3 Kohms it suddenly doesn't matter anymore.

Except now you basically just have one weapon instead of three, all so that your Kohm doesn't run out of ammo. I'd say that's more than a fair trade.

23 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

On that note, I'm pretty sure you can build as many copies of any weapon that you want, like if I wanted to build 3 Ignis flamethrowers I could choose to do that, they don't have to be different variants, but that's why they added mod config slots so that you could easily switch builds, because people used to have multiple versions of the same gun depending on enemies they were going to fight.

For the same mission? Is that something that is liable to incur problems at the moment?

23 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

In my opinion I don't really see primary/secondary/melee as a limitation, because there are enough different secondaries and primaries to choose from that it covers a lot of bases really well. There are a variety of decent submachine guns, the Atomos, different beam and energy weapons, thrown weapons, and one handed crossbows. But the thing is these are truly SECONDARY weapons. Like you said, they are smaller, they are not really designed to be the first choice, but there are a few that stand out - I really like the Vaykor Marelok because it does good damage and has a syndicate proc, and the Atomos is a good status weapon.

My point, though, was that besides looking physically smaller, there is little real difference between them and primaries -- they cover the same range of functions as primaries, which is why there are secondary shotguns, beam weapons, even snipers. There isn't a meaningful difference between those two classes of guns, and this is without even bringing up the melee weapons that also sometimes operate as ammo-less guns.

23 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

Not a balance issue, but players have to use the Xoris to complete the Deadlock Protocol quest, so that's at least on time where they must carry a melee weapon.

Whether the weapon is melee or not is irrelevant, one can still unequip it and screw oneself over now, and the same would happen if all weapons were merged into the same selection pool. I'm not sure why the existence of specific quest-mandatory weapons would require types to be made separate.

[TheMostFrench]

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Except now you basically just have one weapon instead of three, all so that your Kohm doesn't run out of ammo. I'd say that's more than a fair trade.

Based on other replies I've seen, this seems like the reason a lot of people like this idea - the chance to carry 3 sets of their favourite weapon e.g twin grakata, or a 'set' like big sword, little sword, dagger.

 

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Whether the weapon is melee or not is irrelevant, one can still unequip it and screw oneself over now, and the same would happen if all weapons were merged into the same selection pool. I'm not sure why the existence of specific quest-mandatory weapons would require types to be made separate.

I think I've only been in this position once but I'm pretty sure I've tried to go on a story missions without a required item and been told 'You need xyz item equipped to do this mission'. I can only assume the same thing would have happened if I didn't have the Xoris equipped for Deadlock Protocol missions that required it.

 

2 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

My point, though, was that besides looking physically smaller, there is little real difference between them and primaries -- they cover the same range of functions as primaries, which is why there are secondary shotguns, beam weapons, even snipers. There isn't a meaningful difference between those two classes of guns, and this is without even bringing up the melee weapons that also sometimes operate as ammo-less guns.

For variety and content, I guess? Something for people to work towards building and collecting? Early in Warframe's life there were like 4 or 5 kinds of pistol - lex, lato, vasto, magnus, sicarus, bolto, their akimbo versions, and prime, wraith and vandal variants. They differed in appearance, style, slight differences in stats, some were revolvers, some magnums, bolto obviously fired bolts and could pin enemies. They all gave something players to work towards even though at their core it was another pistol. DE weren't going to reinvent the wheel with every single weapon that came out.

Part of every content release now tends to include a new frame, a prime version of a frame that didn't exist before, a new cosmetic pack for an existing frame, or any of these combined with a set of weapons. If there is a new quest or mission area it will probably fit that theme, like the latest weapons are corpus themed to fit the Deadlock Protocol.

[Teridax68]

9 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

Based on other replies I've seen, this seems like the reason a lot of people like this idea - the chance to carry 3 sets of their favourite weapon e.g twin grakata, or a 'set' like big sword, little sword, dagger.

And this is a bad thing... why? Why do we need to punish the players expressing enthusiasm at the idea of trying meme builds?

9 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

I think I've only been in this position once but I'm pretty sure I've tried to go on a story missions without a required item and been told 'You need xyz item equipped to do this mission'. I can only assume the same thing would have happened if I didn't have the Xoris equipped for Deadlock Protocol missions that required it.

Sorties with weapon restrictions won't let you enter a mission unless you have a weapon of the required type... and primary weapons are split into a bunch of different types there already. So, once again, what does weapon type have to do with this?

9 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

For variety and content, I guess? Something for people to work towards building and collecting? Early in Warframe's life there were like 4 or 5 kinds of pistol - lex, lato, vasto, magnus, sicarus, bolto, their akimbo versions, and prime, wraith and vandal variants. They differed in appearance, style, slight differences in stats, some were revolvers, some magnums, bolto obviously fired bolts and could pin enemies. They all gave something players to work towards even though at their core it was another pistol. DE weren't going to reinvent the wheel with every single weapon that came out.

Part of every content release now tends to include a new frame, a prime version of a frame that didn't exist before, a new cosmetic pack for an existing frame, or any of these combined with a set of weapons. If there is a new quest or mission area it will probably fit that theme, like the latest weapons are corpus themed to fit the Deadlock Protocol.

