Do Weapons Need To Be Balanced?

[nicopopolis]

This forum is filled with buff this/nerf that threads and arguments about if a weapon is OP or fine the way it is.  This all goes around the actual question that we need to ask, is it necessary that the weapons be balanced in the first place.  Some argue that since this game is not PvP driven that the "overpowered" weapons that your teammates are using help you so there is no need to nerf them.  We even hear that they're going to start tiering the equipment so that you need a high mastery rank to use the most powerful weapons in the game.

 

If you ask my opinion the first question I'm going to ask is do you intend players with high mastery ranking to play with players with low mastery ranking?  Is it fun to watch someone else blow everything away while your weapons barely damage them?  Do you expect people to use potatoes on weapons that they KNOW they're going to throw away once they hit rank 30 or buy inventory slots to save weapons they intend to discard?  The desire for weapons to be balanced doesn't come from a fear of power creep for everyone.  Some people like the style, look and feel of certain weapons.  They don't like the idea that the weapon that works the way they like is not as powerful as a weapon that they don't care for.

 

If a player likes auto-shotguns, of course they're going to be upset when the sustained fire from an auto-shotgun at close range is completely blown away by an automatic rifle that also has better range and more accuracy.  If you like the idea of a rocket launcher it's annoying that a pistol with 5x the fire rate can do as much damage per shot as a rocket.  That isn't about being upset by power creep, it's pure jealousy.  And that jealousy is deserved when things are completely unfair for the style of weapons you like to use.  Power creep does, however, make people reluctant to become invested in their gear and spend time using forma and re-leveling equipment.

 

On the current path it still feels like the developers are taking an approach to this as if this were a single player game, or a multiplayer game you play with friends rather than an online game you play with random people.  It might seem reasonable that the weapons you have to work for are the most powerful weapons in the game and generally that would make sense if this weren't an online game.  If you were playing with friends, you might ask your friend to stop using the ridiculously overpowered rifle so the rest of you could get some kills and have some fun.  That's not the way online games work though.  People don't have fun watching one player take all the challenge out of the game because he has the hardest to obtain and therefor most powerful weapon in the game.

 

What are your thoughts on the subject?

Edited September 24, 2013 by nicopopolis

[ForumSmurf]

Not balance. But make all weapons a valuable purchase. Balance means precisely near equal performance. What needs to happen is strategical value variation. 

Edited September 24, 2013 by ForumSmurf

[PsychedelicSnake]

My thoughts are I may need to find a flame retardant suit.

[MaxImpact]

Currently, when you join a pub game, the only separation between the newbs and the pros is 3 mastery ranks. So, a rank 1 player can't join a rank 7 player. That's good. But, a rank 5 player, who most likely has mid to early-late game weapons, can join a rank 7 player with all the best gear in existence. This is a problem. My idea: A conclave limit option in settings under the ping limit option. That way, the player can choose what the maximum variation of conclave ratings from theirs that the people in the game they're joining are. So, for example, a reasonable default would be 200-300.

[USIncorp]

Currently, when you join a pub game, the only separation between the newbs and the pros is 3 mastery ranks. So, a rank 1 player can't join a rank 7 player. That's good. But, a rank 5 player, who most likely has mid to early-late game weapons, can join a rank 7 player with all the best gear in existence. This is a problem. My idea: A conclave limit option in settings under the ping limit option. That way, the player can choose what the maximum variation of conclave ratings from theirs that the people in the game they're joining are. So, for example, a reasonable default would be 200-300.

What, and separate the new players from the old in an even greater way?

That's a terrible idea, and the conclave ratings a re being abused too much as it is.

 

@the OP

Balance exists in PvE games so that there is a wide variety of different and unique weapons. Each having some kind of role. If one playstyle/loadout was inexplicably better in every way than the other,

This.

Is.

A.

Problem.

 

This is why weapons like the Acrid, Soma, Despair and Strun Wraith are bad. This is why Nova, and to an extent, Frost, are bad. They literally discourage all variety in loadouts, since it if you do not use them, the game literally punishes you. THIS IS AWFUL GAME DESIGN. This is WHY balance exists. 

This is why people who say that balance is unnecessary in Warframe ARE WRONG. We NEED NERFS, as much as we NEED BUFFS. Balance is a literal balance between buffs and nerfs.

 

And I apologize if I seem ranty, it just frustrates me so when people constantly try to defend the brokenly overpowered things in the game out of their blind ignorance, and their refusal to try and ATTEMPT to see reason.

