Less armor, more Damage

[Cubewano]

3 hours ago, LazyKnight said:

The other problem is do you think DE has time on their plate this year to rework all the Warframes?  The scale of the problem is most likely why this issue comes up every year and is eventually dropped when it is investigated.

They would if they didn't spend year after year before this one shirking the issue with one hand while also actively making it worse with the other. And rinsing and repeating it this year as well isn't going to help make it any better. (we also have to be real, they don't need to rework all frames to start on balancing this game, just extreme outliers like nukes and scale breakers like octavia)

Edited January 18, 2020 by Cubewano

[SenorClipClop]

Sooo, less Armor and less damage? Make combat even easier?

8 hours ago, AuroraSonicBoom said:

any hope of a skill based combat.

The overhaul of combat in a way I think you suggest would make it a very different game. Warframe's combat loops have never been about skill, and I don't expect they ever will be, with the possible exception of the odd game mode or boss fight. We're not going to have skill-based combat unless we strip a ton of power from players: there's no need to play skillfully if you can tap a couple of buttons to become invincible, invisible or completely disable a group of enemies, so any feature like that would have to go.

In Warframe, skill can come into play sometimes (headshots on Noxes and the like), but combat isn't based on player skill. At least not in the way most games talk about skill, which mostly translates to relfexes, aim and pattern recognition. Warframe's combat loops are about management -- manage your resources (health, ammo, Energy), optimally direct your effectiveness, reduce enemy effectiveness if needed, eliminate enemy, shore up depleted resources (magazine, health etc.), repeat loop with new enemies. It's all about awareness, control and management of your resources and the field of play.

This relates to the (hopeful) enemy Armor reduction because its current inflated state extends the time of combat loops without providing anything new (this enemy's done for... eventually...), and it skews player prep far toward dealing with that Armor. Less Armor makes the loop shorter, but also easier since there's less time for enemies to damage you and less of a player need to debuff the enemy. An increase in enemy damage makes sense here, because once the loop is made shorter, more lethal enemies make the loop tighter, so there's more pressure on the player to manage the situation in a short time. People will invariably rush to tank frames to handle a change like this*, but I think we'll also see a resurgence in the popularity of CC-focused frames.

_{*I've noticed that tank frames are a popular pick for any new change or gamemode, as they let the player stay safe longer while learning about the mode. In the first month of Railjack I've seen a lot of Inaros, and it was the same with the intro of other game modes.}

[shut]

11 hours ago, LazyKnight said:

-snip-

This thread is talking about the enemy/player number-scaling problem in this game, and tank warframes are almost unkillable in 99.99% of this game's content, while many non-tanks get oneshotted in the same content. Similar problem for player damage. This problem has reached such an extent that it's almost completely impossible for DE to create any enemy that represents a "fair challenge", a "test of skill", yadda yadda; because your choice of warframe will always determine whether you trivialize that content or get trivialized by that content.

That, to me, is borked. It's broken on a very fundamental level. It is the big poo poo.
I mean, seriously, I have never experienced a game where inter-class balance was so bad that it was literally impossible to create an enemy that feels truly satisfying to fight against. And this is from a solo perspective; don't even get me started about how braindead missions become when there are 4 of you.

 

I can understand why CC poses a balance issue as well, but it's just... not nearly on the same level as the big fat numbers problem. Definitely not an order of magnitude worse, at least not when you're playing solo.

• CCing enemies requires that the player press a button on each new group of enemies. That right there is already 999x more interactive and 999x more risky than tank gameplay.
• CC abilities tend to have limitations-- e.g. range, LoS, Nullifiers, etc. It's very easy to have at least one dude in the map unaffected by CC, and this is more than enough to kill you at higher levels. This is what I meant when I mentioned being "punished".

The point is, if you're running solo, then CC has a few small downsides and weak points. Big fat numbers (be it damage or bulk) have neither of these things, and big fat numbers are something that every experienced WF player has sitting in their arsenal.

 

11 hours ago, LazyKnight said:

-snip-

It's hard to imagine anything being "fair punishment" in a game where you can die 3 times in a minute without affecting the mission outcome.