Okay, and I'm with you there that variety is good, but that's also my point: weapon type separation isn't what causes variety, actual weapon diversity causes variety. So, why then is the question of variety relevant to that of enforcing weapon type separation?

[TheMostFrench]

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

And this is a bad thing... why? Why do we need to punish the players expressing enthusiasm at the idea of trying meme builds?

I never said it was bad, just an observation.

 

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

but that's also my point: weapon type separation isn't what causes variety, actual weapon diversity causes variety. So, why then is the question of variety relevant to that of enforcing weapon type separation?

Well that was my point when I said 'DE weren't going to reinvent the wheel with every single weapon that came out.' They can't come up with an entirely new gun that does something we have never seen before every time, otherwise there would be way less weapons to choose from, and we would see new guns less often. DE have definitely made the point in the past that new content attracts more players and keeps the game profitable.

Anyway, some people have different ideas of what 'variety' means, for example the Soma and Gorgon have totally different appearance, sound effects, and animations, but they are both machine guns - so depending on someone's point of view, they might say they are 'the same' even though lots of work has gone into making them look and sound very different. I would personally consider them to be varied enough to be interesting, but similar enough not to be overwhelming.

Imagine if every gun that exists in the game now was completely unique - no two guns were the same, and everything did something totally different. That's a lot of diversity and very impressive, but players would have to remember what all of them do, and chances are a lot of those guns would probably be useless or weird (which is already a problem with a number of guns), and a lot of potential ideas for guns are already Warframe or Operator abilities.

They would all need to be balanced against each other and balanced against the game, otherwise you end up with stuff like 4 people running around with the old style no self-damage Tonkor shooting enemies at point blank range and not using the other 99 weapons they spent all that time creating because people demanded more variety.

[Teridax68]

Just now, TheMostFrench said:

I never said it was bad, just an observation.

Okay, but you are clearly trying to use this observation to propose that those kinds of builds should be restricted, when nothing seems to support the notion that equipping three Kohms or the like would be particularly overpowered, or even good.

Just now, TheMostFrench said:

Well that was my point when I said 'DE weren't going to reinvent the wheel with every single weapon that came out.' They can't come up with an entirely new gun that does something we have never seen before every time, otherwise there would be way less weapons to choose from, and we would see new guns less often. DE have definitely made the point in the past that new content attracts more players and keeps the game profitable.

Sure... but again, how is this relevant to this conversation? Why would this entail keeping primaries and secondaries in separate categories?

Just now, TheMostFrench said:

Anyway, some people have different ideas of what 'variety' means, for example the Soma and Gorgon have totally different appearance, sound effects, and animations, but they are both machine guns - so depending on someone's point of view, they might say they are 'the same' even though lots of work has gone into making them look and sound very different. I would personally consider them to be varied enough to be interesting, but similar enough not to be overwhelming.

Your argument seems to be that people have different ideas of what "variety" means simply because there is a difference between mechanical and cosmetic variety. If a reskin of a weapon is enough to add variety, then great, we could use more skins. That's not, however, going to tide over the player looking for mechanical diversity, which is no longer something DE can provide just through weapon reskins with minor stat alterations. This is something you also noted.

Just now, TheMostFrench said:

Imagine if every gun that exists in the game now was completely unique - no two guns were the same, and everything did something totally different. That's a lot of diversity and very impressive, but players would have to remember what all of them do, and chances are a lot of those guns would probably be useless or weird, and a lot of potential ideas for guns are already Warframe or Operator abilities.

But players already have to remember the existence of hundreds of weapons by that very same standard, so more distinct functions would make them easier to memorize. I don't think that argument makes sense to begin with, though, since the only time the player has to remember these weapons is when choosing which ones to equip in the arsenal, after which point the player only needs to remember what their three equipped weapons do when playing in a mission.

Just now, TheMostFrench said:

They would all need to be balanced against each other and balanced against the game, otherwise you end up with stuff like 4 people running around with the old style no self-damage Tonkor shooting enemies at point blank range and not using the other 99 weapons they spent all that time creating because people demanded more variety.

And this is different to the current, highly unbalanced state of the game's arsenal... how? Also, why are we talking about the balance and diversity of individual weapons in a discussion about allowing players to equip two secondary weapons?

[Lancars]

I can't find a primary i like as well. All my sidearms do a better job. Most of the normal primaries are under-powered feeling unless you go for a riven and all the shotguns suck now. Only primaries that feel good are the gimmicky ones with weird passives. I use the Imperator vandal if i need a lot of bullets down the line. With all the changes to elements without some of the weapons being looked at too a lot of them feel like they hit the floor.

EDIT: Plus for the most part its the meta or nothing.

[TheMostFrench]

Just before we continue I want you to know there's no ill will here, and I'm enjoying this discussion 🙂 

9 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Why would this entail keeping primaries and secondaries in separate categories?

Because then there would just be one very long list called 'Weapons'. For all I know (I won't make any assumptions about your own knowledge) there could be a good game design reason behind it. Every time we open the equip menu in the arsenal to choose a new weapon, it could load a databse from primary, secondary or melee weapons, of 3d models, images, saved mod configurations and cosmetic setups, and animations.