 

/endrant

[LazyKnight]

-Snipe-

This isn't a PVP game and perfect balance isn't idea. In PVE there NEEDS to be inclined towards vertical progression or the game stagnates. The idiotic escapist video is made by a hack that hasn't a clue, but just likes to lecture people.

 

The warframes need buff/nerfs and they should follow an ideal of perfect balance within certain range with them. If they do the same with weapon it doesn't work because people WANT endgame and people have been complaining for far longer that this game lacks any sense of progression.

 

They have made FAR too many useless weapons and it is because DE isn't testing stuff they made prior to U9. The entire list of primary and melee weapons needs a review because they are not up to par with the level ranges of the various planet's NPC. The overpowered weapons are far less of a problem than the issues that so many weapons are just woefully inadequate in their own rights.

Edited September 25, 2013 by LazyKnight

[USIncorp]

This isn't a PVP game and perfect balance isn't idea. In PVE there NEEDS to be inclined towards vertical progression or the game stagnates. The idiotic escapist video is made by a hack that hasn't a clue, but just likes to lecture people.

 

The warframes need buff/nerfs and they should follow an ideal of perfect balance within certain range with them. If they do the same with weapon it doesn't work because people WANT endgame and people have been complaining for far longer that this game lacks any sense of progression.

 

They have made FAR too many useless weapons and it is because DE isn't testing stuff they made prior to U9. The entire list of primary and melee weapons needs a review because they are not up to par with the level ranges of the various planet's NPC. The overpowered weapons are far less of a problem than the issues that so many weapons are just woefully inadequate in their own rights.

When did I say anything about perfect balance? The thing i've noticed in a lot of anti-balancers, is that they assume that we want everything to be exactly equal, which is NOT what we want in the slightest.

 

The issue with the endgame isn't that it doesn't exist, it's that all it is is normal gameplay, just much more punishing. As in much more punishing to you if you don't do exactly what the meta-game dictates you should do at every given point in time.

 

And I agree that DE should do actual testing with their weapons before release. (Because, really, day one Miter was just plain broken, and that's a bit inexcusable) However the problem is less that the old weapons are bad, its that the overpowered weapons invalidate any and every aspect of variety and skill in this game. It makes more sense to nerf the much fewer overpowered weapons than try to balance the dozens of primary and melee weapons in the game. Also many of the older weapons are not actually bad, just underrated (e.g. Strun, Braton, Latron, Boltor). They are underrated because of the overpowered crap, and the fact that enemy scaling is broken.

[LazyKnight]

 Also many of the older weapons are not actually bad, just underrated (e.g. Strun, Braton, Latron, Boltor). They are underrated because of the overpowered crap, and the fact that enemy scaling is broken.

It doesn't take long to buff weapons, it is just an excel table. I would not use a strun, latron or boltor if I had no other available weapon(would just use melee). I am re leveling the braton(Iah one I sold my original) and my urge to vender it even with it's catalyst is quite high. These weapons are so weak it not even remotely fun, it feel like every NPC is a brick wall.

[USIncorp]

It doesn't take long to buff weapons, it is just an excel table. I would not use a strun, latron or boltor if I had no other available weapon(would just use melee). I am re leveling the braton(Iah one I sold my original) and my urge to vender it even with it's catalyst is quite high. These weapons are so weak it not even remotely fun, it feel like every NPC is a brick wall.

 

Suit yourself. Having used the Latron, Braton, Boltor and Strun extensively I can reasonably say that each one has their own unique merits which makes them good in their own rights. 

Then again, I find content past level 60 to be extremely dull. Which is why I don't play it often. (Usually when I am invited to T3 matches by clanmates.

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Balance needs to happen.  I'm one of the people that still wishes for everything being a sidegrade of everything else and higher mastery guns just being more specialized (though for the record, I have accepted defeat in that regard and if we are to have tiers, I shall do my best to assist them).

 

Tiers based on mastery are about the only reasonable way to do tiers in this game, but even then, that's a messy system.  To be perfectly honest, the mastery system punishes more than it helps by forcing a player to use weapons they otherwise wouldn't.  I guess that's part of the point though: base progression in the game around what percentage of the material has been used.  I suppose it does lengthen gameplay time.

 

Despite its shortcomings though, mastery provides a framework within which balance can occur.  It does reward grinding (as well it should) in the sense that it gives you better guns as you rank up.  There are obvious broken-OP exceptions to this (I'm looking at you, Soma), but those are the things that need to be adjusted.

 

Let's consider a player's options.  A new player has the Mk-1 Braton.  Following this, if they are informed, they are going to go for the Akbolto as a pistol and the Braton as a primary unless they happen to have a bunch of awesome mods by chance at which point they'll go for the Soma.  In other words, they're going to grab the best weapons they can find that they know of.  Normal human beings aren't going to gimp themselves deliberately unless they have a reason to.

