are we even aloud to progress further without risking power creep

[MysticDragonMage]

so here is the elephant in the room.

since the introduction to railjack, it has become apparent that the star chart is progressing to a point where we are encountering level 100 bad guys at the beginning of missions. most playstyles are rendered pointless if it does not follow meta guidelines which potentially limits the quality of choice to an even greater extent.

however, due to the growing concern of power creep and lack of challenge we are apparently never aloud to progress in power or evolve ourselves. that can only be said if the developers continue to progress in the star chart and introduce enemies with even greater levels long-term, but this will still mean no more evolution or progression beyond meta limits.

i personally would like it if the developer were to create a system exclusively available in future high-level additions to the star chart where we can work toward scaling our own stats with enemy levels passively. a system that would give us more room to evolve and enhance gameplay through even more progress and without making us seem overpowered in lower levels.

player progress is at a stand still. any attempt to enhance the gameplay and giving players even more reasons to progress in the game results in balancing changes that takes weeks to perfect, making the increase in power seem pointless if the game is just going to balance itself around the peak of our potential in the end.

Edited March 30, 2020 by MysticDragonMage

[NovusKnight]

in my humble opinion - as someone with years of experience doing sorties, long arbi, and extremely long endless relic runs with friends, but is absurdly inept at eidolon hunting and hasn't even started with railjack - is that all we need is to do a wide scale rework on about half the warframes (most needing only tiny changes though) and hugging some weapon types that remain subpar.make the non-meta stuff more useful. Even out the playing field. Then also rework AI. We need better enemies.

 

a man can dream X.X

[Loza03]

4 minutes ago, NovusKnight said:

in my humble opinion - as someone with years of experience doing sorties, long arbi, and extremely long endless relic runs with friends, but is absurdly inept at eidolon hunting and hasn't even started with railjack - is that all we need is to do a wide scale rework on about half the warframes (most needing only tiny changes though) and hugging some weapon types that remain subpar.make the non-meta stuff more useful. Even out the playing field. Then also rework AI. We need better enemies.

 

a man can dream X.X

I agree, though I'd probably add a wide-scale player health rebalance to the mix (tightening up the player health variance so it's not a scale of a couple hundred to tens of thousands of effective health on endgame builds) so that DE can actually make enemies deal reasonable amounts of damage without either forcing more 'hide in invisibility/nuke/CC' strategies and/or only tickling the tanks.

Better enemies, especially on the Corpus, would also go a long way towards making non-meta stuff more useful. Part of the reason why the meta is so set is that there's only really need for AoE weapons for most of the game. Support-focused enemies which work with and enhance shield gating would help make precision weapons more useful on the Corpus, by making AoE weapons in general very ineffective, at least without proper set-up. The meta as a concept cannot be stopped, but it can be shaped, and more niches to fill means more 'meta' for there to be. Plus, it gives a couple off-meta generalist choices a chance to shine, especially in crossfire and corrupted missions since both Corpus and Grineer (and thus mixing the AoE and precision metas).

And perhaps it will be more than a dream, at least slightly. Revised shows they are at least aware of the foundations that the Leaning Tower of Pisa would say "at least I'm not that guy" at.

[MysticDragonMage]

3 hours ago, NovusKnight said:

my humble opinion - as someone with years of experience doing sorties, long arbi, and extremely long endless relic runs with friends, but is absurdly inept at eidolon hunting and hasn't even started with railjack - is that all we need is to do a wide scale rework on about half the warframes (most needing only tiny changes though) and hugging some weapon types that remain subpar.make the non-meta stuff more useful. Even out the playing field. Then also rework AI. We need better enemies.

I agree with this. It would be nice if players could optimize playstyles rather than optimizing toward a meta build.

There is still however the issue concerning weather or not we are aloud to progress with even more power long term with power creep becoming a growing concern. While it would be nice if all optimized playstyles were balanced, would these optimized playstyles still be the limit or would we be aloud to progress even farther when eventually encountering enemies of greater levels at the beginning of missions as the developers continue progressing the star chart? Even if we could become stronger would the foundations of the game need to be rebalance again in order to compensate?

Thus the reason why I think We need a system in place that leaves more room for long term progress in higher levels without being so overpowered in lower levels.

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

This is a really good question. One I dont have an answer to. Very thought provoking because it's like this for a lot of games. 

This game and many are at a cross roads where you have to appease everyone from the guy with no coordination or reflexes to the person that stays up farming till 4am. But they work with what they have to have something for everyone to play I guess, or tried. Spawn rates definitely need to be increased. I can play hard in a high level mission or go afk with a farm frame in a low level mission. I guess at least I have the freedom to choose? Idk.