If that list is suddenly three times as long, there is now three times as much info to load into memory - Even longer if people have lots of duplicate weapons they have made + zaws and kitguns. The difference in loading time might only be 3 quarters of a second, but if enough people notice that the menu lags every time it opens, then there will be threads popping up in these forums about how the arsenal menu has poor performance and is 'broken'.

 

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

And this is different to the current, highly unbalanced state of the game's arsenal... how? Also, why are we talking about the balance and diversity of individual weapons in a discussion about allowing players to equip two secondary weapons?

Haha, the discussion has gone way beyond equipping just two secondary weapons. Even you made this point after I mentioned how people were interested in using 3 sets of twin grakatas or 3 melee weapons. We shouldn't punish people for wanting to use whatever weapons they want, but there might be reasons that they can't which we aren't aware of:

11 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Why do we need to punish the players expressing enthusiasm at the idea of trying meme builds?

 

Anyway -

10 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

And this is different to the current, highly unbalanced state of the game's arsenal... how?

I thought you understood where I was coming from. The game already has issues with weapon and ability balance, but now you're saying that there needs to be even more diversity in the weapons even though the existing diversity has issues. I think what you're saying is 'It's already broken, so it doesn't matter if we break it even more for the sake of diversity'. ?

If something is broken and over powered, like the no self-damage Tonkor, or old-school Ember World on Fire, or old-school Mesa Peacemaker (where you didn't need to even look at enemies to shoot them, and the targeting circle did not get smaller) then people don't use anything else and it kills the diversity anyway. I definitely ran enough 4 man tonkor/ember groups to know what I'm talking about there, nothing could stop us, even more so if it was 3 ember + 1 trinity for unlimited energy. You could use other guns and frames if you wanted to, but you would have the lowest damage and the least kills at the end of every group mission. It used to be worse than it is now.

 

11 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

players already have to remember the existence of hundreds of weapons by that very same standard, so more distinct functions would make them easier to memorize. I don't think that argument makes sense to begin with, though, since the only time the player has to remember these weapons is when choosing which ones to equip in the arsenal, after which point the player only needs to remember what their three equipped weapons do when playing in a mission.

This is what I mean when I said it depends on what you mean by variety or diversity. If those guns are all completely different then I disagree.
Imagine these guns:
- One fires loot at high velocity. Whatever item you have collected the most of is used as ammo, so it mostly fires trash loot that doesn't do much damage. The loot is destroyed on impact. (I actually kind of like this idea, now that I think about it).

- One only hurts enemies if you shoot them in the knees. If the enemy is infested or non-human, you just have to figure out where the knees are meant to be.

- One hurts enemies by shooting your friends. It does splash damage (like a grenade launcher), but if the splash damage touches anything EXCEPT an ally then it does NO damage to enemies at all. Allies need to stand close (but not too close) to enemies for it to work. The gun does reduced self damage in case you are playing solo, but again, if enemies are too close it won't do any damage. Primary fire shoots a bomb and then you suck it back into yourself with secondary fire like a vacuum, or just shoot at the ground.

- One gun is a big polaroid camera, with a flash so powerful that enemies are disintegrated on every shot, it has a long windup time but everything in the player's field of view is a one shot kill. It takes a screenshot of their last moments, and you can stick them around your orbiter.

That's some diverse weapons that don't exist in the game yet, with very distinct and specific functions, but they all require a very different kind of behaviour and level of dedication from the player to make them work. I doubt most people would choose to use the first three when the fourth gun, that kills everything in one shot, exists. None of them are actually any better than stuff that already exists either. It's already possible to almost instantly clear a room with existing builds.

[Teridax68]

12 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

Just before we continue I want you to know there's no ill will here, and I'm enjoying this discussion 🙂 

The feeling is mutual!

12 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

Because then there would just be one very long list called 'Weapons'.

We already have very long lists. The search bar makes searching through easy.

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For all I know (I won't make any assumptions about your own knowledge) there could be a good game design reason behind it. Every time we open the equip menu in the arsenal to choose a new weapon, it could load a databse from primary, secondary or melee weapons, of 3d models, images, saved mod configurations and cosmetic setups, and animations.

For all I know there could be an invisible sky whale ready to crash down on top of us all the moment someone next leaves the house. I'm not going to worry about it, though, because it's pure conjecture based on zero evidence, and there is an infinity of conjectures just as valid as that one. The hypothesis you are proposing is one such conjecture, and ultimately one that isn't even relevant to the subject matter, given that if DE's databases were implemented poorly enough to not allow condensing of weapon types, that would just mean DE has a database problem that would need to be fixed, not that pooling weapons together would be a bad idea.

Quote

If that list is suddenly three times as long, there is now three times as much info to load into memory - Even longer if people have lots of duplicate weapons they have made + zaws and kitguns. The difference in loading time might only be 3 quarters of a second, but if enough people notice that the menu lags every time it opens, then there will be threads popping up in these forums about how the arsenal menu has poor performance and is 'broken'.

DE already uses tricks to save up on loading time with our tilesets, where rooms beyond the doors of our current tile aren't rendered until the player's close enough. If loading is ever a problem, I see no reason why a similar trick couldn't be used to only load names and icons of weapons in the vicinity of the player's search, and only load up more information for weapons that are directly selected. 

