The New Damage Model Proposal: Dragon Ball

[George_PPS]

The New Damage Model Proposal: Dragon Ball model 
Dragon Ball's damage model elevated the series to super stardom status of all manga and animations since it was released decades ago using just the same damage model again and again.

Have you read or watched the Dragon Ball manga and animation series? In this immensely popular Japanese manga series/ universe, both the main characters and their extremely powerful archenemies are always growing and forcing each other to grow and get stronger.  Main characters always have to go through super grindy training and learning new tricks to grow even stronger and have more power to overcome the ever stronger opposing forces. It's a great and perceptual cycle and an extremely success formula that has worked for over decades of the development of the stories of the Dragon Ball universe. The formula is never tired, and readers and audiences like it because it fulfills some of the deepest psychological needs of human beings that we are facing tough challenges but we can always over come them by hard work and grinding.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_Ball

 

Warframe's damage and balancing mode should adapt this Dragon Ball model, instead of nerfing gears to create artificial difficulties of the same enemies. It is a natural human psychology that keeps us moving forward and getting more and more engaged to meet and overcome stronger and stronger enemies.  



The term balancing has been a hot topic for Warframe as long as I can remember since I started playing Warframe. DE seems to be struggling between nerfing gears  and/or making enemies  harder to "balance" to satisfy players. However we have seen a lot of problems, and complaints that drive players away and shrink player base few % every time a major nerf is done to players' favorite play styles, weapons, warframes, loadouts, gears, Mods, Riven Mods.  Instead of nerfing weapons and warframes to create this artificial increase of difficulty, why not consider this alternative and better model? 

The better damage model I believe is the "Dragon Ball" model that came to my mind few days ago, and the rules are VERY SIMPLE as following: 

Rule No 1: Always buffing  and never nerfing anything. Human beings are extremely  sensitive to what they have been taken away especially after hard work and a lot of time investment. If nothing ever gets nerfed, players feel a sense of security to keep invest time and money into their loadouts and the game.

Rule No 2: Always making enemies harder gradually, depending on enemies types, so players will always try to build better gears, get better and high stats new or just buffed weapons to counter the growing threats from enemies. This is very rewarding psychologically without even giving players some great rewards since the process itself is already a big part of the rewards.

Rule No. 3: Always buffing weaker and strong weapons alike but at different rates and in different updates to their perspective ranks of mastery levels or internal  power ranks whatever you call it. This way, everyone gets happy and no one will complain. It's like wealth. No one wants to see their wealth shrinking. This is a perceptual growth model that grows everything, including player base.

If DE implements this Dragon Ball model, no one's weapons and warframes ever get nerfed but always have to proactively grow stronger to beat enemies.also growing stronger and stronger. This is the right way to encourage players to try other weapons or warframes. Nerfing is the worst way ever possible to force players to use something else in the name of balance. 

Just by doing 1 or more of these 3 steps in each update, the balance is constantly and dynamically adjusted and no one will have to expect the sense of hardwork/loadouts/weapons efficiency/damage potential getting stolen or taken away harshly. The model will keep and maintain all existing players, and the playerbase will always be growing.

[SilverRook]

4 minutes ago, George_PPS said:

Rule No 1: Always buffing  and never nerfing anything

Sorry, I'm out......

[Khantico]

At least they got the blue aura right

[Sajochi]

No

[Volinus7]

Aka Warframe "no new players allowed" version 

[George_PPS]

2 minutes ago, SilverRook said:

Sorry, I'm out......

Rule 1, 2, and 3 all work in synergy as part of the damage system. Read them again. 

[George_PPS]

Just now, Volinus7 said:

Aka Warframe "no new players allowed" version 

Why would that be? New players as soon as they start the game, they get the latest and most recently buffed weapons and stats and newly balanced enemies. You didn't read the post in its entirety. 

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

10 minutes ago, George_PPS said:

The formula is never tired

The formula did get tired for a lot of people though. 

I mean, he's losing. Something pisses him off, he wins. Rinse repeat. The show is just a way to make kids with anger issues feel special...not unlike the incredible Hulk. Lol I watched it through the Buu saga and it was the same every season...Power Creep.

Warframe's biggest issues typically stem from power creep, and lack of balance. This is only asking to make those limits more extreme. DE actually mentioned very recently that they were going to finally "pull the bandaid off" and work on armor scaling. We need a tighter range of enemy strength with more meaningful techniques to dealing with enemies (that rewards more than just nuke frames)...not just keep making enemies and frames infinitely more powerful.

Edited November 5, 2019 by (PS4)Ozymandias-13-

[Volinus7]

Just now, George_PPS said:

Why would that be? New players as soon as they start the game, they get the latest and most recently buffed weapons and stats and newly balanced enemies. You didn't read the post in its entirety. 

That's not how a pay to skip game works. 

