Stop the powercreep, please.

[GruntBlender]

1 minute ago, Xzorn said:

Fixed that for ya. =D

We're a bunch of Gokus pretending to be Naruto?

[Xzorn]

6 minutes ago, GruntBlender said:

We're a bunch of Gokus pretending to be Naruto?

 

...Or maybe the Ninjas are just so skilled we can't find them. 🤪

[JohnMorte]

3 minutes ago, GruntBlender said:

How would you feel if weapon damage was tripled but Serration was lowered to something like 20% to compensate?

I don't see how that promotes modding diversity.

[GruntBlender]

1 minute ago, JohnMorte said:

I don't see how that promotes modding diversity.

I didn't say it would. You just said nerfs are bad, but it's all relative. Boosting base damage and nerfing mods can be a boost overall. A nerf to weapons with a bigger nerf to enemy health is a relative boost to weapons. So, how would you feel about gimping damage mods in favor of more base damage or lower enemy health?

[JohnMorte]

8 minutes ago, GruntBlender said:

I didn't say it would. You just said nerfs are bad, but it's all relative. Boosting base damage and nerfing mods can be a boost overall. A nerf to weapons with a bigger nerf to enemy health is a relative boost to weapons. So, how would you feel about gimping damage mods in favor of more base damage or lower enemy health?

All meta weapons are now stronger. Bad weapons also increase in damage, but not enough to care about to take over meta weapons.

[GruntBlender]

14 minutes ago, JohnMorte said:

All meta weapons are now stronger. Bad weapons also increase in damage, but not enough to care about to take over meta weapons.

But if the difference is now 10% instead of 10x, wouldn't that help?

[Uthael]

4 hours ago, GruntBlender said:

We're a bunch of Gokus pretending to be Naruto?

Sonuva sentient! You're right!

 

4 hours ago, JohnMorte said:

All meta weapons are now stronger. Bad weapons also increase in damage, but not enough to care about to take over meta weapons.

4 hours ago, GruntBlender said:

But if the difference is now 10% instead of 10x, wouldn't that help?

This issue needs someone to compare the best possible builds for any weapon, consider their unique perks to find their niches, list all of that in a single topic and propose very specific changes.

Some websites already have players' builds and descriptions for almost everything in the game which leaves "only" listing all of that and proposing changes.

This topic asks for devs to do it. When THEY do it on their own, they often get a negative backlash for "changes nobody asked for". Even if it's from a few people, it's loud.

DE tends to follow up with changes if they can say "you asked for it, here you go". That means A PLAYER has to do it. This has happened before. If you (anyone reading this) want a change, specify EXACTLY what you want changed and why. Nobody else is going to do it for you. It needs work, but that's the way to "stop the power creep".

[Xzorn]

2 hours ago, Uthael said:

This issue needs someone to compare the best possible builds for any weapon, consider their unique perks to find their niches, list all of that in a single topic and propose very specific changes.

 

Majority of the best scaling weapons in the game aren't meta weapons anyways.There's no basis for "meta" outside whatever goofy perimeters some Youtuber sets and whatever players want to follow those guidelines. Oh and perhaps whatever DE pigeon holes it's players into with bad design.

In the end synergy beats what a single weapon can do every time but anyone who actually plays the game can tell at a glance where a weapon stands.

[DatDarkOne]

12 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

In the end synergy beats what a single weapon can do every time but anyone who actually plays the game can tell at a glance where a weapon stands.

I've been saying this for years now. But do people on the forums actually read, Nooooo.  

Thankfully there are a few who do know better and can think for themselves.  😈 

[Uthael]

@Xzorn, @DatDarkOne - Yes, synergy. That's what I meant by "their unique perks and niches". Some examples:

• Due to its fire rate, Synapse is my weapon-of-choice for Lephantis and the Hemocyte, but the ammo consumption made it unviable for longer missions. Exilus slot for ammo mutation helps immensly. Thanks.
• The idea of firing Sancti Castanas through a Mutalist Quanta alt-fire using Ivara's Navigator at a bullet sponge's weak point to be able to one-shot it when it gets exposed without the need to reposition or aim at that time. That's a prime example of sinergy. Neither Sancti Castanas nor Mutalist Quanta are often used.
  This whole tactic needs preparation and timing and is largely unpopular because of that.
  An example of feedback here would be:
  "Make the Mutalist Quanta's bubble easier to place at an aimed position (Like Volt's shield, for example) and make it larger so the whole squad can notice and use it."
  No need to change the damage on that weapon for it to become used more.
• Panthera is fun to use, but the range on alt-fire is very limited. You have to use a mod to overcome that, but at that point, it becomes unviable compared to most other weapons. Please, increase the default range to ~15m

Just... Doing that for every weapon would be exhausting.