Quote

Haha, the discussion has gone way beyond equipping just two secondary weapons. Even you made this point after I mentioned how people were interested in using 3 sets of twin grakatas or 3 melee weapons. We shouldn't punish people for wanting to use whatever weapons they want, but there might be reasons that they can't which we aren't aware of:

If there are, then those reasons need to be fixed. Not only are those "reasons" purely hypothetical, given that there is zero supporting evidence for them, they're not even salient to whether or not it would be good to pool weapons together, particularly as you and I both seem to have ended up agreeing that it wouldn't really generate gameplay issues.

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, or old-school Ember World on Fire

It wasn't overpowered, merely boring to use for the player and their allies. WoF wasn't a balance problem, but a design problem.

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, or old-school Mesa Peacemaker (where you didn't need to even look at enemies to shoot them, and the targeting circle did not get smaller)

Peacemaker is arguably even more of a problem now, given its power. Again, the old Peacemaker's issue was one of design, not balance, as its damage was noticeably less than it is now.

Quote

then people don't use anything else and it kills the diversity anyway. I definitely ran enough 4 man tonkor/ember groups to know what I'm talking about there, nothing could stop us, even more so if it was 3 ember + 1 trinity for unlimited energy. You could use other guns and frames if you wanted to, but you would have the lowest damage and the least kills at the end of every group mission. It used to be worse than it is now.

I question this statement, given that the current meta is dominated by an equally small handful of optimal warframe picks, up until recently had one weapon stand head and shoulders above the rest (and arguably this is still the case if one knows how to build it properly), and has essentially only one meta elemental mod combination. That is, however, beside the point, as I'm curious to know how this relates to the topic of pooling weapons together, or even the topic of actually balancing weapons. Tell me, what is it you are proposing here to address the state of Warframe's balance?

Quote

That's some diverse weapons that don't exist in the game yet, with very distinct and specific functions, but they all require a very different kind of behaviour and level of dedication from the player to make them work. I doubt most people would choose to use the first three when the fourth gun, that kills everything in one shot, exists. None of them are actually any better than stuff that already exists either. It's already possible to almost instantly clear a room with existing builds.

So just balance the fourth gun to not be ridiculously overpowered? I'm not really sure what point you were trying to make here.

[Teridax68]

Posting here because Cloudflare seems to be having a conniption:

10 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

I thought you understood where I was coming from. The game already has issues with weapon and ability balance, but now you're saying that there needs to be even more diversity in the weapons even though the existing diversity has issues. I think what you're saying is 'It's already broken, so it doesn't matter if we break it even more for the sake of diversity'. ?

I think you may have misunderstood my point: not only are you arguing off of a standard of balance that never existed in the first place, you are arguing off of zero evidence that pooling weapons together or diversifying them would make them harder to balance. The opposite is more likely to be true, given that when the only difference between a number of options is minor mechanical differences, choosing from them is simple matter of number crunching, where one option wins and the rest inevitably loses. When weapons are diverse, however, they each have a niche, which means that so long as none of them are ridiculously over-the-top or useless, they're all likely to see play without needing to be balanced too finely.

10 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

If something is broken and over powered, like the no self-damage Tonkor,

The Tonkor deals no self-damage now and is still a middling weapon, so lack of self-damage was clearly not its problem. Just because there's some tiny echo chamber of self-damage fanatics on these forums doesn't mean one oughtn't apply some critical thinking and more comprehensive analysis of the game's balance over time.

[TheMostFrench]

14 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

For all I know there could be an invisible sky whale ready to crash down on top of us all the moment someone next leaves the house. I'm not going to worry about it, though, because it's pure conjecture based on zero evidence, and there is an infinity of conjectures just as valid as that one. The hypothesis you are proposing is one such conjecture, and ultimately one that isn't even relevant to the subject matter, given that if DE's databases were implemented poorly enough to not allow condensing of weapon types, that would just mean DE has a database problem that would need to be fixed, not that pooling weapons together would be a bad idea.

Ok, on the subject of things not relevant to the current discussion this has to take the cake. My assumption about memory management was at least to do with stuff that might be going on in the background of how Warframe is programmed. But the existence of 'an invisible sky whale' is more like an assumption about existentialism and reality as a whole.

My point is that if DE's databases are poorly implemented then yes, it WOULD mean that pooling weapons together would be a bad idea UNTIL those databases were fixed. Otherwise you would be introducing a brand new problem caused by poor database performance.

 

14 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

We already have very long lists. The search bar makes searching through easy.

You should be very glad if you've never forgotten the name, or even the appearance, of what you're looking for, because at times like that you have to scroll through equipment lists manually like "Uhhh it...shoots darts maybe... it was a rifle, I think? We were doing vault runs with it..."

My experience with the search bar is very hit and miss, the weapons are not all tagged properly:

For example if I go to melee weapons and type 'zaw' then only my zaw weapons will show up. But if I go to primary weapons and type 'sniper' I will get results like the Penta, Tonkor, and Ogris (possibly because they all have base 100 accuracy) along with a few actual sniper rifles, and Lenz, but no other bows which are good for sniping, like Dread.

Typing 'bow' will show all bows and crossbows, like you would expect.

