@DE the nerf Warframe NEEDS, but players don't want!

[selig_fay]

3 минуты назад, (PS4)UltraKardas сказал:

Kinda why they have augments as using a growth tree system for this vast amount of warframes would be all consuming and impossible to balance.

 

While it sounds cool an paper, its not practical. The meta would find its niche and people would use the strongest combo to become the meta and nothing would change.

Except that new content would be on hold for the next year or so as DE tried to make that system work.

 

Well, I was talking about the early stages of the game. It's too late to change anything now.

[(PSN)UltraKardas]

3 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

If only some frames and weapons have more than a single build, then modding clearly isn't working. I don't think the old tree system was good either, as it had the habit of driving players to min-max their frames to the extreme and outright unequip some of their abilities. Unique bonuses, on the other hand, I'm entirely in favor of, and I think those would be the ticket towards a greater diversity of playstyles.

Except that the frames that don't have multiple builds, never had the potential for multiple builds. Loki for example has the same build no matter how you mod him. His playstyle doesn't massively change. You are invisible + you can disarm with or without radiation procs. 

For the few abilities that are good enough to mod only for them that leaves multiple builds. You can mod for those. Frames like Nova are a good example when you have speed nova, slow nova and wormhole nova. 

The multiple builds are more about using Nova's kit. You use a slow, or reverse it to have a different effect. Most warframe abilities in the game can't be given the opposite effect. 

[Teridax68]

32 minutes ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

Except that the frames that don't have multiple builds, never had the potential for multiple builds. Loki for example has the same build no matter how you mod him. His playstyle doesn't massively change. You are invisible + you can disarm with or without radiation procs. 

Loki did actually have a second, Radial Disarm-focused build back in the day, which was extremely popular in Defense, especially ODD, so this isn't at all true, particularly as his 2 and 4 operate off of completely opposite stats, i.e. duration vs. range. However, his 2 and 4 also have very little to do with each other, and both builds focus on just one ability at the expense of all others on his kit. Effectively, the example you picked reinforces the point that the current modding system makes it more or less impossible for frames to have both coherent kits and a multiplicity of playstyles.

32 minutes ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

For the few abilities that are good enough to mod only for them that leaves multiple builds. You can mod for those. Frames like Nova are a good example when you have speed nova, slow nova and wormhole nova. 

The multiple builds are more about using Nova's kit. You use a slow, or reverse it to have a different effect. Most warframe abilities in the game can't be given the opposite effect. 

Nova is perhaps the only frame in the game where modding her in different ways puts focus on more than one ability (outside of maybe a Duration+Range Rhino), as her 1 and 4 both operate off of the same core stat, and Strength only really regulates the speed modifier on Molecular Prime (nobody really cares about her 1 damage). Even so, the build doesn't really accommodate her 2 or 3, and conversely her Wormhole build dumps on the rest of her kit. I do think we're in agreement here, though, in that Nova is an exceptional case, and in the near-totality of other cases there's a clear discrepancy between our modding system and the potential for warframes to be modded along it.

[(PSN)UltraKardas]

5 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Loki did actually have a second, Radial Disarm-focused build back in the day,

Except that build is no different then the way people build him today. People build him for invisibility and disarm, or disarm then invisibility. Nothing about his kit particularly changes except if you radiate enemies or not. 

The only different is if you can disarm an entire room and beyond or just enemies near you. His kit is functionally the same. Only the time and range is altered. It's not like Nova where her slow suddenly speeds up enemies. 

Loki is in the similar boat as Octavia. There's really not a different style of play. You can tweak their kit, but their abilities basically stay the same with only tweaks to duration or range.

 

8 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

Nova is perhaps the only frame in the game where modding her in different ways puts focus on more than one ability (outside of maybe a Duration+Range Rhino), as her 1 and 4 both operate off of the same core stat, and Strength only really regulates the speed modifier on Molecular Prime (nobody really cares about her 1 damage). Even so, the build doesn't really accommodate her 2 or 3, and conversely her Wormhole build dumps on the rest of her kit. I do think we're in agreement here, though, in that Nova is an exceptional case, and in the near-totality of other cases there's a clear discrepancy between our modding system and the potential for warframes to be modded along it.

I mean Nova's 2 only scales off damage, then is immune to every other stat change which helps if you lower her power range. Otherwise it scales more off weapon damage. 
Duration is the main factor in Nova's range for her molecular prime, but the Strength determines what its effect is.

There's also Chroma. Duration, and Power strength all effect his  2+3. Duration also decreases his energy consumption on his 1 and 4.  Chroma has a lot of builds depending if you want to be a solo tank, an eidolon killer, or a team healer with everlasting ward and fire element to give people health. 

Equinox is another frame like Nova. Duration extends her first two abilities, then lowers the energy drain of her 3+4. You can build her to hard cc, or to nuke damage or be a healer mix. With her having 8 abilities its pretty natural you get a large amount of builds with her from everything to stealth to saryn-esque nuke setups. 

Nezha's entire kit could be based around duration. His warding halo and ultimate work like Rhiino's Iron skin and his Ultimate. You can make a CC Nezha build or a damage build. 

At the end of the day, it's what you can do with the warframe ability themselves that make builds diverse. Nova's molecular prime didn't need an augment, it already had the potential to effect enemies in several ways, and mods just made it possible. 

Having more corrupted mods, and augments that alter abilities like smoke shadow (Ash makes his team invisible) would vastly help. But like the aforementioned Octavia, some abilities without augments can only allow so much "diversity" 

 

[Teridax68]

1 minute ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

Except that build is no different then the way people build him today. People build him for invisibility and disarm, or disarm then invisibility. Nothing about his kit particularly changes except if you radiate enemies or not. 