Edited November 22, 2019 by Uthael

[DatDarkOne]

1 hour ago, Uthael said:

This whole tactic needs preparation and timing and is largely unpopular because of that.

You might have noticed the things which require the least bit of thought or skill are the most popular to the masses.  

For example, "most" liked to use the melee combo counter as the main point of their builds, yet completely ignored the Venka Prime.  A weapon which has innately high counter rate and multiplier.  

😁 

[Squick]

If you want to feel like the game was at release:

 

Get a bunch of copies of your current mods, and put them at level 1-2. Then use those mods instead of your normal ones.

 

Ta da, difficulty is back. The big difficulty gate is in getting all of the basic mods to max level. After that, everything is much easier. Even the lato and braton do reasonably well with max rank mods and rivens.

[Xzorn]

6 hours ago, Uthael said:

@Xzorn, @DatDarkOne - Yes, synergy. That's what I meant by "their unique perks and niches". Some examples:

• Due to its fire rate, Synapse is my weapon-of-choice for Lephantis and the Hemocyte, but the ammo consumption made it unviable for longer missions. Exilus slot for ammo mutation helps immensly.

 

I get what you mean but there are so many things to cover regarding synergy it's unending.

This example for instance. Use it with Volt and Transistor Shield. You'll never run out of ammo and it does even more obscene damage than Synapse normally does. I have an old Endurance run where I used Volt and old-school Amprex which is far more of an ammo hog and pushed that simple combo to lvl 350 MOT Solo.

Once you break into team synergy it's pretty much impossible to rank weapon performance. That's not to say there isn't obvious weapon deficiencies or even just basic stat distribution but it gets complicated real quick and those more basic problems "should" be easily fixed by DE and not some BS Riven Disposition.

In the end.. What's our test dummy for ranking? There's no standard.

[DatDarkOne]

7 minutes ago, Xzorn said:

In the end.. What's our test dummy for ranking? There's no standard.

Very TRUE.  I have to constantly remind myself that weapons aren't going to do as much damage with other frames as they do while I'm Prowling as Ivara.  

[Uthael]

9 hours ago, Xzorn said:

What's our test dummy for ranking? There's no standard

Let's create some standard, than! Here's a suggestion:

If you have a weapon that works best with one or two Warframes, that's it's niche and let it be measured off of that.
If you have a warframe power or team combo that makes dozens of weapons OP, you ignore that combo.
For the actual test dummy, use whichever mob the test weapon works best on and remove the "global" mods (like Serration and Split Chamber).

For starters, focus on improving the idea of creating a standarnd instead of dismissing it. If it sounds good, start testing 😛

[GruntBlender]

2 hours ago, Uthael said:

Let's create some standard, than!

I'll suggest that a rank 30 gun should be good for level 30 mobs, needing mods to be taken further. Star chart ends with Sedna at 30-40 (ignoring the arena), so that fits as the end of what we can consider the base game. Rest of the content really only goes to 120 outside endurance runners who are the extreme minority. So, scaling unmodded maxed frames and weapons for level 30 and "endgame" builds for 120 seems about right. First 5-10 levels are very important too, for new player experience.

For current TTK and survivability benchmarks we can take the new player experience as one intended data point, at least.

[Uthael]

Lvl 30-40 mobs is a great idea! How about testing the gear with any mods as long as it's unforma'd and no mods are white/riven?

First few levels feel fine, imho. Enemies are few and die easily enough to unranked gear. Formas and polarities could be explained in a video clip after reaching 30 with something. As far as I know, that's the large obstacle for new players.

[GruntBlender]

So I just looked at TTK with a braton, with and without mods, against a crewman and a lancer. At level 5 the unmodded braton takes 1.08s to kill the crewman and 0.74s to kill the lancer. By level 100 it's 89 and 428 seconds respectively. With mods/forma/potato you get similar TTK from level 90 crewman and level 50 lancer, with only taking 1.43 and 6.85 seconds respectively. A modded braton does 62.5x the damage of an unmodded one, that takes a lvl55 lancer from a minute down to a second to kill. This is so wrong.

As a side note, despite the differences in armor vs shield, the corpus has more EHP up to around lvl 15, and comparable EHP up to lvl 20. That's around the middle of the starchart levels, so this could be the benchmark DE used to balance the EHP scaling.