Under secondary weapons if you type 'pistol' it will also show thrown weapons like knives and stars. But if you type 'throw' it will specifically show Aklex and Cycron along with thrown weapons. Once you type 'thrown' (with the 'n' on the end) it will only show throwing weapons. If you type 'shotgun' it will show Bronco, but not Akbronco or Akbronco prime.

 

 

14 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

It (world on fire) wasn't overpowered, merely boring to use for the player and their allies. WoF wasn't a balance problem, but a design problem.

I have to disagree. People could literally turn on world on fire, get up and walk away from the game for several minutes knowing there would be no risk. It was overpowered AND poorly designed. It was OP because enemies had no way to counter it (since WOF worked through walls), and it was poorly designed because there was no risk to the player - they didn't have to do anything to make the ability work except turn it on and have energy. Remember that there was also the firequake augment that knocked enemies down when they got hit with WOF. They couldn't even get close to a group with more than one firequake ember.

 

14 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

I question this statement, given that the current meta is dominated by an equally small handful of optimal warframe picks, up until recently [...] one weapon stand head and shoulders above the rest (and arguably this is still the case if one knows how to build it properly), and has essentially only one meta elemental mod combination.

That is, however, beside the point, as I'm curious to know how this relates to the topic of pooling weapons together, or even the topic of actually balancing weapons. Tell me, what is it you are proposing here to address the state of Warframe's balance?

[...]just balance the gun to not be ridiculously overpowered

You answered your own question for me.

 

14 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

The Tonkor deals no self-damage now and is still a middling weapon, so lack of self-damage was clearly not its problem. Just because there's some tiny echo chamber of self-damage fanatics on these forums doesn't mean one oughtn't apply some critical thinking and more comprehensive analysis of the game's balance over time.

I am talking about Tonkor at the time, lack of self damage definitely was a problem. My clan and every public group I played with at the height of Tonkor's popularity experienced this - Tonkor was practically a melee weapon, you could walk up to a group of enemies and shoot them in the face with zero consequence. You have to consider it in the context of what kind of content was available then, what kind of enemies existed, and how damage and armour scaling worked at that time. Groups went in with 4 corrosive projection auras, and again there might have been a couple of WOF firequake embers, a trinity and a speednova or nekros, so no chance of losing energy, health or running out of life support. Everyone could sit in a corner shooting themselves in the feet forever, any enemy who got close would be nuked.

Yes it may have been 'boring' but people did it because the only way to get rewards in the game is by playing, paying, or trading, and this was the least amount of effort to put in while still getting the same rewards for zero financial cost.

Today I never see anyone use Tonkor because there are other guns that get the same results without the drawbacks like staggering.

 

14 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

When weapons are diverse, however, they each have a niche, which means that so long as none of them are ridiculously over-the-top or useless, they're all likely to see play without needing to be balanced too finely.

So the questions then are how many niches are there to fill? How regularly do these niches appear in gameplay? The frequency at which players encounter that gameplay element is what will affect weapons usage, and how effectively the weapon deals with that will determine its popularity.

Every 'niche' is essentially a type of enemy, and if you need a unique weapon for every 'niche' then suddenly you have a new problem. Where previously we were debating that we should be able to use any weapon in any slot, and not have certain weapons in arbitrary groups like 'primary' or 'secondary' based on something like their size, now you have dozens of weapons in a single list, but they actually have very specific roles (Can you suggest what some of those roles might be?)

There is way more need for organisation using that method. You would want your weapons listed by damage type, or the enemy they are most effective against, a new series of categories for the different 'niches' they might fit into. Compared to right now where there are just three simple categories, which can then be easily filtered down with the search bar like you suggested (once it is all tagged properly, of course).

Also consider that this thread was created by someone who just doesn't like any of the primary weapons. There are always going to be people who don't care about the variety, about the diversity, or about 'the niches' and just want to do their own thing - they will always use guns that aren't suitable just because they look or sound cool, or because they like the name, or because it fits whatever look they've created with their favourite frame.

[Teridax68]

7 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

Ok, on the subject of things not relevant to the current discussion this has to take the cake. My assumption about memory management was at least to do with stuff that might be going on in the background of how Warframe is programmed. But the existence of 'an invisible sky whale' is more like an assumption about existentialism and reality as a whole.

The point is that you're making a conjecture based on zero evidence. Your conjecture about the specific implementation of Warframe's data structures has exactly as much validity as the conjecture about the invisible sky whale, because both are based on equally absent evidence.

7 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

My point is that if DE's databases are poorly implemented then yes, it WOULD mean that pooling weapons together would be a bad idea UNTIL those databases were fixed. Otherwise you would be introducing a brand new problem caused by poor database performance.

This is what is actually irrelevant to the conversation, because even you now admit that the existence of this secondary problem would only be a temporary setback, and not a permanent obstacle, and so only because this other hypothetical thing would need fixing, not because of the subject matter being discussed. Bringing up data structure implementations that may or may not exist was therefore pointless.

7 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

You should be very glad if you've never forgotten the name, or even the appearance, of what you're looking for, because at times like that you have to scroll through equipment lists manually like "Uhhh it...shoots darts maybe... it was a rifle, I think? We were doing vault runs with it..."

As you mention later on, weapons have tags and keywords that address this, so if you think the system is not complete enough, you could very well suggest more keywords. If you want the system to magically divine the weapon you're thinking of when you don't have even the remotest idea of what it does or looks like, I'm not sure that's ever going to happen.