The only different is if you can disarm an entire room and beyond or just enemies near you. His kit is functionally the same. Only the time and range is altered. It's not like Nova where her slow suddenly speeds up enemies. 

Loki is in the similar boat as Octavia. There's really not a different style of play. You can tweak their kit, but their abilities basically stay the same with only tweaks to duration or range.

I think we're basically saying the same thing here, in that mods don't actually add mechanics to a warframe, though I'd argue that there is a difference between an Invisibility that lasts for over half a minute, and one that lasts for less than five seconds, just as there's a difference between disarming a whole room and only disarming enemies immediately around Loki. At least there there is more than one direction to build towards, whereas with Octavia, the build is just maximum Duration and Strength.

1 minute ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

I mean Nova's 2 only scales off damage, then is immune to every other stat change which helps if you lower her power range. Otherwise it scales more off weapon damage. 
Duration is the main factor in Nova's range for her molecular prime, but the Strength determines what its effect is.

Indeed, though all this shows is that Nova is the prime (/pun) example of why our modding system doesn't work, because her scalings are deliberately bent completely out of shape and markedly different from those on most other frames, just so that she can have a chance at working towards multiple builds without killing off her other abilities. Gauss has the exact opposite, where the strength of his 4's steroids scales with Duration rather than Strength, just so that he's forced to build for Duration to make the most of his kit (besides his 3 anyway), and doesn't end up dumping more than one ability when building for another. It just adds even more counter-intuitiveness to a system that clearly isn't built to give our tools the diversity we'd expect of a modding system.

1 minute ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

There's also Chroma. Duration, and Power strength all effect his  2+3. Duration also decreases his energy consumption on his 1 and 4.  Chroma has a lot of builds depending if you want to be a solo tank, an eidolon killer, or a team healer with everlasting ward and fire element to give people health. 

That is true, but then each of those builds focuses on one ability, if only because his 1 and 4 are also generally seen as too weak to use. His tank + Eidolon killer build focuses on Vex Armor (and maybe his 2 if going for Toxin and greater swap/reload speed), whereas his healer build focuses on Elemental Ward. In terms of ability use, he probably has some of the least diversity around, despite his versatility, since the only two abilities he really uses are duration-based steroids.

1 minute ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

Equinox is another frame like Nova. Duration extends her first two abilities, then lowers the energy drain of her 3+4. You can build her to hard cc, or to nuke damage or be a healer mix. With her having 8 abilities its pretty natural you get a large amount of builds with her from everything to stealth to saryn-esque nuke setups. 

I'd argue she only has two builds, her sleep build and her nuke build. Her healing is sub-par relative to other healer frames (or Trinity, at the very least), and most of her abilities aren't actually considered all that good, with her 1 just being a transformation button especially. Modding works against her too, because focusing on one stat over others worsens her over-reliance on one form over another, as her Night and Day forms scale a bit differently.

1 minute ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

At the end of the day, it's what you can do with the warframe ability themselves that make builds diverse. Nova's molecular prime didn't need an augment, it already had the potential to effect enemies in several ways, and mods just made it possible. 

I mean, the augment was basically just another augment to her 1, not to her 4, and was mainly a convenience thing due to the fact that she can't reactivate Null Star, and needs the DR. Other than that, as mentioned above, the only reason she has diverse builds is because her scalings are twisted in such a way that altering her stats doesn't destroy half her kit when going for her more common builds (her Wormhole build does arguably make her 1 and 4 terrible, though). She is living proof that our current modding system doesn't work, and I'd look to mods like Rolling Guard or even Rhino's 1 augment for examples of mods that do genuinely enrich gameplay. If Gale Kick were any good, it'd probably be a nice supplement to many playstyles as well, which is why so many players were disappointed when the mod turned out to be crap.

1 minute ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

Having more corrupted mods, and augments that alter abilities like smoke shadow (Ash makes his team invisible) would vastly help. But like the aforementioned Octavia, some abilities without augments can only allow so much "diversity" 

I can somewhat agree with this, in that some abilities are really dull and don't lend themselves all that well to interesting mechanics. However, augments are a clear example of how pretty much any ability can be made potentially more interesting by adding entirely new mechanics on top, something a stat-based modding system is fundamentally unable to do. If Molecular Prime could only slow, but then had an augment that allowed it to speed enemies up instead, that would be another valid way of implementing the ability's dual purpose, for example.

[keikogi]

2 hours ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

There's also Chroma. Duration, and Power strength all effect his  2+3. Duration also decreases his energy consumption on his 1 and 4.  Chroma has a lot of builds depending if you want to be a solo tank, an eidolon killer, or a team healer with everlasting ward and fire element to give people health. 

Chroma is the wrost desing in warframe because he somehow failed to be an aura bot. His 2 and 3 are aura's that are not used as auras. His 1 makes him weaker and his 4 arguably makes him weaker as well due to the armor reduction. His element stick is also a joke because he has 4 elements and 2 choices do I want EHP or I'm feeling fancy and want reloads. He is the wrost example of variety in builds because the healling build sucks ( the heal has a Cool down equal to the duration of the buff , the buff is not worth an argument mod to give it for allies ) and the real build is just how much power str I can fit on this boy.

3 hours ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

Nezha's entire kit could be based around duration. His warding halo and ultimate work like Rhiino's Iron skin and his Ultimate. You can make a CC Nezha build or a damage build. 

Using duration on Nezha is a bad idea you are better of with eficiency because his spears dont apply to enemies entering the area so you are better of recasting. His 1 Also benefits more from eficiency because its easyer to get 75% efficient than getting 300% duration

 

3 hours ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

Having more corrupted mods,

There is a good reason why it has been I while since we got a new corrupted mod, quite likely is the released corrupedted mods never accomplished what they were meant to do.