 

For instance, I have almost all pistols maxed, and because my mastery is already nearing 10, I have no desire to ever even touch the Spectra.  It's just too weak.  On the other hand, because I would like to hit mastery 10 at some point, I am currently working on ranking up my Dread despite already having a maxed Soma, Flux, Ogris, Lanka, Boltor, Supra, Dera, etc because it's not so much of a gimping that it I don't mind it because it's actually decent.

 

Let's say the Synapse was as good as we originally thought (there was a time where some believed that >100% crit would have a chance for a crit on top of a crit, causing stupidly high damage output, though we now know it to be effectively just multishot) and was mastery 11.  Would I be willing to use the Spectra then?  Maybe.  I'd be able to get to 11 plenty of ways without it.

 

You see, people will go for the best they can get, gimping themselves as little as possible along the way to do so.  This is why we need balance within tiers.  If people have sudden stupid jumps in power (Mk-1 Braton to Soma for instance), then they won't want to touch anything else.  You shouldn't be able to get the best gun in the game until you've had the chance to get the second best, and the second after the third, and so forth.  If players are given access to content that is too powerful, they will avoid content and inevitably something more powerful than the Soma will come out and then they'll be left at mastery 1 while the new gun is mastery 10 and that's a long row to hoe considering they've just gotten used to the best in the game.  This is why nerfs can be useful.  They prevent sudden jumps in power that eclipse other content.  Nerfs should be used to bring weapons that are above the median power level of a given tier back in line or when thought of from a different perspective be used to increase acquisition difficulty (either through cost, rarity, or mastery rank required) by bumping it up to a higher tier where that power level is acceptable.

 

Now for buffs.  Some will say "just buff everything to X-level," where X is some overpowered gun.  The problem with that is that it forces a massive rebalance of every other weapon in the game which will probably be worse once complete with new overpowered guns so in the end, it is a simple waste of time for the devs when they could be doing better things with their resources.  That said, buffs are still useful.  They are ideally used to bring content in line with the median power of other content in that tier.  Should the Spectra and Embolist get buffed?  Absolutely!  They both need it very very badly.  Why?  Because as I said before, they are below the threshold of what players deem "acceptable gimping" when going through mastery.

 

Buffs and nerfs both have their place.  Balance ultimately is to make all content equally viable, which in Warframe means "for all tiers, make all content within a given tier equally viable."  Each should have pros and cons.  A Dera is very different from a Hek, but both are mastery 4 and are good, solid weapons.  We don't need things like the Soma eclipsing all other content in the game.  We just don't.  Personally, I'd rather see the Soma mastery 8 and super-high costs rather than have its power reduced, but that's just me.  I'm not trying to advocate nerfing everything into the ground.

 

The problem is though, some people don't have the appropriate perspective and come in when their favorite X got nerfed and now they're mad because it takes them a reasonable amount of time to kill things.  Instead of thinking of the big picture where buffs and nerfs need to happen to keep things relatively close to the median of the tier, all they see is the fact that they got gimped by the system.  The irony is that had they tried to advance in mastery (which is inevitable as higher and higher rank equipment is released), they would have had to have been gimped by the system anyways.  At least by nerfing, we can prevent future players from suffering the same fate.

 

 

Now, onto the issue of higher rank players making lower-rank players irrelevant by dealing all the damage.  Higher mastery players should be rewarded somehow as I detailed above.  The game already separates players by mastery though.  It will whenever possible, match you with players within three mastery ranks of yourself.  Though, honestly, the situation described where one person gets all the kills is more about warframes and their 4's than anything else which is a balance issue which needs addressing and has for a very long time.  People who advocate 4's not getting changed love to claim that people are complaining about kill-stealing which makes no sense in a PVE game, so they should be left as-is.  It's not an issue of kill-stealing though.  It's an issue of players being forced to be inactive and not useful.  Players enjoy contributing to their team and denying a player that is the heart of the issue.  People don't like it when a teammate forces them into inactivity.  Yes, sitting idly by and watching the mastery roll in gives you some sort of compensation, but you'll get mastery whether you contribute or not.  People want to contribute and that is being denied.

 

 

In the end, balance needs to happen.  Without it, we get content that gimps players, eclipses other content, and can force allies into a position where they can no longer meaningfully contribute to the team.  In all three situations, the fun of the game is reduced.  Balancing within, or in severe cases between, tiers is how we combat this.  So yes, weapons do need to be balanced.