WF is a casual game, so I'm not asking for WF to suddenly have Dark Souls levels of challenge (at least, not at starchart levels for newbies), but playing WF should feel engaging. Hard to make engaging content when player stats are this out of whack, though.

- TL;DR - 
WF's stat scaling is so insane that the concept of "challenge" does not exist. WF's CC issue is somewhat less insane.
Stats need to be normalized so WF can offer engaging gameplay for both casual and hardcore audiences.

[SenorClipClop]

11 hours ago, LazyKnight said:

-snip-

Uhh... I do. Failure in Dark Souls is more common than in Warframe, but it's so much better.

In Dark Souls, the game teaches you that failure (death) is a natural part of the game and is to be expected. Frequently. But it also has a mechanic where as long as you prove to have learned from the mistake that got you killed, as long as you do as well or better than your last attempt, your loss is almost entirely reversed. Get to where you last died and you can pick up what you lost. This mechanic pushes players to learn from their experiences when they fail, rewards them for continuing to try, and adds a layer of tension when you have to recover from your failure. It also encourages players to experiment (okay that strategy got me killed, let's try doing something else this time).

In Warframe, you are just irreparably punished for failure. You have a buffer of several lives, and teammates can pick you up if you're downed, but once you fail the mission, that's it, you're booted out and all you typically get it is a small handful of exp. You can learn from the experience of failure (watch Life Support, don't wander away from the Cryopod), but the only lesson the game directly teaches you is "don't fail", which can get frustrating for players. There's no chance at redeeming that failure and no reward for improving beyond their previous mistakes. This also pushes players to only pick the safest bets with what they play, leading to people clinging to the safest and most powerful items and builds they can muster. The finality of failure here doesn't actively discourage experimentation, but that's the effect it appears to have. Failing a mission just sucks, and that's just the end of it.

This doesn't need to change. Lots of games punish failure pretty harshly, and it's not necessarily a poor design choice. But if Warframe adopted a mechanic that rewarded players for redeeming themselves when defeated, I think this would open up a few doors (more experimentation, less player salt-rage). This could be as simple as amping up the [Replay Mission] option. Fail the mission, hit Retry and you're in another instance of that same mission, at the same level or maybe just slightly higher. Finish the mission (or in endurance modes, last longer than you did before), and when you win you recover your lost loot and exp. A very similar mechanic is already in place with Liches.

[GPrime96]

24 minutes ago, SenorClipClop said:

Uhh... I do. Failure in Dark Souls is more common than in Warframe, but it's so much better.

In Dark Souls, the game teaches you that failure (death) is a natural part of the game and is to be expected. Frequently. But it also has a mechanic where as long as you prove to have learned from the mistake that got you killed, as long as you do as well or better than your last attempt, your loss is almost entirely reversed. Get to where you last died and you can pick up what you lost. This mechanic pushes players to learn from their experiences when they fail, rewards them for continuing to try, and adds a layer of tension when you have to recover from your failure. It also encourages players to experiment (okay that strategy got me killed, let's try doing something else this time).

In Warframe, you are just irreparably punished for failure. You have a buffer of several lives, and teammates can pick you up if you're downed, but once you fail the mission, that's it, you're booted out and all you typically get it is a small handful of exp. You can learn from the experience of failure (watch Life Support, don't wander away from the Cryopod), but the only lesson the game directly teaches you is "don't fail", which can get frustrating for players. There's no chance at redeeming that failure and no reward for improving beyond their previous mistakes. This also pushes players to only pick the safest bets with what they play, leading to people clinging to the safest and most powerful items and builds they can muster. The finality of failure here doesn't actively discourage experimentation, but that's the effect it appears to have. Failing a mission just sucks, and that's just the end of it.

This doesn't need to change. Lots of games punish failure pretty harshly, and it's not necessarily a poor design choice. But if Warframe adopted a mechanic that rewarded players for redeeming themselves when defeated, I think this would open up a few doors (more experimentation, less player salt-rage). This could be as simple as amping up the [Replay Mission] option. Fail the mission, hit Retry and you're in another instance of that same mission, at the same level or maybe just slightly higher. Finish the mission (or in endurance modes, last longer than you did before), and when you win you recover your lost loot and exp. A very similar mechanic is already in place with Liches.