People mostly use corrupeted mods when the negative effect is meaninless ( does not really affect anything thats usefull ) , the mod is blatantly overpowered ( fleeting expertise ) or they side step the cost by sacrificing something that had no value to begin with ( the skill negatively affected was not good to begin with ). They never feel like the balancing act they were supposed to be.

People dislike tree system because technically speaking there are few choices but I tend to prefer tree system becuase more often them not we have meaninfull choices. Yes technically speaking we have coutless build choices but in the end of the day we have like 3 choices on a build. Secondary weapons right now pretty much use the base damage trio , them the crit packcage them choice combo of dual stat mods, for all the diverstity of thr modding system you got to pick 1 mod and odds are it is primed heated charge after the fire buff. Same applies to warframe to lesser extent because warframe have different purposes meaninf they won't suffer as much.

 

[selig_fay]

25 минут назад, keikogi сказал:

Using duration on Nezha is a bad idea you are better of with eficiency because his spears dont apply to enemies entering the area so you are better of recasting. His 1 Also benefits more from eficiency because its easyer to get 75% efficient than getting 300% duration

1 no longer energy drain. So this ability benefits well from both duration and effectiveness. The longer the duration,the more the trail will burn.

[CopperBezel]

Nezha is one of the few cases where building him feels like balancing priorities by degrees. Other than efficiency, there's nothing that's building up to a cap, and building to a cap always means that every % point you can drop in has more % value than the last one you dropped in - instead, he can lean hard into one or another area and get gradually diminishing returns for it. I don't always use his 3 augment because it's situational, my usual build for him leans hard into range at the cost of power strength, and I have a build for him that drops range (I.e. his 4) entirely for more survivability as a pure boss-fighting tank. It's usually going to start with full efficiency for him, not always (he's generally going to have Hunter Adrenaline and he's a tank so energy is not quite as precious) but after that, it can be duration, it can be range, it can be survivability or his one good augment, etc. And he's also got a very good linear progression, since at low levels and without a lot of mods, his Warding Halo is an exceptionally cheap DR (based on health instead of duration, so he casts it once a mission at low levels and once in seven seconds at high) and his Divine Spears is a radial nuke until it becomes a radial CC with cool synergy bonuses. Not every frame needs to build like Nezha, but he's one of the more obviously successful examples. It helps that every ability in his kit is actually good and most of them scale with something. (Burning Chakram doesn't benefit from anything but can be killed by very low power strength or duration from corrupted mods.)

I can't get very far looking for problems with the build system before I'm encountering bigger problems with the frames themselves. I mean, even Gauss is one of those, where the fundamental problem is just that everything worth doing scales off his duration. Nova is another - if her DR capped lower or Antimatter Drop was worth the trouble of casting, a person might consider building her with at least a Streamline in there. I do think at least she's a case where there are too many mods useful to her to really have an "optimal" build - the four duration mods, Umbral Intensify, Molecular Fission, Adaptation, your choice of Rush or Escape Velocity in the exilus slot, that leaves one slot to decide between Quick Thinking, Vitality, her 1 augment, or Hunter Adrenaline. And all that duration is really about building to a DR cap, so even though the last duration mod is giving her the last 10% of her DR thanks to where the thresholds fall in the last 15%, it's still certainly less valuable than Adaptation, and if you drop one of Constitution or Augur Message, you must drop the other now that it has half the value of whatever you dropped first....

Meanwhile, Neutron Star is just a decast that you can simulate exactly by jumping out of bounds without the mod, and Antimatter Drop is weak because it's a slow setup that hails from a time in which the game was slower and AoE was hard to get. So the cause and solution to some of Nova's greatest building problems really has to do with poor design in her base abilities.

I certainly do build suboptimally, and I have all of the relevant focus nodes now but no useful arcanes. Guardian changes everything for squishy frames and I don't have it, Grace can make a big difference if you have a Guardian to stack it with, Energize is popular for the 5% of folks not using Zenurik for some reason and if one arcane lets you pick a different focus school, that's certainly a perk. I avoid Adaptation because it's OPAF, and it's still baffling to me that it exists. I don't expect the chaotic mess that is Warframe not to have cheese builds. There are enough frames in the game with enough entirely unique abilities to make balance impossible, and it's not because of the mod system in specific, it's because of the card game logic interaction that everything in the game uses in general that also happens to be much of the fun. It's when this mod or arcane or ability triggers on X and is valid to affect Y, which means that in situation Z, you can get bonus A multiplied by the normally middling passive B, etc.

When one of my top frames gets too OP for any normal content, sorties and liches and the first 30m of arbies, etc., I cycle over to someone else. The way power creep works in this game, I assume that means I'll eventually be a Zephyr main.

So as far as I'm concerned, ability mods are very nearly the only thing I'm pretty sure are exactly right. The abilities themselves, survivability mods, all forms of damage, and possibly the weapon mod system could always use refactoring and some nerfing, but ability modding remains actually pretty fun.

Edited January 28, 2020 by CopperBezel

[(XBOX)DarkForceLegend]

Mmm... nope. I don't agree with this at all. I feel that it would have the opposite effect that you intend. Allow me to explain... So lets say this happens and the mods that affect abilities get nerfed, thus making alot of frames that needed that bit of strength or range to keep up with other frames that don't actually need it such as Saryn. It would force players to in fact start using frames that have better scaling.

My current Saryn has very little strength, and while I do have a lot of range on her. Having ranged nerfed wouldn't do too much to deter me from using her.

Honestly, as powerful as some frames are, I actually don't see Saryns everywhere, I don't see Mesas everywhere...

I feel your proposal is completely unnecessary, unneeded, and unwanted.

I'd rather see a general pass on the older frames to bring them up to par with some of the newer frames abilities.