[Test-995]

Just now, Volinus7 said:

That's not how a pay to skip game works. 

Is it that different from current warframe tho?

[SilverRook]

1 minute ago, George_PPS said:

Rule 1, 2, and 3 all work in synergy as part of the damage system. Read them again. 

i did and what you propose is dumb. sorry but it is. I've heard this argument several times over.

 

You propose to buff everything including enemies and their health and armour pools to match the overpoweredness of our weapons..

There's a thing called differential.

This being the damage output of our weapons and the effective health of the enemies

if a weapon does 100 damage against an enemy with 100 eHp and you buff BOTH   

you buff it to 200 damage and you buff the enemy in response to 200 eHp 

ITS THE SAME AMOUNT OF DAMAGE 

you have achieved NOTHING 

[Volinus7]

14 minutes ago, Test-995 said:

Is it that different from current warframe tho?

Not really, but the prominent trait of the current Warframe is how it's "hidden", otherwise Warframe will immediately look like Diablo 3 strapped on an orbital elevator for new players. 

Oh it's supposed to be hidden, right? 

Edited November 5, 2019 by Volinus7

[George_PPS]

1 minute ago, (PS4)Ozymandias-13- said:

The formula did get tired for a lot of people though. 

I mean, he's losing. Something pisses him off, he wins. Rinse repeat. The show is just a way to make kids with anger issues feel special...not unlike the incredible Hulk. Lol I watched it through the Buu saga and it was the same every season...Power Creep.

Warframe's biggest issues typically stem from power creep, and lack of balance. This is only asking to make those limits more extreme. DE actually mentioned very recently that they were going to finally "pull the bandaid off" and work on armor scaling. We need a tighter range of enemy strength with more meaningful techniques to dealing with enemies...not just keep making enemies and frames infinitely more powerful.

Dragon Ball series' characters have tremendous powers. That's the best selling point of the series lasting for over decades for many readers. It is a proven success. It just makes sense. DE currently balances the game by mostly nerfing. And that is a big no-no for many players. The model solves this issue. Also, any power creep is also balanced by the Rule 1, 2, 3. updates. 

1 minute ago, Volinus7 said:

That's not how a pay to skip game works. 

That's another matter. 

[George_PPS]

3 minutes ago, SilverRook said:

i did and what you propose is dumb. sorry but it is. I've heard this argument several times over.

 

You propose to buff everything including enemies and their health and armour pools to match the overpoweredness of our weapons..

There's a thing called differential.

This being the damage output of our weapons and the effective health of the enemies

if a weapon does 100 damage against an enemy with 100 eHp and you buff BOTH   

you buff it to 200 damage and you buff the enemy in response to 200 eHp 

ITS THE SAME AMOUNT OF DAMAGE 

you have achieved NOTHING 

"Dynamically". Go back to read 1, 2, 3 TOGETHER again.

[SilverRook]

what needs to happen - is status needs to mean something again.

give us a reason to use status based weapons over crit weapons other than stacking CO damage.

make enemies have proper weaknesses.

corrosive is the only status effect thats actually used regularly 

Fire has had a recent overhaul with the ember rework but more needs to be done on status

 

[lukinu_u]

Yeah super great idea, so we end up with scientific notations for damage numbers, stuff like 2.63x10^4, 4.53x10^89, 1.53x10^789987, etc... and when we start hitting billions powers of ten, we will start using tetration and get damage numbers like 3↑↑↑3, 5↑↑↑5, get higher damage that atoms in the universe, etc...

Of course it's sarcastic, it's by far the worst idea. And calling nerfs "fake difficulty" is funny since stronger enemies that still get OS by our ridiculously overpowered weapons is fake difficulty. Nerfing the most used thing in a game generally provide more variety and create actual difficutly, while having stronger bullet sponge doesn't really help and encourage using the current "meta" more. 

[SilverRook]

Just now, George_PPS said:

"Dynamically". Go back to read 1, 2, 3 TOGETHER again.

i did .

My point stands.

[George_PPS]

Just now, lukinu_u said:

Yeah super great idea, so we end up with scientific notations for damage numbers, stuff like 2.63x10^4, 4.53x10^89, 1.53x10^789987, etc... and when we start hitting billions powers of ten, we will start using tetration and get damage numbers like 3↑↑↑3, 5↑↑↑5, get higher damage that atoms in the universe, etc...

Of course it's sarcastic, it's by far the worst idea. And calling nerfs "fake difficulty" is funny since stronger enemies that still get OS by our ridiculously overpowered weapons is fake difficulty. Nerfing the most used thing in a game generally provide more variety and create actual difficutly, while having stronger bullet sponge doesn't really help and encourage using the current "meta" more. 

The model is the best idea ever. Read what I write carefully. Number display is not a problem. Computers can process huge numbers. Just go up by few % at a time. There is room to grow for decades to come. 

