Balance Requires a Damage Ceiling

[ChaosSpectre86]

Warframe is a game that provides a plethora of unique and fun content, but the latter part often is the result of whether or not players are in line with the expectations of the content. As someone who has been in this game for literal years, often the biggest issue that comes from new content for me is I am too powerful for said content. I remember when Gara first came out and, for fun, I went into an excavation mission with a Trinity, and tried to see how high I could get my splinter storm. While it was a fun experience to be able to walk into a group of level 250 enemies and do 5 million dps, it was also a massive indication of why this game has issues with difficulty, which is also why Veterans consistently feel like they don't have anything to do, and a great presentation of this issue came recently with the Ropalolyst boss fight.

While I will say, the Ropalolyst is a fun fight, if you are in a mission with someone who is just damage stacked, then the only fun part of the fight is the small puzzle portions, not the parts where you do damage. For the first three runs of the fight, I had no idea what exactly was even going on, because each time it could take damage, it immediately popped because someone else was doing 20k+ damage a shot. When I finally did get a fight with it where we couldn't one shot it, I found it to be way more fun because it wasn't dying in less than a second and I had a portion of time to explore what exactly the boss fight was. This is definitely not the only boss like this, with Vay Hek being another grand example of too much damage turning a "boss" into a joke. 

So this begs the question, do we need to do that much damage? Do we absolutely need to be able to perform 5 million damage per second in absolutely any circumstance? The answer is no, absolutely not. As a matter of fact, being able to do that much damage is a huge detriment to this game, specifically end game, because DE can never be able to create content that is challenging enough for veteran players without creating a plethora of ways to prevent them from doing such ludicrous damage. Just as well, being so damage heavy makes a lot of frames virtually useless (why CC when killing faster is the best CC), makes modding a repetitive song and dance with little to no build diversity, and even goes as far as making an entire list of arcanes and mods worthless because they are not extra damage. Warframe takes the concept of a glass cannon, turns the glass to diamond, and then throws it out there. There is detriment to modding Ignis Wraith or Arca Plasmor to do ludicrous damage while using Rhino or Inaros to take no damage. At best, the only downside in that instance is range, which is a negligible downside, and even then, vectis prime and lanka are insanely powerful as well and can pop eidolon parts in virtually one shot. If your bosses, or even grand bosses, can be one shotted, then there is one of two things wrong: either they don't have enough health, or players are allowed to do too much damage. 

Now, I'm not a dev for a large game like this. I've done writing and some UI scripting for some game jam games, as well as brainstorming for friends of mine who are making games to help with balance and gameplay feel, so while my suggestions may not be the defacto solution, they are at least a start as to where I feel warframe should move to improve the end game experience for veterans and people who are finally getting there. My suggestions are below

1. Implement a Damage Ceiling: While I know there will be some people out there who will be upset with this concept, especially those who invested a lot into giving themselves as much damage as possible, Warframe already provides a variety of ways to advantageously swing a fight in your favor. Damage does not need to be the defacto way to win a fight every time, and the fact that it currently is is why the game is boring at end game, because you can turn your brain off entirely in every single mission as long as you deal enough damage. 
2. Implement a System Like Railjack Uses: Instead of having mods like serration that are basically mandatory on every single weapon, these mods should be removed entirely from the pool, and the effects they used to provide should be a tradeoff system like what railjack is using. If you want to use more damage, then you put the energy pool into that, but that might mean slower reload or fire rate. This creates a better situation of creating legitimately unique builds, because some base stats can be tinkered, while mods alter the way a weapon may functions. Instead of mods just making a weapon more powerful, mods instead make a weapon more versatile, much like what Amalgam mods are sorta doing. 
3. Rework Damage Mods: If you implement a damage ceiling, then increasing damage should become something else to some degree, and perhaps this would be a good chance to finally encourage players to learn the damage system itself. Instead of consistently increasing damage, conversion of damage might be a more tactical solution for players to be able to explore build possibilities. Mods like these already exist in Conclave, and even operators can obtain magus arcanes that convert their damage to a new type.

While I'm sure there are quite a few other solutions, this is what comes to mind at first. I know this whole thing would be a sort of huge undertaking, but it is also something that I feel should be at least approached. Back when I first started playing this game, I loved the Bo because it had knockdown. In one patch, the knockdown was removed, and I went on my first hiatus from the game. I returned after damage 2.0, and realized that instead of fixing the Bo, DE fixed the damage system and now my Bo could do the same exact thing if I modded it right, which is a design decision that has inspired me in my endeavors, because instead of fixing one thing, they fixed the whole. Empyrean sounds like an effort to fix the whole by potentially reworking the node-system and travel in game. Damage 3.0 should be an effort to fix endgame as a whole by creating parameters in which it can exist and flourish. If there is only a lowest damage and no highest damage, balance cannot exist. I hope to see the day when phase 2 vay hek is a legit threat. 

 

tl;dr 
Damage needs to be limited in order to provide difficulty for end game, diversity in builds, and viability to non-damage effects. Damage needs to be reworked in order to create a legit balance in the game. Fixing the whole can fix all the small things if done right.

[KochDerFrettchen]

"But that sounds like a nerf, wouldn't it be nicer if they buffed the numbers of all of the weapons, frames, and enemies that are currently not meeting the standards of the weapon I enjoy a lot, because it's so powerful, instead?"