The only Missions that’s closer to Dark Souls levels of punishing for Failures is Arbitration. Only Game mode that keeps your Rotation rewards after a Failure but lose the rest of your Resources you farmed from the enemies or crates. But Liches are the closest.

[ZealousStalker]

10 hours ago, AuroraSonicBoom said:

As mentioned in the devstream, the devs at DE apparently believe that ramping up damage enemies deal is necessary to compensate for the lowered survivability. I was pretty taken aback by that, as not only would I have expected them to decrease the damage while buffing enemy survivability, but also at the fact that it was talked about in the context of creating challenging content.

I'm pretty sure a lot of people here know how little skill it takes to mindlessly roll, jump and flail around to keep that DR up while trying to take out the mob. The proposed changes would only escalate this playstyle and decrease the time to kill it takes an enemy further, working directly against what is actually needed to create any hope of a skill based combat. More spam, less thinking. Less time for enemies to do anything that could be considered a counter, and less time for the tenno to waste not killing the mobs.

This is the kind of change that would make the combat even shallower than it is now, and I cant really tell if the devs plans this to alleviate themselves of the responsibility to create a slower(as in slow enough), more thoughtful combat experience or of they can't see this far ahead.

What do you think?

They need to add a new armor type on top of what is there already and for the enemies to get skills.

Armor that reacts to what the player has and or is doing, Armor that reactions with damage types in a negative and violent way if you don't have the right stuff on. In a simple example foe as armor that's all about no fire damage, you hit them with fire and its not the gray zero you may get or tiny numbers but a big plume of fire that catches you aflame, use an element that has a combo of fire? tiny fire plume? This would not always happen as the mob often has a mix of armor types but just be a small chance, like wise plates should be on the armored foes that have their own health bar and interaction.

The biggest hardship I have for warframe is how lack luster the thought for the enemies are, if this was a reality and your enemy was some semi immortal murder tron that bounced around in your space ship like some sort of demonic human seized blender how would you deal with that? what would you make or build to keep the death blender away? I see hints to it, shield guys smack you and you fall or rail gun robots make that lil shock wave thing and you fall on your face so they can try and beat on you with some hints in high level play with the corpus robots and those laughing assassin in the grineer that can keep pace with your warframe, have the power to work around them and attack when they make a wrong move but really nothing more than this and its always either--oh a big boy is on the map and it did a thing and now I am dead or it spawned and now its dead what did it do?

Base units should be able to handle the player and punish them if they lean to hard on something, if you want to jump and slam all the time elites should have a small chance to be able to catch or deflect you, whip out a grenade that magnetize you to the floor or even the ceiling or wall or change up what they do in reaction to something, maybe a corpus medic sees every one melting under saryns spores? Slaps down a power rod that removes it that you have to kill before its effect goes away. Maybe the 200 IQ rhino is just stomp spamming while walking around in no death mode? well boys we need that big fat cannon, elite makes a sound, lights up whatever just flags and warns the player he is about to go sicko mode as they change out their rifles for shotguns or some other large hard hitting armor puncturing god hand that would nock the player out of that state and silence that skill for a time.

would force you to be more alert and punish trying to mindlessly blow by stuff while also making your enemy seem a lot more alive and real apart from more threatening while making you react and change to whats going on. most of these have nothing to do with taking damage just the interaction with you and your enemy reminding you that for all your space ninja-ness you are still trying to fight a inter-solar system faction with resource to control and reach across the whole solar system--no a pile of aggressive goo that sluggishly walks into your bullets.

Mean I think the most threatening enemy you fight on a normal base is those goofy grineer balls that roll over you and you stagger for a second and that handful of seconds is a healthy stress spike as you jerk around maken sure you are not about to be clubbed in the skull with a blade or eat a rocket.

 

Edited January 18, 2020 by ZealousStalker

[SenorClipClop]

24 minutes ago, GPrime96 said:

But Liches are the closest.