[selig_fay]

2 часа назад, CopperBezel сказал:

Energize is popular for the 5% of folks not using Zenurik for some reason and if one arcane lets you pick a different focus school, that's certainly a perk

Or, because there is a nasty energy drain all the time and zenurik is actually useless in this regard? Or because energy leeches exist in the game and zenuric also becomes useless. Arcane energize is popular with 90% of people, because it gives a lot of energy to nuck frame, which can be content with orbs of energy from killing mobs. Some frames can't function properly at all if they don't use arcane energize. So no, zenuric is a niche for frames with a good energy balance.

[Teridax68]

4 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

Nezha is one of the few cases where building him feels like balancing priorities by degrees.

So as far as I'm concerned, ability mods are very nearly the only thing I'm pretty sure are exactly right. The abilities themselves, survivability mods, all forms of damage, and possibly the weapon mod system could always use refactoring and some nerfing, but ability modding remains actually pretty fun.

The conclusion to your comment comes across as a bit self-contradictory, given that your whole paragraph on Nezha explains why he's one of the few frames out there who can mod his abilities differently and still generally make use of his whole kit. Your next paragraph goes on to point out that the way warframes are designed typically doesn't allow ability modding to work properly on them, and you then elaborate further on how your own diversity of playstyles comes from intentionally building suboptimally. For sure, one can talk about how a lot of warframes have some inherent design problems, but at the end of the day, whether it's the fault of the warframes or that of the mods, the end result is that our modding system, including our ability mods, isn't well-suited to providing diversity of options in this game. keikogi is also right in that a lot of ability modding is actually kind of vacuous in practice, because a lot of it depends on corrupted mods, which are frequently used in such a way that they dump on a stat one doesn't care about, e.g. dumping range on Mesa in favor of more duration on her DR. By all means, DE could definitely stand to improve a lot of warframe kits, but I don't think that alone will solve the problems around ability modding, not while the stat-based system remains.

[Mephane]

Assuming OP's nerf is warranted - which I am not convinced of - a better way to nerf those mods would be to nerf the stacking of multiple instances of the same stat bonus, and not to nerf the mods themselves. This way, someone who only applies a single power strength or range mod wouldn't already be nerfed, but only the most extreme stat stacking ones.

Now, what I actually do consider worthwhile exploring is to make more offensive abilities based on line of sight.

[TearsOfTomorrow]

Just gonna copy-paste this here from that other topic about Saryn.

... Why.

What is the point of a topic like this. Warframe is a PVE game with virtually no PVP component to speak of, which means that no matter what map/mission/type of content you play, there's never going to be anything on the line. Your gameplay experience is yours and yours alone, especially if you play solo. So why do you care if Saryn has high damage potential? If you don't like the fact that she makes things "too easy" (newsflash: the game itself is easy as a whole) then just play some other 'frame.

A company with millions of customers should not cater to your individual perception of what's fun and what isn't.

[CopperBezel]

59 minutes ago, Teridax68 said:

The conclusion to your comment comes across as a bit self-contradictory, given that your whole paragraph on Nezha explains why he's one of the few frames out there who can mod his abilities differently and still generally make use of his whole kit. Your next paragraph goes on to point out that the way warframes are designed typically doesn't allow ability modding to work properly on them, and you then elaborate further on how your own diversity of playstyles comes from intentionally building suboptimally. For sure, one can talk about how a lot of warframes have some inherent design problems, but at the end of the day, whether it's the fault of the warframes or that of the mods, the end result is that our modding system, including our ability mods, isn't well-suited to providing diversity of options in this game. keikogi is also right in that a lot of ability modding is actually kind of vacuous in practice, because a lot of it depends on corrupted mods, which are frequently used in such a way that they dump on a stat one doesn't care about, e.g. dumping range on Mesa in favor of more duration on her DR. By all means, DE could definitely stand to improve a lot of warframe kits, but I don't think that alone will solve the problems around ability modding, not while the stat-based system remains.

I mean, you're free to hold that opinion but it's a hell of a lot less concrete than the contrary. I can point to specific things that need to change about abilities that would help them interact with scaling better and specific mods that need to go. You, on the other hand, can say "Another completely different modding system that didn't do what the current one does but something else instead would be better." So. Yay?

Like, I would like building to be an interesting challenge and frames to have reasonable ceilings, so given god powers, I'd bin Adaptation and all warframe arcanes (the 90% of arcanes that aren't broken are useless instead, and would be no loss.) That'd be my first step to more engaging builds, before giving everyone reworks. That's crazy talk of course, most people would string me up for it - but as the player arguing for binning all warframe mods, you're the one person who can't.

And there's usually a cost for a dump stat. Nova has to dump range to be viable, and Mesa can dump range for some advantages. Nova dumping range kills her Wormhole, because she's poorly designed. Mesa dumping range kills her Shooting Gallery and makes her genuinely more vulnerable as a result.

I don't know how you can look at a frame like Gauss, who builds for one thing, and acknowledge that that's a problem, and then suggest that the problem is having builds. If you take away building or make building not about abilities, then everyone builds like Gauss. Linearly if at all. 

So yeah, I'm not the one contradicting myself here. Most warframes don't build interestingly, and a few build so badly that they're no better than a linear progression system. The ratio of complexity over depth is only good in comparison to all of the other ratios of complexity over depth in Warframe, which by the terms of most other games is actually pretty bad. The sum result depth of the game, meanwhile, is only significantly better than a typical MMO and not at all god-tier. I can't think of a worse element of the game to complain about. 

Maybe if we were talking archwing builds. There's only eight mods and all you have to do is complete the set and forma the archwing a few times. That's pretty dumb. It's obvious why it works that way and it provides a linear progression just fine, even gotta wait for Baro for one of them in there, but it's a nice illustration of what building without any depth actually looks like.