Aha, yeah, there you go.  Every inch of power creep, marginally more powerful weapons and mods, slowly makes playing around mechanics and/or the viability of lots of equipment in higher tier content irrelevant concepts.  There doesn't even have to be a magic "damage softcap" (lame, personally hate that when I see it in other games), just some numbers on a whiteboard in the DE office that demonstrate what they think should be obtainable damage/dps values for sustained and burst weapons/frames to think about when they add something.

[ChaosSpectre86]

33 minutes ago, KochDerFrettchen said:

"But that sounds like a nerf, wouldn't it be nicer if they buffed the numbers of all of the weapons, frames, and enemies that are currently not meeting the standards of the weapon I enjoy a lot, because it's so powerful, instead?"

Aha, yeah, there you go.  Every inch of power creep, marginally more powerful weapons and mods, slowly makes playing around mechanics and/or the viability of lots of equipment in higher tier content irrelevant concepts.  There doesn't even have to be a magic "damage softcap" (lame, personally hate that when I see it in other games), just some numbers on a whiteboard in the DE office that demonstrate what they think should be obtainable damage/dps values for sustained and burst weapons/frames to think about when they add something.

Yeah I don't really like the idea of limiting players in how much damage they are able to do, but Warframe definitely takes this to a new degree and it, honestly, has made pubs a worse experience for me in new content. I tend to go into pubs with a more rounded build so I experience the content without obliterating it, but others do not do that and it ends in some content just feeling super meh. Theres no line drawn of any kind really, and it can actually result in a worse experience for others. Just having a range alone would be leaps and bounds better than having no limit at all. Frankly, I feel that if someone is to do insane amounts of damage, it should be situational, as in buffed by players and mods like the ones that on headshot give you a bonus. 

[Aldain]

1 hour ago, Jareson said:

Damage needs to be limited in order to provide difficulty for end game, diversity in builds, and viability to non-damage effects. Damage needs to be reworked in order to create a legit balance in the game. Fixing the whole can fix all the small things if done right.

I agree with you, but you're going to have one hek of a time convincing the part of the playerbase that chase damage above all else.

[ChaosSpectre86]

Just now, Aldain said:

I agree with you, but you're going to have one hek of a time convincing the part of the playerbase that chase damage above all else.

I think this is overall the hardest part for DE, but I really feel like the people who chase damage do it because it is, currently, the meta. This meta is shoving other content to the wayside, and it really comes down to DE asking themselves if they need to fix the other content, or fix damage. I suggest the latter, obviously, and while I know the backlash that will happen if they do do it, for the health of the game in the future, I think it would be the best course of action. Those new players from Plains and Vallis will start reaching the end game sooner or later, and when they do, they will start to complain like many of the veterans already do about how nothing is hard anymore and it is boring. This is probably a more damaging scenario than telling people that damage is going to be overhauled, them getting mad for a bit, then coming back with the new content and experiencing a game where skill and tactics can actually start to matter because damage isn't the end all be all. Least thats my take. 

[Aldain]

1 minute ago, Jareson said:

I suggest the latter, obviously, and while I know the backlash that will happen if they do do it, for the health of the game in the future, I think it would be the best course of action.

Backlash is putting it lightly...check through that "Can something be done about Sayrn" thread that got moved to the Warframe Feedback section, it is a warzone in there.

[ChaosSpectre86]

1 minute ago, Aldain said:

Backlash is putting it lightly...check through that "Can something be done about Sayrn" thread that got moved to the Warframe Feedback section, it is a warzone in there.

Yeah I've seen that kinda stuff. I do feel like it is a vocal minority, especially on the forums being this is probably less used than reddit, and a large swathe of players probably don't even touch the forums or reddit at all. They just are loud and do not like to be quiet at all. 

On the flip side, looking at the general feedback area, it seems like my request is not alone. I've already read through 3 topics in general that seem to be of the same camp in asking for some sort of balancing to make the game feel more fluid in some sort of way, although theres a variety of suggestions. It definitely doesn't seem like this is a lonely thought at least, its just an opposed on by a very specific group.

[(XBOX)Zweimander]

I like my power fantasy so this gets a big fat no from me.

[Aldain]

Just now, Jareson said:

Yeah I've seen that kinda stuff. I do feel like it is a vocal minority, especially on the forums being this is probably less used than reddit, and a large swathe of players probably don't even touch the forums or reddit at all. They just are loud and do not like to be quiet at all. 

On the flip side, looking at the general feedback area, it seems like my request is not alone. I've already read through 3 topics in general that seem to be of the same camp in asking for some sort of balancing to make the game feel more fluid in some sort of way, although theres a variety of suggestions. It definitely doesn't seem like this is a lonely thought at least, its just an opposed on by a very specific group.

Yeah, it is hard to tell even on the forum alone just what the actual balance between pro and anti damage creep is, much less on the playerbase as a whole.

I know the feeling of shouting against the wind that can sometimes happen here though, the Wolf of Saturn Six feedback era was hell on Earth.

[ChaosSpectre86]

1 minute ago, (XB1)Zweimander said:

I like my power fantasy so this gets a big fat no from me.

I'm curious, I don't see how reining in damage is going to kill the power fantasy. Frankly, I didn't touch on Rivens because I don't believe they should be touched on, I think those should remain, as their primary value is bringing weak weapons higher up, and giving higher up weapons a little more of a boost. The power fantasy doesn't need to go away, it just also shouldn't be in the millions of damage range, or in such a way that other players experience is detracted from because one player is godly in comparison. 