I think I made an account on PS4 some time ago. I'll see if it's still there and run through the start of the star chart, noting weapon progression and resources/mods I get so I can get some idea of what'll be available to a new player in terms of modding.

[OmegaVoid]

5 hours ago, GruntBlender said:

despite the differences in armor vs shield, the corpus has more EHP up to around lvl 15, and comparable EHP up to lvl 20. That's around the middle of the starchart levels, so this could be the benchmark DE used to balance the EHP scaling.

Alternatively, it might be the point at which the player is expected to have acquired methods of mitigating armour. I remember that I was still ranking up my 90% elementals when I reached Europa, so I'd acquired tools for armour-stripping about the time I was starting to need them, and they would become more effective as armour became more of an issue 'cos I'd be ranking them up and swaying the proc pool more towards Corrosive as I progressed up the Star Chart.

(But balancing enemy unit eHP across factions is surely only valid if you also balance their numbers and damage output; think Zerg/Terran/Protoss in Starcraft for example.)

[Xzorn]

DE simply can't standardize weapons because they use Power Creep to entice players.

Can they do it in a far less drastic manner? Most certainly but some amount no matter how small is inevitable. If they break down each weapon into it's various component of DPS then it's easier to manage that power creep but still impossible to eliminate. Take these breakdowns for three builds for the same weapon.

 

Spoiler

Tigris Prime (Sweeping Serration)
1560 Damage (80% Slash) Crit 10% x2, 8 Pellet Count, 30% Status
Primed Point Blank
1560 * ( 1 + 1.65) =  4134 Damage
Sweeping Serration
4134 * 0.8 = 3,307.2 * 1.2 = 3968.4 Slash
Elementals
4134 * (0.6 + 0.6) = 4,960.8 Rad / 4,960.8 Viral
Multishot
(4,134 + 4,960.8 + 4,960.8 + 3,968.4) / 8 = 2,253 Damage per Pellet
8 * (1 + 1.2) = 17.6
2,253 * 17.6 = 39,652.8
Damage per Shot
39,652.8 * (1 + (2 -1) * 0.1) = 43,618.08

Status
Status Trigger per Shot = 17.6
Slash Weight (3968.4 + 3307.2) / (2480.4 + 3968.4 + 4134) = 0.6875 = 68.75%
Elemental Weight 2480.4 / 10,582.8 = 0.2344 = 23.44%
Elemental Trigger per Shot
17.6 * 0.2344 = 4.125
Avg Slash Trigger per Shot
17.6 * 0.6875 = 12.1
Avg Bleed Damage per Tick
(4134 / 8 ) * (1 + ( 2 -1) * 0.1) * 0.35 = 198.95
Avg Bleed Damage per Proc
198.95 * 7 = 1,392.64
Avg Bleed Damage per Shot
1,392.64 * 12.1 = 16,850.96

Estimated Total Damage per Shot
43,618.08 + 16,850.96 = 60,469.04

 

Tigris Prime (Vicious Spread)
1560 Damage (80% Slash) Crit 10% x2, 8 Pellet Count, 30% Status
Primed Point Blank + Vicious
1560 * ( 1 + 1.65 + 0.9) =  5,538 Damage
Elementals
5,538 * (0.6 + 0.6) = 6,645.6 Rad / 6,645.6 Viral
Multishot
(5,538 + 6,645.6 + 6,645.6) / 8 = 2,353.65 Damage per Pellet
8 * (1 + 1.2) = 17.6
2,353.65 * 17.6 = 41,424.24
Damage per Shot
41,424.24 * (1 + (2 -1) * 0.1) = 45,566.664

Status
Status Trigger per Shot = 17.6
Elemental Weight 3322.8 / (3322.8 + 5538) = 0.375 = 37.5%
Slash Weight 4430.4 / 8860.8 = 0.5 = 50%
Avg Elemental Trigger per Shot
17.6 * 0.375 = 6.6
Avg Slash Trigger per Shot
17.6 * 0.5 = 8.8
Avg Bleed Damage per Tick
(5538 / 8 ) * (1+ (2 -1) * 0.1) * 0.35 = 266.5163
Avg Bleed Damage per Proc
266.51625 * 7 = 1,865.614
Avg Bleed Damage per Shot
1,865.614 * 8.8 = 16,417.4

Estimated Total Damage per Shot
(45,566.664 + 16.417.4) = 61,984.065

 