7 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

For example if I go to melee weapons and type 'zaw' then only my zaw weapons will show up. But if I go to primary weapons and type 'sniper' I will get results like the Penta, Tonkor, and Ogris (possibly because they all have base 100 accuracy) along with a few actual sniper rifles, and Lenz, but no other bows which are good for sniping, like Dread.

That's because those weapons use sniper ammo. Also... why are you expecting the Dread to show up under "sniper"? I don't expect my Vaykor Marelok to show up under "sniper" just because I can shoot people accurately with it.

7 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

Under secondary weapons if you type 'pistol' it will also show thrown weapons like knives and stars. But if you type 'throw' it will specifically show Aklex and Cycron along with thrown weapons. Once you type 'thrown' (with the 'n' on the end) it will only show throwing weapons. If you type 'shotgun' it will show Bronco, but not Akbronco or Akbronco prime.

That's because it picks up keywords from the weapons' description. The system is more developed than you're giving it credit, even if it's not perfect.

7 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

I have to disagree. People could literally turn on world on fire, get up and walk away from the game for several minutes knowing there would be no risk. It was overpowered AND poorly designed. It was OP because enemies had no way to counter it (since WOF worked through walls), and it was poorly designed because there was no risk to the player - they didn't have to do anything to make the ability work except turn it on and have energy. Remember that there was also the firequake augment that knocked enemies down when they got hit with WOF. They couldn't even get close to a group with more than one firequake ember.

And beyond level 30, the ability would do next to nothing, especially after its nerf (which neutered Firequake). The ability was only overpowered at very low levels, where it turned missions into walking simulators, but sucked after that. This is why its problems stemmed from its design, rather than its balance, because the ability wasn't nearly strong enough to dominate the game, yet couldn't be fixed just by making it weaker.

7 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

You answered your own question for me.

"How are you proposing to balance the game?" "Oh, just balance it." What an illuminating answer. 🙄

7 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

I am talking about Tonkor at the time, lack of self damage definitely was a problem.

It really wasn't. Again, because what ultimately nerfed the Tonkor wasn't giving it more self-damage, it was slowing it down and making its projectiles more difficult to blow up. Again, this is why it pays to apply independent and critical thinking, because the narrative that crippling self-damage is or ever was the solution to unbalanced explosive weapons simply does not hold up to reality.

7 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

So the questions then are how many niches are there to fill? How regularly do these niches appear in gameplay? The frequency at which players encounter that gameplay element is what will affect weapons usage, and how effectively the weapon deals with that will determine its popularity.

A niche is not something that hides in a level and can only be capitalized by a single weapon, a niche can be a particular manner of playing. Using the Stahlta's protracted secondary fire is a different niche from the Xoris's mid-air explosion. Both will have situations where they're more useful than other weapons, but ultimately both are worth having because they introduce something different to the game, even though they're by no means the only AoE weapons out there.

7 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

Every 'niche' is essentially a type of enemy, and if you need a unique weapon for every 'niche' then suddenly you have a new problem.

And this is precisely why that definition of "niche" is wrong and can't possibly apply to weapon diversity as we know it.

7 hours ago, TheMostFrench said:

Also consider that this thread was created by someone who just doesn't like any of the primary weapons. There are always going to be people who don't care about the variety, about the diversity, or about 'the niches' and just want to do their own thing - they will always use guns that aren't suitable just because they look or sound cool, or because they like the name, or because it fits whatever look they've created with their favourite frame.

But that desire to do their own thing is itself a desire for diversity -- the OP wants the option to wield two secondaries instead of a secondary and a primary, a desire that is perfectly valid and would only add to the game's diversity of build options if enabled. You're pitting the OP's desires at odds with gameplay diversity here, which could not be further from the truth.

[TheMostFrench]

 

23 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

 Why are you expecting the Dread to show up under "sniper"? I don't expect my Vaykor Marelok to show up under "sniper" just because I can shoot people accurately with it.
 

I would expect Dread to show up because it has a very high projectile speed when fully drawn, pinpoint accuracy when aiming down sights (a unique attribute for a few bows https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Dread), 125% crit with a maxed point strike mod, 2.5m punch through, and is silent. It is pretty damn good for sniping.

Oh and also, it uses sniper ammo just like the penta, tonkor, and ogris :) 

 

22 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

If you want the system to magically divine the weapon you're thinking of when you don't have even the remotest idea of what it does or looks like, I'm not sure that's ever going to happen.
 

All the more reason not to have a series of unique weapons that do different things sitting in a single list. Especially if you also need to be able to think of the niche it fills, except now it's clear to me that we've both been arguing about different ideas of what 'niche' and 'diversity' mean so I'll stop here.

[Teridax68]

1 hour ago, TheMostFrench said:

I would expect Dread to show up because it has a very high projectile speed when fully drawn, pinpoint accuracy when aiming down sights (a unique attribute for a few bows https://warframe.fandom.com/wiki/Dread), 125% crit with a maxed point strike mod, 2.5m punch through, and is silent. It is pretty damn good for sniping.

Oh and also, it uses sniper ammo just like the penta, tonkor, and ogris 🙂

It's a bow, though. You seem to be under the impression that search engines are sapient entities capable of understanding where you're getting at, without you having to be even remotely accurate, which is... not how it works.