Recently, I've been playing with my friends who are just getting into the game, and they expressed to me how they would prefer it if I let them be able to actually get kills after our first time together, because my build is so powerful in comparison that I essentially am soloing the content for them. I stepped my build back, decided to play around with some of the more one-off mods, and ended up having dramatically more fun than I have in the game for a long time. Having enemies that aren't just a simple hit marker has been a more engaging experience, as well as allowed my friends to play and learn the game alongside my help, without detracting from any of us. I'm also finally seeing all the mods that seemed so worthless before as fun and interesting new ways to play the game, which makes me think with the release of the amalgam mods that DE actually wants us to diversify our mod setups, but we can't because damage is meta. Giving us more options seems like a logical solution, especially being we are still godly warframes with insane power compared to the peons of the grineer and corpus.

[Somi_xD]

vor einer Stunde schrieb KochDerFrettchen:

"But that sounds like a nerf, wouldn't it be nicer if they buffed the numbers of all of the weapons, frames, and enemies that are currently not meeting the standards of the weapon I enjoy a lot, because it's so powerful, instead?"

Aha, yeah, there you go.  Every inch of power creep, marginally more powerful weapons and mods, slowly makes playing around mechanics and/or the viability of lots of equipment in higher tier content irrelevant concepts.  There doesn't even have to be a magic "damage softcap" (lame, personally hate that when I see it in other games), just some numbers on a whiteboard in the DE office that demonstrate what they think should be obtainable damage/dps values for sustained and burst weapons/frames to think about when they add something.

Huh, yeah that's why Warframe really lost it's appeal for me in many aspects.
The power creep, and desigin of most missions turned it into "rush and just kill as fast as possible"
Even for a Hoard game, Warframe isn't really that high, like for example a Diablo game.

[Kenoman]

I do not agree to this concept. I've played various different games including games with damage cap, simply making your enemies a bullet sponge (As the scaling of the health of the enemies at higher level with damage cap essentially does that) Phantasy star online 2 for example does this, Ultimately makes the game a much slower paced and overall dull experience.

You can bet that you will lose a very good portion of the players if you think this is a good idea. It just isn't, the pacing would be horrible, (above reason), the challenge just doesn't come from it at all.

[(XBOX)Zweimander]

1 hour ago, Jareson said:

I'm curious, I don't see how reining in damage is going to kill the power fantasy. Frankly, I didn't touch on Rivens because I don't believe they should be touched on, I think those should remain, as their primary value is bringing weak weapons higher up, and giving higher up weapons a little more of a boost. The power fantasy doesn't need to go away, it just also shouldn't be in the millions of damage range, or in such a way that other players experience is detracted from because one player is godly in comparison. 

Recently, I've been playing with my friends who are just getting into the game, and they expressed to me how they would prefer it if I let them be able to actually get kills after our first time together, because my build is so powerful in comparison that I essentially am soloing the content for them. I stepped my build back, decided to play around with some of the more one-off mods, and ended up having dramatically more fun than I have in the game for a long time. Having enemies that aren't just a simple hit marker has been a more engaging experience, as well as allowed my friends to play and learn the game alongside my help, without detracting from any of us. I'm also finally seeing all the mods that seemed so worthless before as fun and interesting new ways to play the game, which makes me think with the release of the amalgam mods that DE actually wants us to diversify our mod setups, but we can't because damage is meta. Giving us more options seems like a logical solution, especially being we are still godly warframes with insane power compared to the peons of the grineer and corpus.

Anything that holds players back in a game like warframe js a bad thing. Players should be able to do as much damage and be as effecient as possible with the things they have earned. Their are games out their for people who want to helf back from their full potential and people could just go play those instead. I will not change my builds to be less effecient and I deserve the power that I hold as a 5 year warframe veteran, as do many other veterans of the game!

[zekkzekk]

FIRMEST OF DISAGREEMENTS.

This game doesn't need a damage limit. Far from it. This game needs an increased accessibility to higher level enemies outside of the daily sortie and paltry "elite" sanctuary onslaught. If you think you're doing too much damage for your own enjoyment you really need to stop being casual content with loadouts made for fighting enemies at a minimum level of 150. Don't punish everyone by suggesting that the game's damage be limited because you couldn't be patient enough to endure an endless mission type long enough to see a challenge that brings balance to your loadout. This wouldn't be a problem at all if we could load up our choice of mission at whatever enemy level we wish to start at instead of the babyfood that is 1-40. My warframes are capable of actually stomping those enemies to death because they're so low level and you will never hear me complaining about this game having too high of damage possibilities.

Level 100 enemies isn't where the game's sandbox ends, it's the beginning.

[ChaosSpectre86]

2 minutes ago, (XB1)Zweimander said:

Anything that holds players back in a game like warframe js a bad thing. Players should be able to do as much damage and be as effecient as possible with the things they have earned. Their are games out their for people who want to helf back from their full potential and people could just go play those instead. I will not change my builds to be less effecient and I deserve the power that I hold as a 5 year warframe veteran, as do many other veterans of the game!

Gonna try to respond to this as best as I can, cause I do understand your stance.

In response to players being able to do as much damage and be as efficient as possible, I think I may have lost you in the concept of reining in damage. I don't want people to not be able to do a ton of damage, I want there to be a standard for that damage. I want there to be an expectation going into something that it is intended to be difficult, and that while your damage might help, it might also not be the only way to do things, which is how the game currently is.