Tigris Prime (Armaments)
1560 Damage (80% Slash) Crit 10% x2, 8 Pellet Count, 30% Status
Primed Point Blank
1560 * ( 1 + 1.65) = 4134 Damage
Elementals
4134 * (0.6 + 0.6) = 4,960.8 Rad / 4,960.8 Viral
Multishot
(4,134 + 4,960.8 + 4,960.8) / 8 = 1,756.95 Damage per Pellet
8 * (1 + 1.2 + 0.6) = 22.4
1,756.95 * 22.4 = 39,355.68
Damage per Shot
39,355.68 * (1 + (2 -1) * 0.1) = 43,291.248

Status
Status Trigger per Shot = 22.4
Slash Weight (3,307.2) / (2480.4 + 4134) = 0.5 = 50%
Elemental Weight 2480.4 / 6,614.4 = 0.375 = 37.5%
Elemental Trigger per Shot
22.4 * 0.375 = 8.4
Avg Slash Trigger per Shot
22.4 * 0.5 = 11.2
Avg Bleed Damage per Tick
(4134 / 8 ) * (1 + ( 2 -1) * 0.1) * 0.35 = 198.95
Avg Bleed Damage per Proc
198.95 * 7 = 1,392.64
Avg Bleed Damage per Shot
1,392.64 * 11.2 = 15,597.568

Estimated Total Damage per Shot
43,291.248 + 15,597.568 = 58,888.816

Now we match a few synergy options. For Banshee Vicious Spread Corrosive will perform better as Sonar does not increase Bleed Damage. For Rhino Sweeping Serration will perform better, least for a wider level range because Roar increases Bleed Damage. Armaments is generally worse than the other two unless you attempt more head-shots with the tighter spread. Corrosive inevitably out scales Viral + Slash the more shots are required to kill an enemy so even the basic choice of Corrosive Vs Viral is heavily influence by the type of buffs / debuffs being introduced if any.

None of these builds are strictly better but obviously better in certain conditions when layered with different synergy. Tigris is a pretty straight forward weapon and this should show it can still get pretty complicated. Of course instead of doing deep dive comparisons like this DE instead does blanket changes like Riven Disp which doesn't really work and mostly makes the problem worse. Since we mentioned it before; My Riven Synapse can drop 8 lvl 165 Napalms with a single mag. Good luck doing that with Catchmoon... Oh but then there's Garuda so the synergy cycle begins again.

 

22 hours ago, DatDarkOne said:

Very TRUE.  I have to constantly remind myself that weapons aren't going to do as much damage with other frames as they do while I'm Prowling as Ivara.  

Yea, head-shot multipliers, dashwire augment, navigator and melee stealth bonuses. Four different variables in one frame.

Edited November 23, 2019 by Xzorn

[DatDarkOne]

1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

Yea, head-shot multipliers, dashwire augment, navigator and melee stealth bonuses. Four different variables in one frame.

Shhhhhh.  Don't say that too loud or DE will hear it and bring out the NERF BAT.  

[GruntBlender]

1 hour ago, Xzorn said:

Take these breakdowns for three builds for the same weapon.

And that's not taking into account that bleed does true damage, ignoring armor. Though Sweeping Serration is not great on the Tigris as it doesn't increase bleed damage. But I digress.

The argument I'm making is for compressing the damage and enemy health ranges, not making all weapons do the same damage. 

[el_chanis]

On 2019-11-18 at 6:42 AM, GruntBlender said:

 

I like where you're coming from, and I agree, but it's very difficult to create mechanics that will be challenging to our overpowered frames and abilities. And AI can be very hard to program. One way might be to look at enemies like shield lancers for inspiration, having individual enemies that have interesting mechanics. That's why Bursas are fun, you have to flank them.

This. The fact that grineer can't interrupt our abilities while corpus have at least 3 or 4 units that do so (and infested "one", the energy drain ancient), means that they will only rely on their weak weapons and armor. DE's solution? SCALE THEM TO FREAKING INFINITE. Since DE's never did the so much needed scaling system rework, we keep getting stronger and stronger, trivializing more and more content, in order to compensate the absurd scaling/mechanic the so called "endgame" has, wich, btw, we still cheese the sht out of it.

There is nothing in the game that could barely resamblance to a ninja mission. Thanks to operators, we get to just "spirit walk" all thay into any stealth objectives just as easily as if were right in front of the spawning point.

We are very pretty, unstopable and pointless robots. As it is right now, we should be able to conquer the entire system in about 30 min, give or take 5 mins of afk to make some coffe.

[ILOHARTA]

sigh here we go again.

[Uthael]

It's easy to be loud about the problems everyone knows about. Offering a solution is the part that requires work. That's how you show that you care.