Edited September 25, 2013 by Volt_Cruelerz

[LazyKnight]

-Snipe-

Your post are always interesting. I also agree that weapons do not need to be brought to despair's level, but weapons like braton/latron need to be buffed a little so it is closer to mid range. I am of the mindset of side-grade within tiers and better versions of lower weapons as goal post to work towards(Flux upgrades to synapse, etc.).

 

Many weapons are what I would consider underachievers that need to be at least brought up to the benchmark of useable. Part of the problem is that DE hasn't set up a coherent ranks for weapons and having the mastery ranks to mean anything because of the method used to gain them. I would prefer that DE didn't use leveling up weapons and warframes as a means of assigning mastery level and instead I would prefer if they just had a general affinity totally determine someone's rank.

 

Acrid is OP considering nothing in game needs that much power. Soma isn't OP so much as it makes other rifles look bad(not hard to do since they are mostly sub-60 weapons for all but corpus). I have tried nearly all void mission with my maxed out soma while solo and it wasn't any easier than using my hind of equal mod level.

 

Soma shouldn't have been added to game at rank 3 and it is clearly in the same league as rank 7-8 and I am surprised that Scott didn't give it rank 8 to start with. It annoys me that the weapons mastery rank are messed up and if DE just used ANY method to determine what rank each weapon fell under it would be a lot less confusing.

 

I am rank 11, I have already grinded out so much master points I just want to stick with one weapon now.

Edited September 25, 2013 by LazyKnight

[Volt_Cruelerz]

Your post are always interesting. I also agree that weapons do not need to be brought to despair's level, but weapons like braton/latron need to be buffed a little so it is closer to mid range. I am of the mindset of side-grade within tiers and better versions of lower weapons as goal post to work towards(Flux upgrades to synapse, etc.).

 

Many weapons are what I would consider underachievers that need to be at least brought up to the benchmark of useable. Part of the problem is that DE hasn't set up a coherent ranks for weapons and having the mastery ranks to mean anything because of the method used to gain them. I would prefer that DE didn't use leveling up weapons and warframes as a means of assigning mastery level and instead I would prefer if they just had a general affinity totally determine someone's rank.

 

Acrid is OP considering nothing in game needs that much power. Soma isn't OP so much as it makes other rifles look bad(not hard to do since they are mostly sub-60 weapons for all but corpus). I have tried nearly all void mission with my maxed out soma while solo and it wasn't any easier than using my hind of equal mod level.

 

Soma shouldn't have been added to game at rank 3 and it is clearly in the same league as rank 7-8 and I am surprised that Scott didn't give it rank 8 to start with. It annoys me that the weapons mastery rank are messed up and if DE just used ANY method to determine what rank each weapon fell under it would be a lot less confusing.

 

I am rank 11, I have already grinded out so much master points I just want to stick with one weapon now.

I'm not even trying to go into a full list of what needs buffs/nerfs, but I do agree with a buff to the Latron family.

 

And I absolutely agree that DE hasn't made ranks stable enough yet and that's a major problem.  Quite frankly, I feel like they need to just bind everything to a mastery requirement and say "something at mastery X should be better than something at mastery Y" where X>Y followed by a massive balance pass.  TBH, if I were given free reign to do whatever the heck I wanted with balance, few items in the game would go untouched because balance is really messy right now.

 

Acrid is stupidly powerful, yes.

 

Soma...  It sounds like it was an attempt to be Gorgon V2.  There was nothing wrong with the original Gorgon mechanics except for the fact that they didn't work for balance reasons at such a low mastery.  It would fit right in at mastery 8.

[Sidathe]

I'm not even trying to go into a full list of what needs buffs/nerfs, but I do agree with a buff to the Latron family.

 

You. I like you. :D

[syle]

I would love to use my afuris

I love those guns they look and feel great

but they are horrible when it comes to dmg and ammo efficiency

why would I even use them over something like hikou or despair or acrid

there is not a single reason other than mastery

[fatpig84]

It is not the weapons are OP, it is that the older ones are UP.

For example the Grakata and Afuris.

Edited September 25, 2013 by fatpig84

[Vaskadar]

Not balance. But make all weapons a valuable purchase. Balance means precisely near equal performance. What needs to happen is strategical value variation.

Specialize and differentiate. Give each one something that the other doesn't have.

[Voidflow]

My opinion to balance is we need balance and still could have weapon tiering.

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/99726-weapon-tiers-and-sidegrades/#entry1133921

 

At current state of game only few weapons are effective for high end game, partially because of the armor scaling and partially because of weapon tiers. So the outcome is, that some weapons are kind of useless and only good for mastery. At the end only a few weapons will be used.