Edited January 28, 2020 by CopperBezel

[Teridax68]

9 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

I mean, you're free to hold that opinion but it's a hell of a lot less concrete than the contrary. I can point to specific things that need to change about abilities that would help them interact with scaling better and specific mods that need to go. You, on the other hand, can say "Another completely different modding system that didn't do what the current one does but something else instead would be better." So. Yay?

I mean, I did give a concrete direction, namely getting rid of the overarching stat system and instead designing more mods like augments or Gale Kick, i.e. bespoke bonuses that focus on adding new mechanics rather than just more power, and you didn't actually give any specific indication of how one could comprehensively change abilities to work better with the current modding system, but sure.

9 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

Like, I would like building to be an interesting challenge and frames to have reasonable ceilings, so given god powers, I'd bin Adaptation and all warframe arcanes (the 90% of arcanes that aren't broken are useless instead, and would be no loss.) That'd be my first step to more engaging builds, before giving everyone reworks. That's crazy talk of course, most people would string me up for it - but as the player arguing for binning all warframe mods, you're the one person who can't.

I'm actually entirely in favor of this, as I too want to get rid of godmoding in Warframe. This is one of the many reasons why I dislike the current stat modding system, as it's innately conducive to ranges so wide that abilities can hit enemies through walls and even rooms, or durations so long they might as well be infinite for the purposes of the ability they affect. Efficiency has also significantly contributed to busting our Energy economy, and allowing us to spam our abilities for 100% uptime.

9 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

And there's usually a cost for a dump stat. Nova has to dump range to be viable, and Mesa can dump range for some advantages. Nova dumping range kills her Wormhole, because she's poorly designed. Mesa dumping range kills her Shooting Gallery and makes her genuinely more vulnerable as a result.

But those costs are inconsequential. Wormhole has no purpose in the missions where one takes a Slowva or Speeva, and Shooting Gallery's weapon jamming is irrelevant when Mesa has 95% ranged damage reduction. Just because every warframe scales off of all stats in some form does not mean all scalings are equal. Claiming Loki suffers from not building Strength because his 4 situationally scales off of it when damaging a certain few enemies, for example, is absurd, at least in the game's current state when enemy EHP scaling has long exceeded that of his Radial Disarm.

9 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

I don't know how you can look at a frame like Gauss, who builds for one thing, and acknowledge that that's a problem, and then suggest that the problem is having builds. If you take away building or make building not about abilities, then everyone builds like Gauss. Linearly if at all. 

The only reason you are failing to understand my point here is because you are establishing a false dichotomy, one where one either builds according to certain stats or one doesn't. Meanwhile, I'm proposing alternatives in the form of additional mechanics that genuinely add gameplay, e.g. Ironclad Charge, Rolling Guard, Reaping Chakram, etc., which would absolutely allow for building around abilities, just not in a way that boils down to doing more of the same thing.

9 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

So yeah, I'm not the one contradicting myself here. Most warframes don't build interestingly, and a few build so badly that they're no better than a linear progression system. The ratio of complexity over depth is only good in comparison to all of the other ratios of complexity over depth in Warframe, which by the terms of most other games is actually pretty bad. The sum result depth of the game, meanwhile, is only significantly better than a typical MMO and not at all god-tier. I can't think of a worse element of the game to complain about. 

You really are, though, as you are patently ignoring the fact that even you are admitting that warframes and their modding system do not fit each other. Problem is, you're trying to argue that the problem is solely with warframes, and that we should redo the entirety of warframe ability design to accommodate a modding system build around four arbitrary, ill-conceived stats. Meanwhile, I'm pointing out that the problem isn't simply with poor ability design, but with a modding system that is itself fundamentally ill-suited for the game, which you also admitted to, but attempted to make a special exemption for stat modding because... reasons, I guess.

9 minutes ago, CopperBezel said:

Maybe if we were talking archwing builds. There's only eight mods and all you have to do is complete the set and forma the archwing a few times. That's pretty dumb. It's obvious why it works that way and it provides a linear progression just fine, even gotta wait for Baro for one of them in there, but it's a nice illustration of what building without any depth actually looks like.

I don't think there's actually all that much of a difference in depth, to be honest. Archwings can only really be built in one manner, but then the same can be said of most warframes, and Archwings don't have nearly as many dead mods (by dint of not having very many mods at all). As such, AW modding is a significantly less complex variant of the warframe modding system with only marginally less depth. It's still a crap system, of course, but one that's crap for pretty much the same reasons as the rest of modding in Warframe.

[CopperBezel]

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

you didn't actually give any specific indication of how one could comprehensively change abilities to work better with the current modding system, but sure.

See this and any other thread I've ever posted in in this subforum for details. "One by one with smart design" would just about almost sound like a cop-out, of course, if your counteroffer was anything but....

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

I mean, I did give a concrete direction, namely getting rid of the overarching stat system and instead designing more mods like augments or Gale Kick, i.e. bespoke bonuses that focus on adding new mechanics rather than just more power

And that also explains how I missed it; still "nothing" but in a colorful way. Christ, we don't even get four good augments out of a given frame; in fact, we're lucky to get one augment that's not a bandaid, not mandatory, and is still worth a mod slot, and that only changes in your picture because you're making mod slots worthless. You want enough individually designed Special Technique mods to constitute a "build". I don't know how many mod slots you're picturing frames having, six maybe? Still too many to fill with some kind of skill tree of ability augments and some conditional mods.

If you think there's any way this could happen that would not result in a single meta build for every frame - and I don't mean "less than now", but like, at all, any variety at all under a system like this, I don't know what to tell you. The only flexibility would be in the areas that matter least. 