In response to the "there are other games" argument, I agree, there are, and frankly, I do not want to lose the power fantasy aspect as part of why I play Warframe instead of Destiny, is because my character doesn't feel like some meager soul with lockdowns on literally throwing grenades and stabbing people. Warframe is fast, I want it to still be fast, but I also would like for there to be more than "shoot gun to win" when it comes to gameplay.

In response to not changing your builds to be less efficient, I feel you missed part of my message in the concept that I don't want damage to be redone because I want people to be less efficient, I want damage redone because I want players to be able to be as efficient and ALSO be unique on top of that. Currently, a standard build would include multishot, damage, elementals, and then either status or crit mods depending on which way the weapon swings. This isn't unique, and it isn't, frankly, efficient, it is railroading. It is only efficient because it is mindless to make, but converting all of that into its own system and freeing up mod slots so players could actually have build diversity would add more to the game than letting someone be able to do 2 million damage. I don't think that damage should becomes in a range of 100-200, because psychologically, those numbers feel weak, and statistically, enemies have way more health than that, so I do think that somewhere around 50k-100k might be a good range to reach for through weapons alone, and then surpass that with warframe buffs or gear. Hell, it might even make specters useful. But yeah, instead of using 7/8 mod slots on pure damage, I would love to be able to use at least 4/8 slots on some sort of utility or modifier that actually alters the weapon. We have 1000+ mods, and yet only like 150 of them are useful because of the way damage currently is.

In response to "anything that holds players back in a game like warframe js a bad thing", does that also include other players? Ropalolyst was a boss fight I was excited for, but my excitement was utterly removed because I went through three straight runs of it being destroyed in seconds by someone else. I was held back from both being able to experience the boss, and learning it, just because someone else pumped everything into damage. My friends who joined the game with me were being held back from even being able to enjoy the game until I started scaling back my own builds, just because I was using the most "efficient" build. They definitely aren't going to redo matchmaking to solve this issue, as matchmaking is already a mess due to the abundance of nodes and lack of people on those nodes, especially due to open world existing. My friends are way too far behind me to be able to participate in new content, and I don't feel any power or satisfaction out of one shotting bosses, so playing solo is a slog, playing in pubs is a gamble, and thus new content feels at best frustrating because others simply exist and are powerful. I don't think the player should be punished for that, they worked for that damage, but I also don't think new experiences should be ruined by other players, and that is an indication of a flawed system. 

I am also a veteran, I've been in this game since closed beta, I am a founder, I missed the first release of the Braton Vandal by literally only a few days due to life events. I remember back when the game first dropped, I still felt powerful, but the game also was challenging back then. The challenge has been siphoned out of the game as time has gone on and power has continued to grow, despite the fact that even back then we had enough power to take down a boss in a matter of a few hits. Bosses have always been an issue, but warframe wasn't always so easy to play. Power creep caused this, and if there is one complaint I hear about the game from veterans more than anything, it is the lack of challenge and how boring endgame is. There needs to be a compromise, either let them balance the game and create challenge by setting up a range of what to expect in difficulty and balance, or frankly stop complaining about the lack of challenge in the game. As the game keeps living, these complaints will continue to get louder, as more people reach a lackluster endgame. Maybe new war will fix this, but theres almost never been a time where difficulty has truly been challenged in warframe, outside of maybe trials which were removed.

I don't mean to come off hostile, I apologize if I do. I love this game, its been there for me through a loooot of hard times in my personal life, which my recent hopping back into the game is another one of those moments. I want to see the game excel, and I'm proud to be a founder because of how far it has already come. I am interested in the longevity of the game, and I feel if there is are detriments to the longevity of the game, they are definitely the new player experience, which is being worked on, and the end game, which we know very little on if there are plans to do anything about. I do get where you are coming from, but I also believe there is a balance that could be struck between the power fantasy and strength a frame has, and making the game balanced in the process.

[zekkzekk]

2 minutes ago, Jareson said:

I am also a veteran, I've been in this game since closed beta, I am a founder, I missed the first release of the Braton Vandal by literally only a few days due to life events.

these things don't bring any validity to your suggestion nor do they give you any ability to speak as an authority about game design. what you're suggesting doesn't help warframe as a game reach the target you've set for it to hit.

 

4 minutes ago, Jareson said:

I want damage redone because I want players to be able to be as efficient and ALSO be unique on top of that

this doesn't need a damage limit to be attained.

 

5 minutes ago, Jareson said:

Currently, a standard build would include multishot, damage, elementals, and then either status or crit mods depending on which way the weapon swings. This isn't unique, and it isn't, frankly, efficient, it is railroading.

This is what happens when a game gives players direct control over the Math they use to play the game. You're complaining about the efficiency of modified damage by players and impersonating Jim Sterling by trying to rename your complaint into something else isn't going to help your argument at all.

 

9 minutes ago, Jareson said:

It is only efficient because it is mindless to make, but converting all of that into its own system and freeing up mod slots so players could actually have build diversity would add more to the game than letting someone be able to do 2 million damage.