Liches take a cut of your successes. You could play perfectly and still the Lich would amass some of your loot. I was more referring to a mechanic that operates in a similar fashion to Dark Souls' recovery system (game stores which items you lost, rewards them again later).

26 minutes ago, GPrime96 said:

The only Missions that’s closer to Dark Souls levels of punishing for Failures is Arbitration. Only Game mode that keeps your Rotation rewards after a Failure but lose the rest of your Resources you farmed from the enemies or crates.

I believe Fissures do this too, granting you your Relic rewards even on a failure. But that's not the point I'm getting at here. My point is that while failure in Dark Souls is more common, failure in Warframe is worse. Dark Souls lets you redeem yourself by letting you recover what you lost after learning and improving yourself. Warframe doesn't.

[LazyKnight]

10 hours ago, SortaRandom said:

This thread is talking about the enemy/player number-scaling problem in this game, 

There is a a problem when talking about the tanks verse non tanks and why they are balanced the way that they are. Warframes that tend to allow for easily being 1-shot killed are given CC, stealth or a room nuke and are expect by DE not to be hit.  That is why they have low health in the first place and it is due to the CC, area damage or invisibility consideration.  

10 hours ago, SortaRandom said:

I can understand why CC poses a balance issue as well, but it's just... not nearly on the same level as the big fat numbers problem. Definitely not an order of magnitude worse, at least not when you're playing solo.

Most of the CC warframes scale to level 9999 (or pick you realistic number that you can stay awake to find) and the tanks falls off at around level 200 for everyone save Revenant, tell me what one is a bigger issue? And this does apply to solo, as well but the limiting factor is player skill. 

10 hours ago, SortaRandom said:

• CCing enemies requires that the player press a button on each new group of enemies. That right there is already 999x more interactive and 999x more risky than tank gameplay.

If that is your first point, the only tank that fits your description for game-play would be Inaros and to a much lesser extent Grendel. Is Inaros who you have a problem with? If so you might as well just say it and not  generalization with the word 'tank'. The other tanks all require as much player input as any CC or stealth warframes but it's more of a micromanagement of resources with a lower requirement of player skill.

10 hours ago, SortaRandom said:

WF is a casual game, so I'm not asking for WF to suddenly have Dark Souls levels of challenge (at least, not at starchart levels for newbies), but playing WF should feel engaging. Hard to make engaging content when player stats are this out of whack, though.

Why is Dark Souls hard? it is a game about pattern memorization and paying a small price for ignorance. Does it stay a challenging game after you gain knowledge and experience, unfortunately not really (i would still be playing it if it did).

Warframe is out of whack, and any argument I have about it will be called meta complaining because it is several system interacting that are broken and not just one. it is not simply fixable by making every warframe as durable as Excalibur and calling that a fix. What that will accomplish is increasing the skill level required to play the game but it would not necessarily do anything to make the game more engaging.

Unless DE reviews how they want the game played, any fix with armor and damage are at most a band-aid for the challenge issue.

Edited January 18, 2020 by LazyKnight

[Lakais]

Well, I'm here of the opinion that while we play the game in this weird ass way where apparently going against hyperlevel enemies is how the game is supposed to be played from the perspective of the vocal part of the community, it is not what DE wants the game to be about. And I can get behind that. I do not like playing against hyperlevel enemies for many reasons. 

But the main bit of feedback I always give with regards to the level scaling system is to get rid of the level scaling system. An enemy is what it is and no magical multiplier system is going to change that. Difficulty and challenge then being provided through enemy population density and variety. 

This is a comprehensive change that would require massive nerfs to great many of the most used weapon and frame mods but it would have the benefit of making weapon and ability design much more manageable as the power curve of enemies and players would be more controllable and predictable. A painful and grueling change that I strongly believe will have a far greater benefit to player enjoyment and overall game health in the long run then these bandaid fixes. 