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

You really are, though, as you are patently ignoring the fact that even you are admitting that warframes and their modding system do not fit each other. Problem is, you're trying to argue that the problem is solely with warframes, and that we should redo the entirety of warframe ability design to accommodate a modding system build around four arbitrary, ill-conceived stats.

You "really are" ignoring the fact that you're the only one claiming it's fundamentally broken and that we should redo anything to accommodate anything the fundamental whatever. The median is middling and the best bits are pretty good. Most frames could use some tweaking and a couple of mods are OP.  The system is fine for what it is. Because again, you can look at the weapon build system or the archwing system and see what it actually looks like for mods to have no influence on gameplay and just make numbers bigger instead.

1 hour ago, Teridax68 said:

I don't think there's actually all that much of a difference in depth, to be honest. 

Then I don't know what to tell you. I assume you play the game and do builds for frames and are being honest about your experience, and the only possibility that leaves me is that your taste is very different from mine in a way that's likely to be irreconcilable.

Edit: I realized I can make this shorter and simpler: You maintain you're describing something fundamentally different from what we have now, but the only fundamental difference is that one exists in reality and the other does not, which is to say that the latter isn't subject to the limitations imposed by real people making real design decisions that sometimes suck. It's just one big perfect solution fallacy.

Edited January 29, 2020 by CopperBezel

[XaoGarrent]

On 2020-01-26 at 10:26 AM, Buzlok said:

Any feedback on this? preferably constructive? It doesn't need to be constructive. Memes work too.

 

The devs spent months getting most of the frames in the game on relatively the same level of performance.

Now they're actively working on scaling.

Screwing around with mods wholesale would be adding a third, completely unnecessary factor that runs perpendicular to both frame performance and enemy scaling. Ergo: Mods intersect with too much else, and attempting a large overhaul at this time, would serve to do nothing else but break all the other effort they've put in.

Also, the sort of changes you're suggesting would hurt frames that are already too MAD as it is the worst, including the recently reworked Vauban, and regress the game's balance back to an older, inferior point of design, when the best builds in the game dumped most of their stats and only focused on one or two skills.

This is before getting into the fact Saryn and Equinox are two of the squishiest frames in the game. If you nerf their range, there's literally no reason to play them over a frame like Nezha or hell, Ember, who- outside of ESO- actually has competitive performance IN ADDITION to damage resistance. Even Vauban has some durability now. Don't even get me started on how newer content is favoring tanky, boss killer frames more and more- Nezha has one of the few debuffs that works on Liches. Meanwhile Saryn can't strip their armor at all.

You're getting booed because you have bad ideas that are wildly out of step with the current state of the game. Whatever your problems with the game are, you will solve nothing like this.

[Teridax68]

7 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

See this and any other thread I've ever posted in in this subforum for details. 

Literally where?

7 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

And that also explains how I missed it; still "nothing" but in a colorful way. Christ, we don't even get four good augments out of a given frame; in fact, we're lucky to get one augment that's not a bandaid, not mandatory, and is still worth a mod slot, and that only changes in your picture because you're making mod slots worthless. You want enough individually designed Special Technique mods to constitute a "build". I don't know how many mod slots you're picturing frames having, six maybe? Still too many to fill with some kind of skill tree of ability augments and some conditional mods.

Just because you personally dislike augment mods does not make my proposal "nothing", much less something that isn't backed up by concrete examples. Augments exist, and you know about them, so if you oppose such a system, you're going to have to be a little more specific beyond feigned ignorance, or "muh bandaids". It is not intrinsic to the nature of augments for them to be bandaids, even if several of them are, so I fail to see why the existence of bandaid augments would work against my proposal.

7 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

If you think there's any way this could happen that would not result in a single meta build for every frame - and I don't mean "less than now", but like, at all, any variety at all under a system like this, I don't know what to tell you. The only flexibility would be in the areas that matter least. 

I fail to see why it would to begin with -- do you have anything to support your claim? Because really, the most basic version of what I'm proposing is to make mods provide unique mechanics, rather than just stat increases: this means more augment-like mods, but also more mods like, as mentioned before, Rolling Guard, Gale Kick, the Aero/Motus/Proton mods, and so on. Due to how these mods are much better for catering to specific playstyles and personal preference, and much less interdependent, they'd lend themselves a lot better to diversity of customization and play.

7 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

You "really are" ignoring the fact that you're the only one claiming it's fundamentally broken and that we should redo anything to accommodate anything the fundamental whatever.

I mean, I did point out the fundamental problems with our stats, and the OP itself points to clear examples of why stacking those stats tends to not work out (hence their own suggestion), so I'm not talking out of the blue. Even if the stat modding system were peachy by itself, though, it would still be incompatible with our frames, as you yourself have admitted, just to be clear -- stating that our warframes don't map onto our modding is ultimately the same as stating our modding doesn't map onto our warframes; it's just that you're proposing to redo the things we play with just to accommodate the system that is itself supposed to be designed to accommodate them, which is completely backwards reasoning. 

7 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

The median is middling and the best bits are pretty good.

Such as?

7 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

Most frames could use some tweaking and a couple of mods are OP.  The system is fine for what it is. Because again, you can look at the weapon build system or the archwing system and see what it actually looks like for mods to have no influence on gameplay and just make numbers bigger instead.

You are using the same debunked reasoning as before: just because something is crap does not excuse something else from being a slightly less intense flavor of crap. Thus, just because weapon modding has almost no diversity at all does not excuse our dozens of warframe mods boiling down to one, rarely two or three builds per frame, to say nothing of how those builds all focus on the same limited pool of mods and leave the rest to rot. Warframe modding could easily stand to be improved, and I still fail to see why you'd want to make an exception for it even as you point out that literally every other part of the modding system is poor.