Baking in damage is a fine idea, however the  modification of secondary damage stats isn't deep enough to allow for a healthy player agency experience when modding their weapons.  How do you go about budgeting the stats that are baked into weapons because there is little parity among the weapon types; 90% multishot/120% multishot & 60% multishot 60% firerate. This is true for nearly every stat that a player has access to modify on a weapon.What happens when a weapon has equal stats for critical chance and status chance? Currently we can reach +240% status chance through all four of the dualstat elemental weapons. Never is that actually a dps increase because you'll be missing out on more important things like Faction damage mods. Meanwhile the amount of crit that weapons can receive from mods is all over the place with zero precision and or consistency.

Being able to do 2 million damage isn't the problem here and I'm having a really #*!%ing difficult time understanding why that is the hill you're wanting to commit seppuku on.

 

16 minutes ago, Jareson said:

I don't think that damage should becomes in a range of 100-200, because psychologically, those numbers feel weak, and statistically, enemies have way more health than that, so I do think that somewhere around 50k-100k might be a good range to reach for through weapons alone, and then surpass that with warframe buffs or gear.

You've clearly never played tabletop RPGs or older MMORPGS if you think 100-200 damage is too low. If you genuinely thought that this game needed a damage limit my assumption is that range is where you would want this game to call home. This is surprising to me but as stated earlier confuses me.

 

18 minutes ago, Jareson said:

Hell, it might even make specters useful. But yeah, instead of using 7/8 mod slots on pure damage, I would love to be able to use at least 4/8 slots on some sort of utility or modifier that actually alters the weapon. We have 1000+ mods, and yet only like 150 of them are useful because of the way damage currently is.

This goal you're trying to impose on everyone else through your suggestion does not require a damage limit. Hell it doesn't even need for a change in the math of warframe's damage systems to be accomplished. Instead of the mods you think are too popular are baked into a weapon and turned on during the ranking up, you'd now have room for your four utility mods.

"but then players will just stack more damage in those slots' place." Probably. That is why my original reply to this thread covered the fact that the game doesn't need any of what you're suggesting instead of access to more challenging levels of enemies. The game is balanced around "infinite scaling" enemies. Placing a limit on player damage does nothing but make enemies higher than level 150 futile and void the bridgestone mechanic which balances this game's damage system.

[Velothed]

5 hours ago, Somi_xD said:

The power creep, and desigin of most missions turned it into "rush and just kill as fast as possible"

I remember this being the norm back in the early days aswell... Coptering through the missions as fast as possible.

As far as I'm concerned Warframe has always been a power fantasy, feel like a god. Challange becomes more and more the holy grail in games "the Dark Souls of (Insert Genre here)" and people seem to forget that challange isn't the only reason why people play games. Sometimes it's really nice to have a game like warframe where you can feel like a god, destroying everything with easy and looking fabulous while doing so.

But that's also why I tend to only play with friends/solo whenever I want to experience new content. Warframe has to play modes for me:

Public, speedrun destroy everything and farm stuff mode.

and

Solo/Private explore, experience, experiment mode.

I could never enjoy doing something like the Ropalolyst fight for the first time with a public group.

Hell, I remember learning this when I started playing in 2013 and for the first couple of bosses I never got to see them, because they where allready dead when I got to them.

Warframe has always been this way.

Edited August 9, 2019 by Vethalon

[Somi_xD]

vor 14 Minuten schrieb Vethalon:

I remember this being the norm back in the early days aswell... Coptering through the missions as fast as possible.

As far as I'm concerned Warframe has always been a power fantasy, feel like a god. Challange becomes more and more the holy grail in games "the Dark Souls of (Insert Genre here)" and people seem to forget that challange isn't the only reason why people play games. Sometimes it's really nice to have a game like warframe where you can feel like a god, destroying everything with easy and looking fabulous while doing so.

But that's also why I tend to only play with friends/solo whenever I want to experience new content. Warframe has to play modes for me:

Public, speedrun destroy everything and farm stuff mode.

and

Solo/Private explore, experience, experiment mode.

I could never enjoy doing something like the Ropalolyst fight for the first time with a public group.

Hell, I remember learning this when I started playing in 2013 and for the first couple of bosses I never got to see them, because they where allready dead when I got to them.

Warframe has always been this way.

Yeah - agree on the most of it.
Sure the old day where not much different, since the old mission types are pretty much still the same they where then. ^^
My point is, it got worse, DE took this speeding through missions and build on it.
We are more agile, faster in many regards (and we need this for PoE and 4Tuna).

Haha yes...
Similar thing here - most of the time i play solo (since all my friends don't play it anymore)
And Public is leveling or part-time-afk some endless missions  :'D

Yeah i started playing 22. April 2013 ^^ (lost access to my first account -.- I had a Primed Chamber on it)
Seriously, the only bosses to live longer than some seconds are those with multiple phases or invulnerability xD
Warframe has always been a Power Fantasy Game but it got much worse nowdays and it slowly drags the game down.

[DOOMPATRIOT]

If Wyrmius is the most difficult thing to do in your videogame then you know something is not ok.

[KochDerFrettchen]

7 hours ago, zekkzekk said:

Level 100 enemies isn't where the game's sandbox ends, it's the beginning.

Higher level enemies don't repair the fact that you can simply ignore enemy mechanics/burst kill those weak enough.  The higher the enemy level becomes, the more apparent the most overstuffed-kits(or stats&effects, for weapons) and overtuned numbers on some gear in the game becomes. That content just requires you to use that equipment or suffer, while offering roughly the same difficulty as using appropriately levelled gear in the rest of the star chart (barring the higher variety of incoming enemy oneshots).