Why not to allow people to use weapons they like as effective as high tier weapons by spending more time via formas.
So the idea to keep tiers and to bring low tier weapons to higher level as "sidegrades".

Tiers + Sidegrades How2:

 

 

Scaling:

 

- Number of polarities depends on tier (tier 2/4/6 respective 1/2/3 polarities)
- At level 30 high tier weapons are better than low tier counterparts
- Upgrading with forma process adds polarity slot and increases weapon stats depending on weapon tier
- Damage increase via forma on high tier weapons is relatively low
- Damage increase via forma on low tier weapons is relatively high
- Damage increase via forma can be caped (8 Formas?) and non-liniear

- Damage increase via forma can be weapon specific (own scaling for Latron for ex.)
- Upgrading via forma can be appled to other weapon stats such as, crit chance, crit damage.

Example:

Vulkar is Tier 1 weapon and available from beginning, no polarity slots
Lanka is Tier 7 weapon and available at mastery rank 7 with 3 polarity slots

Both maxed and polarized (formaed 8 times) have comparable DPS with a maximum difference of 15 %
(so that Lanka is still better than Vulkar)

 

DPS scaling between mastery rank 6 and 8 shouldn't be that high. The higher the mastery the lower the difference between those ranks (6 and 8, 7 and 9 etc.). Otherwise you will increase power creep and making lower tier stuff obsolete.

DPS increase via tier / mastery rank should be flat at the end (asymptotic curve), see below  

http://modelinginsights.com/Datamodeling/images/Fig2-3.gif

 

Sidegrades:

 

In my opinion it is the wrong way to put some weapon variety / sidegrades to the game via "weapon only for faction X"

Flux "for" infested <-> Synapse "for" Corpus. so you need 2 similar guns, even if you only enjoy one of them to play. 

 

A different and better way to put variety is:

 

Flux for precision, but less range, low critical hit chance.

Synapse less precision, more range, high critical hit chance.

(No rifle is useless against specific faction.)

 

Chose the one is better fitting you own feeling, not the faction you playing against. 

And yes one rifle can be a bit stronger against faction X compared to Y and vice versa. But then only by 10-15 %.

 

Summary:

 

- This way we could have sidegrades, weapon tiers and less useless weapons. 

- With high tier weapon you will be rewarded with more polarity slots, less to forma, unique look, and a bit higher DPS output.

- With low tier gear, you can master it by installing some formas into it (up to 8!), making it on pair with high tier weapons. 

 

EDIT: updated

Edited September 25, 2013 by Voidflow

[nicopopolis]

My opinion to balance is we need balance and still could have weapon tiering.

https://forums.warframe.com/index.php?/topic/99726-weapon-tiers-and-sidegrades/#entry1133921

 

I realized some time ago that if I were to make all the changes I wanted to this game, it wouldn't be recognizable as warframe anymore, it would be a completely different game practically.  Personally I hated the idea of forma the instant it was introduced because I knew it would end up doing two bad things to the game: weaken your potential for NOT releveling the same piece of gear multiple times AND restrict your weapon options to a handful of weapons you're willing to spend time in.  I like trying different weapons and loadouts.  I loved the old mod system where your weapons evolved in meaningful ways and the most powerful mods were weapon specific.  So even if you weren't planning on getting a boar, getting that +25% damage / +75% mutishot boar only mod made it go up on your priority list.  I liked it when potatoes didn't do much until a weapon was level 15 so you had a chance to really try it out before spending cash shop items on it.

 

Before the mod system changed I had almost every weapon potatoed up.  Since remodding was expensive, I didn't swap mods around all the time, they stayed in the weapons I equipped them to making finding rare mods extremely meaningful and not redundantly boring.  I WANTED all the mods I could get so I could customize all my weapons to do what I wanted.  Nowadays I equip a powerful pistol and head to Kappa to level all this boring gear that I really don't want to use like the Dera, or Paris.  But if I found a Dera specific mod that gave me +100% fire rate/+50% ammo capacity, well I would think about how I could mod up the Dera to be a great weapon.  As it stands, it's just a worthless piece of equipment good for nothing but mastery to me.

 

All this ranting is off topic though.  Tiering equipment is the standard in most MMOs because in most MMOs the weapon doesn't cause your character to operate differently.  They exist for the sole purpose of progressing through a game and only offer stats, not different functionality.  This is a shooter, not a MMORPG and differences need to be respected.  It sucks when the weapon that operates the way you like doesn't do enough damage to make it viable at endgame.  Tiering seems like a good idea to allow progression, but if they go that route, don't expect people to become attached to their weapons anymore.