7 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

Then I don't know what to tell you. I assume you play the game and do builds for frames and are being honest about your experience, and the only possibility that leaves me is that your taste is very different from mine in a way that's likely to be irreconcilable.

It clearly is, as you yourself admitted to deliberately underpowering yourself just so that you can feel a challenge. That puts you in the distinct minority of players, and ultimately does nothing to address the fact that the game does not incentivize players to diversify their builds, as the game incentivizes maximizing power for easier missions (and thus easier access to loot), and our means of maximizing power are fundamentally not very diverse. Just because you personally choose to handicap yourself does not make the modding system any more diverse, particularly considering that your choice is itself inherently limited, as you're apparently not carrying that choice over to weapon modding.

7 hours ago, CopperBezel said:

Edit: I realized I can make this shorter and simpler: You maintain you're describing something fundamentally different from what we have now, but the only fundamental difference is that one exists in reality and the other does not, which is to say that the latter isn't subject to the limitations imposed by real people making real design decisions that sometimes suck. It's just one big perfect solution fallacy.

Also known as proposing a solution to an existing problem, yes. I'm not claiming my solution is perfect, only that its core aspects are demonstrably sound. By your own shoddy reasoning, none of us should be proposing any solutions at all, not even you, who have failed to this day to give any specifics on what your own solution would even look like. At the end of the day, our conflict is even simpler than you're making it out to be: I think there's a problem with how our warframe ability modding focuses on stats; you do not, even though we both seem to agree that modding literally anything else is not great. I honestly do not see what reason you have to hold to this opinion, given that you've still failed to provide any justification, and have instead resorted to displacing blame onto warframe abilities, even as you also acknowledge the fact that warframes can be modded to become invincible, to the point where you intentionally avoid doing so via suboptimal warframe and modding selection. All of this begs the very basic question: what do you think is so great about our current stat-based ability modding system?

[FireSegment]

On 2020-01-28 at 6:04 PM, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

Except that the frames that don't have multiple builds, never had the potential for multiple builds. Loki for example has the same build no matter how you mod him. His playstyle doesn't massively change. You are invisible + you can disarm with or without radiation procs. 

you picked the wrong example, Loki have multiple builds, the decoy and switch builds just being too much hassle for the pay off to be viable.

Imagine if Loki decoy invulnerable augment don't have cooldown/have a way to end cooldown, or if the switch teleport give 180% range+strength for the switched squadmate and combine both frame LoS for the next ally skill being cast within 5s - Loki would be a god tier support frame in that scenario (oh and make his decoy actually attract enemy + not dying ofc)

Almost every frames are already designed with multiple builds in mind when the devs start to  put them on the drawing board, it's only the matter of how to balance between the builds

--

On topic, if you want DE to reduce all the mod effectiveness to only 25% of what they were, then there is a look of stats for the individual frame skill that DE would need to make it won't break the trade-off they built in with the imba mod in mind (for example, if they nerf duration mods, Nova nullstar can not reach 90% damage reduction anymore). I expect a change like this would be on pair with the melee 3.0 rework, not a simple change.

[selig_fay]

If DE is really working on making multiple builds, then they are not working well. Wisp for example. Her 1 skill benefits from strength and duration (still radius, but you don't worry about it). Her second skill benefits from duration and energy efficiency. This way you build for strength, duration, and energy efficiency and don't worry about the radius. But, but, but, but, 3 and 4 ability wins from the radius, so if you are building for 3 and 4 ability, you should take this into account. The problem is that 3 and 4 abilities are not nearly as strong as 1 and 2 abilities. We already have an increase in DPS from buffs and we already have the best CC + invisibility from 2 ability. Yes, Wisp has several builds, but I still completely destroy two abilities, because, really, I do not need them. If that's what DE planned, it's a very bad design.

[Hawk_of_the_Reborn]

On 2020-01-26 at 8:34 AM, (XB1)GearsMatrix301 said:

Wouldn’t that just nullify the whole armor fixes?

 

[Jadous]

On 2020-01-26 at 5:26 PM, Buzlok said:

Howdy And Stuff.

With the nerfs coming out to armor scaling grineer will no longer be unkillable monsters at high levels and just be the slightly tankier faction that they were meant to be. Hurray! HOWEVER, this also means that no faction in the game scales extremely hard anymore, which is a good thing, but it also means that they will be back. The biggest threat to game balance and the multiplayer experience that Warframe has ever had. Nuke builds!

The fix is simple, healthy, and good for long term balancing, but it WILL get some understandable hate regardless!

Nerf frame mods. Base values on a lot of frames are reasonable and flexible for game-play, but once someone joins the lobby with a max range and power build you know it'll be boring as #*!%. A high level certified late game mission should have at least SOME challenge to it even if it isn't much.

I would suggest reducing the effect of ALL range and power mods by about a third. Stretch would go from (45)% to (30)% more range and Intensify would go from (30)% to (20)% more power as an example. The negative effects of corrupted mods would probably be reduced comparatively. These changes would no doubt limit or weaken some existing builds, but that's the bloody point!

This would actually make the game more fun and diverse despite being unwanted?

Since this nerf would only apply to mods, the base values on abilities would be unaffected and the nerf'd mods will still be more than usable, just not as insanely meta. Let's be real here. Do you really need 280% range on your Equinox or Saryn? Wouldn't it be fine to actually enter combat with an enemy? Maybe use those weapons you forma'd 4+ times a little?

This change would also mean that people would start taking more than just raw offensive mods in their load-outs. People might start taking more than 1 defense or utility mod and not get 1 shot in your kuva lich mission while typing "WTF" in the chat (I do it too, no hate). People would start to get diverse and creative with their builds and you would see new strategies and builds that weren't used before. People would finally start tapping into Warframe's MASSIVE mod pool that is barely used; Albeit some mods aren't used because they are just bugged or useless, but DE would actually fix them if people started trying them and gave more feedback.