And, frankly, the biggest problem on this topic is not the experience for the veterans.  Veterans would simply see a better spread of viable frames and equipment from a 'damage overhaul', and pretty much all of us are already using whatever we want because rivens and specialized builds.  This imbalance harms new players the most, finding gear they thought looked cool turning into trash in their hands and having the game torn out from under them by whatever random player is packing the forma'd ignis wraith or equinox or whatever.

7 hours ago, zekkzekk said:

 If you think you're doing too much damage for your own enjoyment you really need to stop being casual content with loadouts made for fighting enemies at a minimum level of 150. Don't punish everyone by suggesting that the game's damage be limited because you couldn't be patient enough to endure an endless mission type long enough to see a challenge that brings balance to your loadout.

Chill out, you're wasting everyone's time by bothering to fabricate situations that help you look down on the OP.  You have absolutely no reason to say any of this, and it holds no value to the conversation.  Every conversation around balance has you in it.  Not the literal you, but that person who just has to chime in and go "LOL the game's way more fun at level 300, what, can't handle it?"

7 hours ago, zekkzekk said:

My warframes are capable of actually stomping those enemies to death because they're so low level and you will never hear me complaining about this game having too high of damage possibilities.

A rework of the damage and enemy defense scaling probably wouldn't stop this from being the case, the whole point is to make some enemy and mission mechanics matter and less gear detrimental to use.  It's clear that DE desires the game to be a power fantasy in some capacity.  So many enemies in this game have little moves and abilities that go unseen past the 'starchart' stage of the game, the difference between a high level hoard of a variety of enemies and the same health pools slapped onto 'basic' non-special units becomes one or two of them being able to turn your abilities off for a second as far as anyone has to care.

[Xzorn]

The game has Enemy Levels for a reason. The game is just flawed but you don't have to actually limit damage output or intake.

Levels are a simple scaling system from all the way back in the 70's RPG days. It's a concept of confronting ever growing player stats with growing enemy stats. One of the many fundamental parts that Warframe missed however is that in addition to stat increases; high level enemies have additional abilities.

Raw Stats = Difficulty, Abilities/Mechanics = Challenge.

Together they compound exponentially until the point failure is only human. An exceptional player can fight something well above their level and win but the circumstance is that they not make a single mistake while the same player can make all the mistakes in the world and not fail against something well under their level. This is where Warframe is at and has been for a long time thus everything seems overpowered because lvl 100 was 5 years ago.

There are more issues involved with the core system of the game simply not working correctly to accommodate this concept and ability / buff stacking but technically a system can be made to go on forever and that's generally the idea you want with an RPG-style game intended for prolonged play. You need only look at Path of Exile to see this working relatively fine. Players even have control over the difficult they want to endure. Something Warframe players have begged for years about.

LoL and +1 on Wyrmius being the hardest thing in Warframe.

[000l000]

Diminishing return.

Diminishing return on damages and critical mechanics. Thus it'd help with Riven high disposition power creep and encourage more hybrid builds than pure red criticals in your Grineer's face. Discrepancy between high critical and high status weapons is real - and status weapons do have a really low ceiling (100% and you're done).

Diminishing return on scaling/cumulative mechanics such as Gara's splinter shield, Saryn's spores, Banshee's / Ember's / Chroma's / Mirage's multiplicative damage buffs. These are already really powerful, they don't need to be THAT powerful.

Diminishing return on CCs too, enemies abilities included - we shouldn't see permanent stun/bumps in a 2019 game - Warcraft did get rid of that a few decades ago. No one is having fun when unable to play - literally.

Diminishing return on range and duration to prevent some abilities to be out of control, including a line of sight limitation on most damageing abilities. This is a shooter game, being able to kill what you can't see isn't making much sense. They did that with melee, we need that on powers.

More diminishing return on scaling enemy levels too, armor/shield/health and damages. We should see some logical increase but at some point balance should make any endless mission reach an optimal level of dfficulty instead of making us use and abuse broken frames/mechanics. Such things as armor scaling shouldn't even reach 95-99% range, a ceiling is highly needed in most Warframe's departments.

Sure it'd be a huge amount of work and it's no prioriity since WF is currently more a "collect content" game more than a "play content" game, but balance also means people would be able to have more fun in more fair content. For now they're mostly complaining about content being locked behind actual play, which is quite ironical.

 

Edited August 11, 2019 by 000l000

[zekkzekk]

On 2019-08-09 at 11:06 PM, KochDerFrettchen said:

Higher level enemies don't repair the fact that you can simply ignore enemy mechanics/burst kill those weak enough.  The higher the enemy level becomes, the more apparent the most overstuffed-kits(or stats&effects, for weapons) and overtuned numbers on some gear in the game becomes.

You've been playing a game that received the linear progression overhaul it needed and are now complaining about it. When playing World of Warcraft I'm not going to try to kill Lucifron, who is Molten Core's first boss, with my level 30 Whirlwind axe. I'm going to use something more appropriate for the content I'm trying to complete. Arcanite Reaper or Blackblade of Shahram. In warframe I use a status monster like the Boar Prime or Supra Vandal and something with deep crit potential as a reply for VIPs. Euphona or Aklex Primes. Notice these examples are all above MR 10 requirements.

