Scaling back on scalability

[Niryco]

Scaling is like the in-thing for warframe's meta game, affects everything from starting to end-game content. Daily we see it as what's viable and what's not past level X. Eventually scaling becomes abit ridiculous for everything........

Example enemies, at the start, maybe to level 20 it is all fair and balanced, level 30 to 50 and things sort of feel, just about right...... mostly..... Anything beyond that and suddenly you and I become a wet noodle. Enemies also be like "Nope, no more abilities, no more energy, no more regen and down with all the poison and fire!"

Player scaling? didn't you see that 1902933965 damage on a level 100 grineer?!?!?!? MUAHAHAHAHA. Let's also use our invulnerability skill + adaptation mod and etc!

And loot scaling....

Scaling is to me a nicer word for inflation. Inflation as it grows either becomes meaningless or, if uncontrolled, unfair and ridiculous. I mean why must you do 1000000 damage to just kill an enemy in one hit? Why must an enemy have 50000 hp to take 20 bullets to die? These numbers start becoming whacked out if we talk about time to kill or even balance.

Inflation also relies on the tools that support it to thrive, this means as long as there are mods or warframe abilities around that can scale endlessly then inflation can remain relevant. And this isn't a good thing, worse in fact because when certain stats that just cannot grow become pointless like hp or armor, then these abilities and mods becomes a need to continue playing the game. In short, you either trivialize the game or the game trivializes you.

Scalable loot, does it save anyone time and does it actually do anything? Stronger enemies and better rewards, that is the slogan. Survive longer and higher chances. But as a player, as any player can sit here and tell you, it took them maybe 10, 20, 200 runs... or even years to get what they want. Maybe we are the minority of the curve, who knows really but as cynical as this sounds, i think getting 20 hexanon after defending against several waves of level 100 enemies, isn't exactly how I pictured it to be.

I guess my point is, infinite scaling needs to be scaled back if the reality it paints is starts to become self mocking. If balancing it is too hard, why not have realistic caps for loot and stats, instead of a exponentially increasing difficulty, make difficulty more regressive perhaps so that things have a soft yet realistic enemy plateau for players to feel comfortable fighting against. This also applies to modding.

Rewards scaling quantity could be done simply in tiers, reaching the highest tier means that all your subsequent rewards should be a fixed quantity and quality of what drops within that bracket.

I think, to break out of this cycle of self mockery, where you either scale or you don't, we got to take a step back and just set some arbitrary numbers that should act as realistic expectations of the game's difficulty. My opinion on pursuing endless numbers as a means of difficulty is a band aid for other issues such as sometimes weaker AI design, dungeon layout, enemy types and etc. Though sometimes stalker AI's is amazing. Saturn wolf mission design while gated and repetitive was a simple but well received addition.

Maybe things can change for the better, I hope it does because I love this game and we should look back at the core foundations of this game and address aspects that simply need a tack on, if you get what i mean. Thanks for reading!

Edited August 29, 2019 by Niryco