Difficulty and Imbalanced Game Mechanics

[kapn655321]

My thoughts on why we have no difficulty, is the way the game nudges players to build. We must be as inherently risk averse as possible at all times, with as much DPS as we can possibly have, to optimize against steep RNG and the chance of losing time and drops. We could have difficulty.. in fact we do.. but no one uses it. We're not afraid to die from an enemy, we're afraid we'll waste our time, and the time of others with us.

If we are ever to have difficulty in the game, weapons must be balanced in a scope of competent DPS, losses cannot happen in the presence of peers, and players must never lose drops. ...Otherwise, we're only ever going to play safe every single time, for risk of shame/incompetency in a cooperative setting, and devaluation of our intent and agency.

We also lack the combat mechanics that feel like the ability to succeed is always with us, and it's up to us to execute that accordingly. Think Dark Souls. You can win with nothing on, if you have perfect execution. If you fail, you go back to the beginning of the area, but you keep going. Super meat boy... Celeste.. everything you need is with you the whole time. Warframe does not have that, and thus it's players do not take any risks; when we lose, it is a crushing blow to our momentum, and often for something outside of our capacity or control depending what is on us at the time. While this is the case, a significant portion of the player base will never accept leaving their comfort zone.

Edited April 17, 2020 by kapn655321

[SneakyErvin]

9 hours ago, ChasmanianDevil said:

You could keep Earth just as it is. That is a good starter tileset. It gives a chance for newer players to learn the basic controls. Give the Corpus Ships and Grineer Galleons sections of the map where the floor blew out and it's just open vacuum, like the infested ships, and have very few platforms to jump on. Put a lot of enemies with jetpacks into this room, and say that they are "repairing the hull damage". Give Mars sections of long quicksand traps, where it is possible to bullet- jump out of them, but you can't stay on the floor for long. Then add in wall-jump points to get through this section safely. When I say "build enemies around Parkour 2.0", I don't mean give the enemies the ability to bullet-jump. I mean build them so that they force YOU to keep moving. Give some (not all) units faster running speed, have more flying enemies as opposed to ground-based enemies, because flying enemies have more space to dodge your attacks in a no-floor scenario. Have at least 1 defense mission where the Defense target is constantly on the move. Have, say, a trolley that is constantly moving through open sky, with guide wires on either side. Every few rounds, the trolley electrifies, forcing you off of it and onto the guide wires. Instead of just having a stagnant tileset with ramps and stairs, have the map move with the player. Right now, the maps are standing still, while you just fly overhead on your way to the goal. This isn't really fun, unless you nail this awesome jump. Make players use Parkour 2.0, not because it's faster, or easier, but because they need to.

While that would work to build more around parkour 2.0 it would have very high impact on those that prefer melee play since melee isnt exactly very friendly to use where there is no ground or where enemies are flying/floating. I could see it being a thing if instead of the flying or floating enemies there would just be moving platforms in the areas, aswell as some static ones that are occupied by enemies. That way melee would still be an option to handle those enemies well.

Flying enemies would be pointless because it would just put even more focus on the braindead frames like Saryn that would just wall-latch and randomly activate her 4. I think those parts of the game imbalance are for more severe than parkour 2.0.

[Iseecko]

I completely agree. Warframes and Tenno have been updated and advanced, but enemy NPCs were left pre-Parkour 2.0 with absolutely no way to deal with us.

[MJ12]

On 2020-04-16 at 5:00 PM, ChasmanianDevil said:

@kwlingo That's the problem. Doom is one of the most popular power fantasy games that I know, but Doom Eternal is HARD!!! Why? Because challenge doesn't come from taking the player's power away. It comes from forcing the player to USE their power to its fullest extent, or else they die.

Doom Eternal is also designed around an incredibly specific mandated playstyle that requires a very tight control over your weapons and equipment loadouts. You could not make Doom Eternal work with pseudorandom maps and random enemy spawns. The more challenging you make a game, the less margin of error you have on difficulty tuning and the more deterministic you need to make the game.

Doom Eternal is built around a whole bunch of enemies with specific counters, which you always have access to (and if you don't, wait ten seconds for your chainsaw to recharge, and now you have access to said counter), being put in specific arenas which change up the fights. The level and game pacing is such that you generally get to practice with more complex enemies before you actually have to fight them in an enemy composition, you are guaranteed to have weapons that counter an enemy before you actually get into a fight with them, and so on.