Let's establish right now that all warframes are capable of managing enemies level 350+~500. Not all weapons are going to be sufficient and that's fine. Totally respectable for weapons to have different levels of power output. This is cemented by the linearly scaling mastery rank requirements. I'd argue that it's also respectable for a warframe to have a more overstuffed kit because it's acquired through content that has deep quest prerequisites compared to any warframe available at mastery rank 0.

 

On 2019-08-09 at 11:06 PM, KochDerFrettchen said:

That content just requires you to use that equipment or suffer, while offering roughly the same difficulty as using appropriately levelled gear in the rest of the star chart (barring the higher variety of incoming enemy oneshots).

If you're playing an rpg and expecting your level 10 gear to be useful when grinding endgame monsters, your desires are the the problem not the game. The gear that is appropriate for the starchart is low mastery rank trash with zero damage mods equipped and a warframe with a decently leveled vitality. stop comparing this game's potential for game balance with the tutorial-phase of content.

 

On 2019-08-09 at 11:06 PM, KochDerFrettchen said:

And, frankly, the biggest problem on this topic is not the experience for the veterans.  Veterans would simply see a better spread of viable frames and equipment from a 'damage overhaul', and pretty much all of us are already using whatever we want because rivens and specialized builds.  This imbalance harms new players the most, finding gear they thought looked cool turning into trash in their hands and having the game torn out from under them by whatever random player is packing the forma'd ignis wraith or equinox or whatever. 

Veteran players already have a variety of choice within their arsenal. A damage overhaul isn't going to create more diversity. A successfully executed damage overhaul is going to spread out the linear progression from mastery ranks 0 to 30. Currently the highest mastery rank requiring weapon in the game, and as an extension most powerful, is the Aklex Prime at 15.

New players, and everyone as a whole, shouldn't expect their starchart experiences to reflect what they'll be doing in endgame. Low level weapons will be replaced regardless of how cool they may or may not be. Rivens are to be used to bring underpowered weapons past their plateau. Furthermore you're complaining about players in public matches playing this game exactly how it's meant to be played; as a hoard slayer measured in kills per minute. This game is a third person shooter Dynasty Warriors. If you're thinking it's supposed to be more like The Division or Destiny where the quantity of enemies encountered is small, you're actually wrong as that has never been this game's intended design philosophy.

 

On 2019-08-09 at 11:06 PM, KochDerFrettchen said:

Chill out, you're wasting everyone's time by bothering to fabricate situations that help you look down on the OP.  You have absolutely no reason to say any of this, and it holds no value to the conversation.  Every conversation around balance has you in it.  Not the literal you, but that person who just has to chime in and go "LOL the game's way more fun at level 300, what, can't handle it?"

Fabricated or factual, the point is that someone trying to control the balance of the game from the bottom up is going to do more damage for everyone instead of letting this game stretch its legs and utilize the built in counters to the exact complaints yourself and the OP are making. The game isn't at fault for a player bringing equipment that far surpasses what they're most likely to participate in. It's the player's responsibility, currently until difficulty selection is implemented, to pursue the content in the game that balances their loadout's power because inside endurance missions enemies scale in level. It isn't the game's responsibility to step backwards and rescind the given power increases because a vocal minority of players feel that they're too strong for content they shouldn't be doing anymore.

 

On 2019-08-10 at 2:09 AM, 000l000 said:

Such things as armor scaling shouldn't even reach 95-99% range, a ceiling is highly needed in most Warframe's departments.

This is the only suggestion that you've made which I will agree to. 90% should be the hard cap because the game already supplies ample variations of removing armor from individual and groups of enemies. The rest of your comment makes me believe you've never attempted to play past levels that are immediately available from a single click.

Let's get into what's problematic and why.

 

On 2019-08-10 at 2:09 AM, 000l000 said:

Diminishing return on damages and critical mechanics. Thus it'd help with Riven high disposition power creep and encourage more hybrid builds than pure red criticals in your Grineer's face. Discrepancy between high critical and high status weapons is real - and status weapons do have a really low ceiling (100% and you're done).

Diminishing return on scaling/cumulative mechanics such as Gara's splinter shield, Saryn's spores, Banshee's / Ember's / Chroma's / Mirage's multiplicative damage buffs. These are already really powerful, they don't need to be THAT powerful.

Diminishing return on CCs too, enemies abilities included - we shouldn't see permanent stun/bumps in a 2019 game - Warcraft did get rid of that a few decades ago. No one is having fun when unable to play - literally.

Diminishing return on range and duration to prevent some abilities to be out of control, including a line of sight limitation on most damageing abilities. This is a shooter game, being able to kill what you can't see isn't making much sense. They did that with melee, we need that on powers.

More diminishing return on scaling enemy levels too, armor/shield/health and damages.

No. Implementing a diminishing return on increases to modified critical hit chance will remove the necessity and or well distributed application of the crit-tier system. Furthermore no one is going to be successful using redcrits against grineer. Status weapons have incredible power through slash procs which no crit weapon will be able to compete with at the upper echelons of content. Sure status weapons have a low modification ceiling, however many of the are incapable of exploiting that low ceiling and maximizing mod slot real estate.