You dont want to have handicapped "instanced dungeons" like the Grendel mission because it alienates min-maxers. And you dont want highly sought after items locked behind super elite hard stuff that only 10% of players can do I guess. 

I mean, damage is damage, so there's a reason why in most games the hybrid support and tank powers always are used for difficult feats. 

Warframe gives more durability than usual to the glass cannon dps in a traditional tank-support-dps syste. It's just up to the person to plan accordingly i.e. team setup etc.

 

[(NSW)Greybones]

I believe I can see where you’re coming from, OP, and you make good points.

Personally, I’m not convinced we need to keep going higher. It feels like Warframe has a power cap that we’ve reached, and instead of pushing it further, the stuff between the start and the end might be filled up and bulked out. I’ve seen people poo-poo weird mods or weapons because they don’t make the farming go faster, but those are exactly the things I’m referring to. Where do fishing and that hover skateboard (my memory has done a brainfart on its name 😅) fit into doing everything fast fast fast? And there’s the onboarding of new players to consider. There’s a lot to consider. A whole lot. 😬 You have my sympathy, DE.

Hmm....🤔

Guild Wars 2 does an interesting thing regarding maximum levels and expansions.

What Guild Wars 2 does

Normally when a game with levels introduces an expansion, they increase the cap and effectively destroy whatever progress you’ve made through the core game since the next new piece of gear is way stronger than your best current gear.

Guild Wars 2 introduces expansions that don’t increase levels, instead they bulk out the options available to you at max level. You play the expansion for the content, not the numbers.

I consider Warframe’s updates as small pseudo-expansions, but better because they aren’t always for the veteran player and instead do the bulking out of the bit between the start and the end that I’m looking for. Fortuna, Liches, Railjack (Railjack was trying to cater to veterans, true, and then they let the rest of us play, which I’m grateful for) and Scarlet Spear are something we can access without being maximum power.

To be blunt, I feel this should be the end of the line for grinders looking for bigger numbers. They’ve already sunk hundreds if not thousands of hours into this game, but they’re not married to Warframe and can stop until one or more new things come out. That’s a lot of hours.

And if a player who’s won Warframe hangs around too long, they may turn septic with the weight of their self-designated duty and start trying to tear DE down thinking it’ll build a stronger Warframe from the rubble.

I hope DE keeps introducing weird, new, experimental things that build up what they’ve got instead of pushing the numbers higher. I like mercy kills on random dudes, their (DE’s) plans for intertwining aspects of Warframe really resonate with me, and I think needing help in some of these updates is really cool (I can only take on the Teralyst by myself, and that takes all night, and I’m fine with that). If I can’t cut it, I’ll do something else until I got a squad together. And there’s a lot of things yet for me to do.

Edited March 30, 2020 by (NSW)Greybones
Trimming the fat from my post because it was too massive!

[LupoDWolf]

powercreep isn't really a problem when most of the time we jus cheese things, like what everyone does in the murex now.
 

[onedeadpixel]

Power creep goes both ways. If content is getting to difficult for all but the most cheesed out warframe builds then DE just has to increase the power that players have access to so that everyone can participate.

[LupoDWolf]

Just now, onedeadpixel said:

Power creep goes both ways. If content is getting to difficult for all but the most cheesed out warframe builds then DE just has to increase the power that players have access to so that everyone can participate.

i really hope that soon we can mod power separeted to the physical stats of the frames

[PookieNumnums]

18 minutes ago, LupoDWolf said:

powercreep isn't really a problem when most of the time we jus cheese things, like what everyone does in the murex now.
 

Exactly this.  

There is and forevermore shall be The Cheese.  

One of the neat things about warframe is how you can treat missions like a jigsaw puzzle with multiple solutions. And one solution only uses 5% of the pieces. 

There will almost always be one or two frames that trivialize the challenge or process. But that it's whats interesting. You don't have to do it that way.  And figuring out which ones do can be fun.  And it's a way to let a frame or two really sparkle in the moonlight. Its fifteen minutes of fame.  Justifies having owned it to begin with. 

Powercreep will always be a part of a game like this. If there is no progression of power there is no need to use any other weaoons than the ones that already work. This presents to the developers the options of making more of the same, or alternatively trying to dream up gimmicks that might create interest. Luckily for us, i think we get a fair mix of that already. 

I just wish there was a way, outside of rivens, to adjust a weapons viability so that if i just absolutely love the lato ans invest enough into it, it could become endgame capable. 

(Inb4 that whole " it already is " or " every weapon is viable " bit, save that for another time please thank you lol)