Quote

All the more reason not to have a series of unique weapons that do different things sitting in a single list. Especially if you also need to be able to think of the niche it fills, except now it's clear to me that we've both been arguing about different ideas of what 'niche' and 'diversity' mean so I'll stop here.

So you want the search bar to guess the niche of a weapon? What? Explain how that makes sense. Also, it would help to actually explain what you mean by "niche" and "diversity", in that case, because whichever definition you're running by doesn't appear to be the one people typically use when discussing either topic.

[M2GamerMicroTag]

Being able to equip 3 weapons of any type would be pretty cool. Also, I think it would also be cool if there existed a Warframe that used three melee weapons and their abilities circled around that.

Edit: also having the option to dual wield normally single handed weapons would be cool. So you can you know dual-weild two nikanas and have  a two handed nikana. Or dual-wield two Scindos and have a Fragor. Just a thought 😄

[TheMostFrench]

On 2020-07-01 at 8:44 PM, Teridax68 said:

It's a bow, though.

OK last one I swear.

 

On 2020-06-30 at 12:03 PM, TheMostFrench said:

 if I go to primary weapons and type 'sniper' I will get results like the Penta, Tonkor, and Ogris

 

On 2020-06-30 at 7:59 PM, Teridax68 said:

That's because those weapons use sniper ammo.

Bows use sniper ammo.

 

On 2020-07-01 at 8:44 PM, Teridax68 said:

You seem to be under the impression that search engines are sapient entities capable of understanding where you're getting at, without you having to be even remotely accurate.

Bows are definitely more suitable for sniping than something like the Ogris. It is a stretch to claim that it is not 'remotely accurate'. When fully drawn, bows are effectively as good as sniper rifles, and plenty of people have used them for sniping for a very long time.

We established that even when we are being VERY accurate the search bar will sometimes not give us what we want, even if it gives us other results that are almost identical, or are a variant of the same weapon.

On 2020-06-30 at 12:03 PM, TheMostFrench said:

If you type 'shotgun' [under secondary weapons] it will show Bronco, but not Akbronco or Akbronco Prime

After looking at the descriptions of each, only Bronco contains the word 'shotgun' which means sometimes it is not actually possible to be 'more accurate' with our description if we don't know the name or can't think of other search terms - Akbronco's description is 'A Bronco equipped in each hand' which is not helpful if you can't even think of Bronco. At the very least, typing 'shotgun' would lead to Bronco, which would hopefully then lead a person to the other variants.

Another example for secondary weapons is if we type 'dual', 'double' or 'akimbo' none of these will show all of the dual pistols available, only the ones with that word in their name or description. It's even less of a stretch than the sniper/bow situation to say "I want to look at all of my dual pistols so I will type 'dual pistol'" only to get a few results. But if we type 'pistol' we get EVERY single secondary weapon including throwing weapons because they all use pistol ammo.

So no, even when we are being reasonably accurate the search bar will sometimes just not give us what we might expect to find. Sometimes it will give more results, sometimes less, and the reasons aren't always clear. The game does not explicitly state that Penta, Ogris, and Tonkor use sniper ammo in their description or stats, so there is no reason for someone to conclude 'Oh it's because of the sniper ammo' unless they are aware of that mechanic.

[TheNeonGod]

for primary modular weapons, can we have modular bows?   

[Teridax68]

1 hour ago, TheMostFrench said:

OK last one I swear.

 

 

Bows use sniper ammo.

They don't, they use bow ammo. The ammo box is the same, but is specifically listed as "Bow Ammo" when you pick it up when wielding a bow, a distinction that is not made for launchers. 

1 hour ago, TheMostFrench said:

Bows are definitely more suitable for sniping than something like the Ogris. It is a stretch to claim that it is not 'remotely accurate'. When fully drawn, bows are effectively as good as sniper rifles, and plenty of people have used them for sniping for a very long time.

Getting a result out of a search engine happens to be one of those situations where you can't argue your way into getting what you want, no matter how hard you try. It doesn't matter if you feel bows are more sniper-like than launchers, because the search engine doesn't operate on relative concepts, it operates on keywords. "Sniper" happens to not be one for bows.

1 hour ago, TheMostFrench said:

We established that even when we are being VERY accurate the search bar will sometimes not give us what we want, even if it gives us other results that are almost identical, or are a variant of the same weapon.

... where did we establish this? If anything, what was established was that the search bar operates off of specific keywords and can easily retrieve the result you want, so long as you don't spend your time trying to convince it that it should operate along your internal logic and not its own.

1 hour ago, TheMostFrench said:

After looking at the descriptions of each, only Bronco contains the word 'shotgun' which means sometimes it is not actually possible to be 'more accurate' with our description if we don't know the name or can't think of other search terms - Akbronco's description is 'A Bronco equipped in each hand' which is not helpful if you can't even think of Bronco. At the very least, typing 'shotgun' would lead to Bronco, which would hopefully then lead a person to the other variants.

The Bronco doesn't come to mind when looking up the Akbronco? What?