Again, No. Gara already has a counter to her splinter shield mechanic through the steep energy costs of her ability combo which allow for her to stack splinter shield. Saryn isn't capable of maintaining high damage spores for long durations as it will eventually kill what is effected before she can spread the spores which is the intended design of the ability. Chroma's buffs are additive. Banshee's sonar is multiplicative but requires players to change their aim and shoot weakpoints instead of their instinctual muscle memory. I've seen how a majority of you, the public collective, play. Your aim is trash and the ratio between your accuracy and headshots is abysmal. Banshee's sonar isn't going to make people who are complaining about low level content being too easy better at the game. Ember's accelerant applies to Heat damage exclusively. Moot inclusion. Mirage does indeed receive a multiplicative damage buff and for the most part exclusively the player playing as Mirage receives the buff unless augmented. Nonetheless adding a diminishing return to these elements is a moot suggestion as there is compounding limits on how far a player can push their modification; slots, capacity drain, ability energy cost, etc.

Diminishing returns on crowdcontrol effects would make sense if this game were something similar to World of Warcraft Classic, The Division, and or Destiny. It's not. Warframe is less of a small quantity encounter game like Halo and much closer to a Dynasty Warriors game where the player's effectiveness is measured in Kills per Minute instead of single target damage per second. And enemy who is still alive to be crowd controlled again after the first application has run through its duration means that the player is playing through content high enough to counter their loadout's damage, or that enemy has been momentarily forgotten. There's no better crowd control than dead and any enemy surviving the first crowd control means that the player is making a mistake, no the game for allowing the player to apply a second instance of the same crowd control.

As stated previously when discussing maximizing multiplicative damage buffs provided by warframe abilities there are already compounding limits on how far a player can modify their abilities. Ultimately if a player is maximizing their range they're choosing that luxury over more valuable stats. This is a rpg shooter game. Casters have their place within the complex equation of Warframe's potential choices of gameplay style. Don't go throwing line of sight limitations around lightly. Digital Extremes has made many mistakes attempting to apply this in the past. That gun can't do anything without a warframe carrying it and the warframe's abilities will always be prioritized first. Digital Extremes applied line of sight requirements on melee because they wanted to remove a player's ability to swing a melee weapon through a wall. This isn't a direct comparison to what was done with melee weapons because we have in universe reasons for why abilities and guns are capable of effecting enemies through terrain. Abilities will effect areas through open doors and guns are capable of punching through materials.

Blanket applications of diminishing returns will not push players into playing the game's content or make playing the game through what's immediately accessible by the starchart more fun.

I'll quote myself because it's a discussion point important enough to be repeated.

 

On 2019-08-09 at 3:29 PM, zekkzekk said:

This game needs an increased accessibility to higher level enemies outside of the daily sortie and paltry "elite" sanctuary onslaught. If you think you're doing too much damage for your own enjoyment you really need to stop doing casual content with loadouts made for fighting enemies at a minimum level of 150. Don't punish everyone by suggesting that the game's damage be limited because you couldn't be patient enough to endure an endless mission long enough to see a challenge that brings balance to your loadout. This wouldn't be a problem at all if we could load up our choice of mission at whatever enemy level we wish to start at instead of the babyfood that is 1-40.

 

[000l000]

Le 19/08/2019 à 20:06, zekkzekk a dit :

No. Implementing a diminishing return on increases to modified critical hit chance will remove the necessity and or well distributed application of the crit-tier system. Furthermore no one is going to be successful using redcrits against grineer. Status weapons have incredible power through slash procs which no crit weapon will be able to compete with at the upper echelons of content. Sure status weapons have a low modification ceiling, however many of the are incapable of exploiting that low ceiling and maximizing mod slot real estate.

Game isn't working that way. Status weapons have a low ceiling only because status can't go past 100%, apart from that they're using the same ceiling as crit weapons if you can increase it. The only thing that matters here is that status is way less impactful than criticals - a sniper rifle will always deal better status damage than a Tigris for example. Full status weapons are powerful at first, help with armor stripping but their damages have a way lower cap. Crit weapons on the other hand, and that's why i don't agree with you, have infinite scaling - which means that with enough starting critical chance and the right gearing - in the end are dealing insane damages no matters what.

No one cares about slash or anything, there's absolutely no full status slash weapon in the entire game that can compete with a full red crit. build with Hunter munitions. Even tons of dots won't do much if they aren't critical hits - and they'll even suck more if not past reds.

What doesn't make sense is that WF crit mechanics is infinitely scaling, there's no ceiling at all and it goes up and up and up until it's damn broken. Why do you think that most people are going for critical based kitguns, critical Zaws along with anything that can buff them through combo ? Blood rush alone shows how critical isn't well balanced along once you reach 3x or 4x combo.

I don't mind some better critical mechanics but in most games you don't have that. You deal a critical or you don't. Here once you can get past the red crit. thread, game is basically broken. I never said diminishing return would solve this but as OP said, no ceiling in any kind of game means there's no balance at all.

Just get a Synpase with HM and a riven with critical, gear it on a Nidus with Teeming Virulence augment along with an Adarza and some avenger arcane. That's quite common stuff and see how no damage ceiling is working fine atm.

Critical is damn broken, status on the other hand isn't scaling at all, physical and elemental damages aren't consistent at all, armor scaling isn't working either, and two factions don't even have viable defense mechanics (shield & health). Tbh the whole damage system needs some serious overhaul, lack of balance is real.

Edited August 21, 2019 by 000l000

[George_PPS]

You can create your own damage ceiling by removing one Mod from each and every frame and weapon in your inventory. PLEASE. 

The majority of us like to be powerful space ninjas without any power caps.