Given that one of the most common complaints against DE that I've seen is that the game forces you to have certain toolkits, and that the less generous the tolerances are for player mistakes the more a player is forced to play 'on-meta' (this is why competitive PvP games are so obsessed with meta picks and nerfing overpowered outliers), trying to make Warframe into Doom:Eternal seems like a huge risk.

[MonsterOfMyOwn]

Warframe powercreep lead to lower the difficulty. But if you're not running the meta the game can be fairly difficult. Also as a "horde" shooter it favors AoE effects / weapons rather than proper aiming  and the time you charge your bow, the ennemy is already dead in most cases.

As a Mag main, i soloed 1h in Mot and I soloed the profit taker which was really challenging.

The "counter" to power creep is invulnerability, immunity to effects and even more bullet sponginess. Lvl 150+ battalyst and kyta raknoids are good example of what I don't want in warframe as fake difficulty... Keep in mind that kyta raknoid have huge shield / overshield and are not affected by magnetic. Arbitration drones and nullifiers also lead to bad meta (aoe, high rof... as if we needed incentive to play the ignis wraith...)

Disruption are tbh ok because the demolysts are not totally immunes, and you have to protect an objective which can't be trivialised, just add a level slider and adjust some level design and it'll be good.

[Sharkgoblin]

On 2020-04-15 at 9:15 AM, 844448 said:

How about Grineer Commanders that use their teleport to ambush us? A bunch of Grineer get together and then a Commanders switches places with us!

they used to do it 🙂

then community cried like little little babies

so commanders got nerfed

 

[le_souriceau]

1 час назад, MonsterOfMyOwn сказал:

Warframe powercreep lead to lower the difficulty.

Thing is, this is not disign, but economic choice from DE. Thats why its really irrevelent to make countless walls of text how to balance this or that. 

Just imagine some fantastic scenario, when every weapon and frame in game are well balanced and actualy demand skill (even high skill) to use. It will be complete financial failure for DE, because it severly alienate huge army of paying casuals and 1-button lamers. I'm indeed sound toxic and elitist with this, but its reality of gaming in 2020. Games mostly pray on worst (in terms of actual in game skill) players, making them FEEL that they good (when they are not), as long they willing to [collectivly in WF case] pay.

So, it mean we will stuck forever with powercreep and absence of balance or difficulty. Its not mistake, but modus operandi of WF.

 

 

Edited April 23, 2020 by le_souriceau

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

On 2020-04-14 at 9:07 PM, ChasmanianDevil said:

Thought experiment: Let's say you take a game like Dark Souls, with its slow, methodical, punishing combat, (all based around a stamina system mind you) and you replace your main character with ANY Warframe, with bullet jumping, aim-gliding, all of that. What happens? You can win Dark Souls with ease. Why? Because Dark Souls built it's combat AROUND their Stamina. Everything you do is based on Stamina. Every enemy attack takes Stamina into consideration. I am NOT, and I repeat, NOT saying that Warframe should be like Dark Souls. What I AM SAYING is that Warframe should build everything around Parkour 2.0.

I understood what you meant from the start and I agree. I hear the word gas city a lot and I dont know exactly what it is, but I assume it's the large, wide open maps on corpus territory...those are beautiful.

For tight hallways I have my 2.27 sprint Loki lol.

[SneakyErvin]

6 hours ago, Sharkgoblin said:

they used to do it 🙂

then community cried like little little babies

so commanders got nerfed

 

The commanders still do that, the problem is that they dont live long enough.

Did some Axi farming the other day in sedna disruption. Had to go afk and couldnt pause since I was in a public solo. When I get back to the PC after the afk a few commanders kept teleporting my Khora around the tile. I had completely forgotten that the mob type even exsisted since most often they are dead the moment they spawn.

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

On 2020-04-16 at 4:41 AM, SneakyErvin said:

While I think it would be cool to design more things around parkour 2.0 I also think it would be very out of place. On the Gas City tiles it works since it is a massive complex in the sky. But how well would it work on places like earth, mars, venus, saturn or other placed that are more ground bound. Why would the grineer or corpus build places that benefit the agility of the tenno and their frames? Sure they could change it so the enemies also start using it, but that would also be very out of place because then you'd suddenly have rank and file crewmen etc. that are as agile as a bio-engineered warframe.

For me, the best solution would be to remove bullet jumping while keeping the rest of the things as they are. They would however also need to limit the operator and reduce their dash range aswell. Things to make us crawl up walls, use elevators, active bridges/trams etc.