1 hour ago, TheMostFrench said:

Another example for secondary weapons is if we type 'dual', 'double' or 'akimbo' none of these will show all of the dual pistols available, only the ones with that word in their name or description. It's even less of a stretch than the sniper/bow situation to say "I want to look at all of my dual pistols so I will type 'dual pistol'" only to get a few results. But if we type 'pistol' we get EVERY single secondary weapon including throwing weapons because they all use pistol ammo.

Okay, but again, right now you are complaining that you don't get what you want when using only approximate terms. Could more keywords be added to the search engine? Sure. Does that mean the search engine doesn't work? No, it just means you're expecting it to do things it doesn't, even though it visibly operates off of a system of keywords that is slightly more rigid than you'd want it to be.

1 hour ago, TheMostFrench said:

So no, even when we are being reasonably accurate the search bar will sometimes just not give us what we might expect to find. Sometimes it will give more results, sometimes less, and the reasons aren't always clear. The game does not explicitly state that Penta, Ogris, and Tonkor use sniper ammo in their description or stats, so there is no reason for someone to conclude 'Oh it's because of the sniper ammo' unless they are aware of that mechanic.

But there is a clear indication of how the search engine works, though. Even you acknowledge that you need to type words in either the weapon's name, description, or associated gameplay tags, e.g. its ammo or damage type, in order to find the weapon. You're acting here as if the search engine were this mysterious crystal ball whose workings operated with no rhyme or reason, when the real issue here is you're expecting it to map perfectly onto your way of thinking, which it doesn't.

[(PSN)AyinDygra]

Despite this train of thought taking this thread off topic... One thing all weapons could use, that I have personally not seen (and it could well be something in plain sight that I've just overlooked...)... but that would be what each weapon's "type" is. I mean, I'd like to know which mods would work with a certain primary weapon, and until I actually equip it, and enter the mod selection screen to put them in, and notice that certain mods are working (like Rifle or Shotgun), you have no other indication. Similarly, knowing whether a pole weapon is a staff or polearm is nearly impossible unless you equip it and check which stances work with it (if you have stances for it), or look it up on the wiki.

Overall, though, I'll reiterate that I'd very much like to equip 3 separate melee weapons on every mission I ever go on, unless I know I'll need ranged for stuff like Dargyns. Currently, my Primary and Secondary slots only serve as Fashionframe, IF I choose to have them visible at all.

[TheMostFrench]

9 hours ago, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

Despite this train of thought taking this thread off topic... One thing all weapons could use, that I have personally not seen (and it could well be something in plain sight that I've just overlooked...)... but that would be what each weapon's "type" is. I mean, I'd like to know which mods would work with a certain primary weapon, and until I actually equip it, and enter the mod selection screen to put them in, and notice that certain mods are working (like Rifle or Shotgun), you have no other indication. Similarly, knowing whether a pole weapon is a staff or polearm is nearly impossible unless you equip it and check which stances work with it (if you have stances for it), or look it up on the wiki.

Overall, though, I'll reiterate that I'd very much like to equip 3 separate melee weapons on every mission I ever go on, unless I know I'll need ranged for stuff like Dargyns. Currently, my Primary and Secondary slots only serve as Fashionframe, IF I choose to have them visible at all.

You could definitely be sure what type of weapon it was if we were able to search by weapon types like 'shotgun' or 'rifle' in the search bar, which was one argument I've been trying to make this whole time 😉

It's a shame you're on PS4 but if you have another device like a phone, tablet, or laptop nearby just keep a warframe wiki page open and search for the weapon you want there for the time being because that page separates weapons into categories like in this image.

https://imgur.com/iYb5ghK.jpg

 

I liked someone else's idea before about being able to have two different one handed melee weapons, like 2 different one handed nikanas. I made a one handed zaw hammer, I think that would go well with one of the kama's, like a hook and hammer mix.

 

 

 

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

On 2020-07-05 at 9:01 PM, TheMostFrench said:

someone else's idea before about being able to have two different one handed melee weapons

Now you are getting it. That would be cool for my Ash. 

[Nazuud]

Great minds think alike. 😄

 

I would really love this to be a thing, I imagine having like a daikyu + nikana lifesteal combo and hema to trigger Vex armor on my chroma, that would be so good. Hopefully this will get DE's attention. 

[(XBOX)YoungGunn82]

DE should stop limiting use to just Primary, Secondary and melee options. Instead give me a Slot 1,2,3 option where I can select any 3 weapon(s) I want. If nothing else than  especially  for SP. 

that said it should be for both modes. With DE redoing their UI this would be a fantastic opportunity. 

[Uthael]

On 2020-07-05 at 6:58 PM, (PS4)AyinDygra said:

Overall, though, I'll reiterate that I'd very much like to equip 3 separate melee weapons on every mission I ever go on, unless I know I'll need ranged for stuff like Dargyns.

We call that a "Glaive" or "Exodia contagion".

Maybe after Heart of Deimos gets its future bugs fixed, we can keep this topic up more. It's been around for literally more than a year, with it's every downside circumvented. Discussions that developed started getting into problems which don't actually exist for the implementation of this idea.
One example is: 
Problem: If you removed primary and secondary, what about mods?
Answer: No such thing is needed for implementation of this idea. Leave "primary" and "secondary" in the game.

There are many more open problems addressed, but none of them is an actual obstacle and can be saved for later.