1 minute ago, SilverRook said:

what needs to happen - is status needs to mean something again.

give us a reason to use status based weapons over crit weapons other than stacking CO damage.

make enemies have proper weaknesses.

corrosive is the only status effect thats actually used regularly 

Fire has had a recent overhaul with the ember rework but more needs to be done on status

 

Yes, forever buffing one way or another, never nerfing players, always buffing weapons/warframes and enemies dynamically. You never will need to worry about your gears being nerfed. You never need to concern  how your time investment into the loadouts and farming will get trashed or taken away again. 

[George_PPS]

3 minutes ago, SilverRook said:

i did .

My point stands.

You only read the first 1. Which doesn't stand by itself. Go back to read and COMPREHEND them or simply approve my model. 

[Loza03]

24 minutes ago, George_PPS said:

Rule No 1: Always buffing  and never nerfing anything. Human beings are extremely  sensitive to what they have been taken away especially after hard work and a lot of time investment. If nothing ever gets nerfed, players feel a sense of security to keep invest time and money into their loadouts and the game.

I feel like you don't actually understand how game balance works, or understand that buffing can in fact nerf other items indirectly.

[George_PPS]

2 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

I feel like you don't actually understand how game balance works, or understand that buffing can in fact nerf other items indirectly.

Rule No.1 is followed by Rule 2 and 3. All work together. Go back to read them again. Everyone will love this model that can help Warframe and its player base grow perpetually.I am offline for now.

Edited November 5, 2019 by George_PPS

[Loza03]

Just now, George_PPS said:

Rule No.1 is followed by Rule 2 and 3. All work together. Go back to read them again.. 

No they don't.

It might 'feel' good, but it's an unsustainable model. Look at the source material, Dragon Ball. One of the common jokes is just how quickly things that were once extremely important become complete non-issues. There was an entire official mini-movie based around two enemies that were about as strong as Frieza in a post-Buu saga world, the joke being that they just sicced the kids on the villains as playtime because it wasn't a threat. See also: Beerus. Remember when Beerus was an intimidating villain/chaotic neutral character? After a while, he became less of a threat, so they had to come up with Jiren, a character who nobody mentioned before who's quite literally stronger than god. There is a reason why the shows have each ended when they have.

[Genoscythe]

Tl;dr unlimited powercreep. It's pretty silly to take a "damage model" from a choreographed fighting anime where every encounter is pre-planned and willingly made the way it is to a videogame where things happen dynamically and balancing should be a thing. DE have gotten themselves into many a mess, and we are already at a "buff everything" state, which leads us to enemies being made completely immune to most damage and status effects and actually only makes a fraction of all playstyles viable. "Buff everything" led to horribly designed annoying enemies like Nullifiers because the devs were unwilling to nerf back then. A well-placed understandable nerf can make a game enjoyable and unless you're a three-year-old that you can also understand it. Saryn got adjusted, people lived with it, Saryn even instakilled enemies (as in, yes, a scripted kill) with her 4 in her first iteration, people lived with it.

 

Oh, have I already mentioned that I hate Nullifiers? Nullifiers, are pretty bad, too. And those corrupted nullifiers, man those are pesky. If DE would have swung the nerf hammer back when they should have a lot of the current power creep and imbalance could have been avoided. But now we're stuck in a timeline with nullifiers. Can't wait for my time machine.

Edited November 5, 2019 by Genoscythe
Clarification on nullifiers

[(PSN)Ozymandias-13-]

10 minutes ago, George_PPS said:

for many readers. It is a proven success.

This is not a manga, or a comic book. This is an interactive, cooperative game. You don't get to be the hero that comes in and overwhelmingly makes the rest of your team obsolete...we already have enough issue with frames doing that as is.

11 minutes ago, George_PPS said:

DE currently balances the game by mostly nerfing

"Rebalancing" after they release something too powerful. Have you noticed they've done the complete opposite lately? Now they release everything too weak, then buff it, because they know everyone will whine if they make it too powerful then take that away.

12 minutes ago, George_PPS said:

And that is a big no-no for many players

Then those players can leave. This isn't Dragon Ball Online. 

Your rules are bs, because you have poor concept of game design. Lol

[krc473]

4 minutes ago, George_PPS said:

Rule No.1 is followed by Rule 2 and 3. All work together. Go back to read them again.. 

I read all your rules, it seems like a pointless idea. If you buff the enemies without an equal or greater buff to our gear, you nerf our gear. If I have the best possible setup, and it gets a 5% increase, but the average enemies get a 50% buff, you nerfed us.

 

You say we don’t get nerfed in rule 1, but then rule 2 says we do. You do not have to change any stats on our gear to nerf us. You have completely skipped over this. If you buff everything equally you achieve nothing. You are either buffing or nerfing players.

• If you disagree, explain why. Don’t just say “read the rules again”.