Edited January 18, 2020 by Lakais

[shut]

I don't want to make giant walls of text so imma cherrypick one thing. (I mentioned this in my previous post, but deleted it to make the wall of text more palatable lol)

3 hours ago, LazyKnight said:

Most of the CC warframes scale to level 9999 (or pick you realistic number that you can stay awake to find) and the tanks falls off at around level 200 for everyone save Revenant, tell me what one is a bigger issue? And this does apply to solo, as well but the limiting factor is player skill. 

If you're planning on doing 999-hour Survivals or something, then obviously you're going to hit a point where CC'ing enemies becomes more viable than tanking. But it's hard to think of this as a balance issue when there is literally zero incentive to play at such a level.

Yes, CC technically scales better, in the sense that utility scales infinitely and a big fat number doesn't. That doesn't mean it's less healthy for the game as a whole.

 

EDIT:

3 hours ago, LazyKnight said:

Warframe is out of whack, and any argument I have about it will be called meta complaining because it is several system interacting that are broken and not just one. it just not simply fixable by making every warframe as durable as Excalibur and calling that a fix. What that will accomplish is increasing the skill level required to play the game but it would not necessarily do anything to make the game more engaging.

Unless DE reviews how they want the game played, any fix with armor and damage are at most a band-aid for the challenge issue.

This, I can agree with. Maybe not the band-aid part (since player/enemy scaling are the backbone around which a healthy game should be built, and this backbone is hella broken right now)-- but once scaling is given a fundamental ground-up rework, addressing our insane CC options should follow soon after.

I just think that addressing CC first is silly, because many of our frames need their insane CC just to not get instagibbed. Nerfing CC before fixing scaling will only further limit the number of viable warframes.

Edited January 18, 2020 by SortaRandom

[LazyKnight]

17 minutes ago, SortaRandom said:

Yes, CC technically scales better, in the sense that utility scales infinitely and a big fat number doesn't. That doesn't mean it's less healthy for the game as a whole.

Does removing counter play from your opponent make a healthy game?  Have you ever played any group mission in this game ever and had nothing to do because the Ai's brain has been removed? Or played a mission where everything is unable to act because the entire group is invisible? 

Do you want your cake and eat too? Should the warframe's keep their CC and other gimmicks if ehp normalize to a narrow range?  If a glass cannon no longer has significant issue why would any ever play anything else?

Edited January 18, 2020 by LazyKnight

[shut]

1 minute ago, LazyKnight said:

Does removing counter play from your opponent make a healthy game?

If this is what you took from my post, then you probably didn't read my post.

[Mover-NeRo]

Well from what i seen... the Railjack dual Grakata enemy can shred even my more tanky builds in split second.

Reason i have to focus more on serious dmg reduction abilities or CC.

On one hand i like it but that also means less room for squishy frames.

[LazyKnight]

25 minutes ago, SortaRandom said:

If this is what you took from my post, then you probably didn't read my post.

That's what you get when you double your post size with an edit. I know you will never change your mind about CC so whatever

44 minutes ago, SortaRandom said:

I just think that addressing CC first is silly, because many of our frames need their insane CC just to not get instagibbed. Nerfing CC before fixing scaling will only further limit the number of viable warframes.

If DE doesn't fix systems that interact at the same time they will only shift the meta and end up with nothing to show for their effort. 

Edited January 18, 2020 by LazyKnight

[Aldain]

14 hours ago, Ham_Grenabe said:

Let’s hope they can thread that needle.

DE's track record would imply that they likely cannot.

I enjoy Warframe and support DE, but I am in no way expecting them to get the numbers right on the first, second or even third go round.

While DE's ideas and concepts are usually very good, their numbers implementation usually leaves much to be desired (looking at you Empyrean resource economy).

[GPrime96]

1 hour ago, Mover-NeRo said:

Well from what i seen... the Railjack dual Grakata enemy can shred even my more tanky builds in split second.

The enemy that killed me the most in Railjack would be these dudes. His burst damage is really high.

[LazyKnight]

1 hour ago, GPrime96 said:

The enemy that killed me the most in Railjack would be these dudes. His burst damage is really high.

Exo eviscerator has enough burst damage to kill a warframe with 1243 armor, 1070 health and adaptation in two burst shots without reloading.

Edited January 18, 2020 by LazyKnight