As a side note it would also be a bit less discouraging to newer players if offensive mods weren't as impactful as they are now, because it wouldn't feel as necessary to get a ton of endo to max out things like corrupted mods as the stats given are less valuable. Although this is a VERY minor point that was just in my head.

Overall this isn't a complete fix to nuke builds and will have some downsides to it, but in general is should help in balancing the game. A single buff or nerf can't always fix everything that it was intended to fix but as long as the change is healthy and makes things easier to balance down the line it's a good change. Having an equilibrium between a game being "balanced" and fun is important too, but even a grind based game like Warframe is dangerous to leave at a stage where it's unbalanced to a boring degree! Any feedback on this? preferably constructive? It doesn't need to be constructive. Memes work too.

 

Or just make the game harder by increasing the difficulty potential. Kuva liches and sorties are a good start. Taking away fun from a game is a recepie for disaster. If Warframe is an RPG action game with godlike weapons and abilities then the playerbase are accustomed to that. You can't just say #*!% it and make their stuff worse. Actually you can but you will be losing in the end because players will leave 

Edited January 29, 2020 by Jadous

[(PSN)UltraKardas]

5 hours ago, FireSegment said:

you picked the wrong example, Loki have multiple builds, the decoy and switch builds just being too much hassle for the pay off to be viable.

Imagine if Loki decoy invulnerable augment don't have cooldown/have a way to end cooldown, or if the switch teleport give 180% range+strength for the switched squadmate and combine both frame LoS for the next ally skill being cast within 5s - Loki would be a god tier support frame in that scenario (oh and make his decoy actually attract enemy + not dying ofc)

Almost every frames are already designed with multiple builds in mind when the devs start to  put them on the drawing board, it's only the matter of how to balance between the builds

--

On topic, if you want DE to reduce all the mod effectiveness to only 25% of what they were, then there is a look of stats for the individual frame skill that DE would need to make it won't break the trade-off they built in with the imba mod in mind (for example, if they nerf duration mods, Nova nullstar can not reach 90% damage reduction anymore). I expect a change like this would be on pair with the melee 3.0 rework, not a simple change.

Na. There are variants, but Loki's kit doesn't ever play differently. He's in the same boat as Octavia that you can put on different stats, but it doesn't really change anything. 

[CopperBezel]

14 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

It is not intrinsic to the nature of augments for them to be bandaids, even if several of them are, so I fail to see why the existence of bandaid augments would work against my proposal.

14 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

Also known as proposing a solution to an existing problem, yes. I'm not claiming my solution is perfect, only that its core aspects are demonstrably sound.

This is the fundamental thing I don't think you're understanding in what I'm saying. I've explained that there are frames that build well and frames that build poorly. I've explained that the warframe whose kit is well designed within itself in terms of providing one or more coherent play styles, scales well both in terms of progression and in terms of having stats worth trading around, is relevant to the game as it exists right now, and is fun, effective, and not broken is a pretty rare case to find without needing to sprinkle on a few asterisks here and there. Changing the mod system would not change that. It would be exactly the same design work in different boxes. DE would in theory have a little more power to control what play styles were available at the cost of having to prepare for each and every one individually, so that things like Nova being poorly designed but viable because players figured out how to use her anyway would be much rarer and less pronounced, but there's no reason to expect that the reverse is true and frames would be more consistently viable, because DE would have to put in the design on each one individually and possibly every time there's a major game-changing update.  

14 hours ago, Teridax68 said:

It clearly is, as you yourself admitted to deliberately underpowering yourself just so that you can feel a challenge. That puts you in the distinct minority of players, and ultimately does nothing to address the fact that the game does not incentivize players to diversify their builds, as the game incentivizes maximizing power for easier missions (and thus easier access to loot), and our means of maximizing power are fundamentally not very diverse.

A meta is by definition the thing that the game incentivizes players to play. There will always be one. If I decide to play Mag sometimes, avoid the occasional too-popular weapon, and would rather focus farm with Khora than Saryn, I'm playing off meta. Playing off meta is always more fun than playing on, because there's more variety. Other games aggressively nerf everything that gets a little bit meta. I prefer how Warframe doesn't care. If people want to play that way, fine. They get more loot and less fun for their time. If you think there's one systematic change that will solve game balance as a thing, I don't know what to tell you.

Or for that matter, I get a new frame, I'm going to experiment with different builds until I find one that works well, and then maybe, eventually, compare my results to what other people are doing. That process of experimenting is the fun part of a new frame. If other people follow a guide and skip that, they're just having less fun. As far as I'm concerned, that's the definition of playing suboptimally. 

[FireSegment]

2 hours ago, (PS4)UltraKardas said:

Na. There are variants, but Loki's kit doesn't ever play differently. He's in the same boat as Octavia that you can put on different stats, but it doesn't really change anything. 

please read my second paragraph again. My point was that if those imagined mechanic were in place, a support loki would need to build for strength and play entirely different than the one-trick-trickster we have right now (which need communication, ally consent, good timing-placing. etc, and may be a bit stronger than nidus's link),. In other words, i made up those mechanic to demonstrate "Hey, loki can be played verryyy differently with just a few tweaks" and that he's not a frame that can't have multiple builds (or variants?).

also, i'm not quite sure what distinction of "builds" and "variants" you have in mind there, as in builds suppose to do the same thing with different level of effectiveness and variants does entirely different things? Then yes those are variants, but if so then why even discuss the different of effectiveness of doing the same thing here? (because it imply you would not play differently with different builds)