Absolutely not. We're not playing Zelda on gameboy anymore dude. 

We're allowed to move on 3-Dimensional plane.......

That's up, down, left, right, diagonal upper right, diagonal lower left etc. Lol.

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

On 2020-04-15 at 10:40 PM, kwlingo said:

I agree with this. Ive posted a thread on this topic a while back. But like always there are those who say this is a horrible idea because they are power fantasy nukers that don't want any challenge or even giving the enemy a chance to attack them aka GOD like. Also Im sure you will see people post immediately on forum or reddit about "why is DE giving enemies these abilities? This game use to be fun."

I remember being sarcastic by creating an imaginary frame that does instant kills entire stage map even boss with x 1million scaling per second and no energy drain ability, for some odd reason lots of players wanted a frame like this??? lol

Not sure why a large majority of the community is so power hungry and feel like failing a mission should not a in game?

Because enemies scale upwards......Do you think people want Saryn for a Lith Defense....lol?

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

On 2020-04-17 at 5:14 AM, SneakyErvin said:

While that would work to build more around parkour 2.0 it would have very high impact on those that prefer melee play since melee isnt exactly very friendly to use where there is no ground or where enemies are flying/floating. I could see it being a thing if instead of the flying or floating enemies there would just be moving platforms in the areas, aswell as some static ones that are occupied by enemies. That way melee would still be an option to handle those enemies well.

Flying enemies would be pointless because it would just put even more focus on the braindead frames like Saryn that would just wall-latch and randomly activate her 4. I think those parts of the game imbalance are for more severe than parkour 2.0.

.....guns dude.....you literally just stated that people cant kill floating enemies because of meleeing? Really lol? 

You can also jump......you can even melee in the air...Am I understanding you correctly....lol?

[SneakyErvin]

1 minute ago, (PS4)CrazyBeaTzu said:

Absolutely not. We're not playing Zelda on gameboy anymore dude. 

We're allowed to move on 3-Dimensional plane.......

That's up, down, left, right, diagonal upper right, diagonal lower left etc. Lol.

Yeah, but people should also accept the limits that it sets on difficulty. We cant have both, no A.I will be able to perform to a standard where they can counter our movement options coupled with our pure power. Not even the most advanced A.I could because it would be limited by the rules of the faction it controls, which isnt the tenno and their frames.

You cant both have the cake and eat it, which is what people expect they can in WF. Certain aspects need to be toned downed if we want challenge and a "smarter" A.I.

[SneakyErvin]

1 minute ago, (PS4)CrazyBeaTzu said:

.....guns dude.....you literally just stated that people cant kill floating enemies because of meleeing? Really lol? 

You can also jump......you can even melee in the air...Am I understanding you correctly....lol?

I guess you missed the point regarding how it would gimp melee gameplay, or well punish melee gameplay compared to all other options. Which wasnt the intent, the intent was to build something around parkour, not limit another system.

And yes, you can use it in the air, but you fail to realize that there will be no ground. So when you jump up to kill that one mob in that one specific direction, you will continue in that direction and fall into nothingness and be reset. Now imagine you really prefer to melee and you need to clear a while room. So now you are suddenly forced into another combat system just so the game can be built around a movement system. It would do nothing for the game since we still have the 50m+ AoE frames and other things. It would just end up being us stopping, going bam-bam-bam-bam or unleash a WMD power then parkour our way through an empty area. What exactly would be the point? 

[Felsagger]

On 2020-04-19 at 11:51 PM, Iseecko said:

I completely agree. Warframes and Tenno have been updated and advanced, but enemy NPCs were left pre-Parkour 2.0 with absolutely no way to deal with us.

I want to work with this comment. : P

The enemy A.I has a lot of opportunities to evolve and engage the Warframes other than being placed to get shots or being cut. The enemy could react, behave like an accurate military force or call for spec ops or special teams when a Warframe and Tenno occurs near them. 

They can call for a Lich Squad or they can use mech armors when things are getting hard for them on certain missions. I get the idea of the loot and shoot the horde game but some of these missions can bring in fearful enemies. Yes they can get easily shot down but they have weapons that can one shot warframes if they are disregarded as normal enemies. 

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

11 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

I guess you missed the point regarding how it would gimp melee gameplay, or well punish melee gameplay compared to all other options. Which wasnt the intent, the intent was to build something around parkour, not limit another system.

And yes, you can use it in the air, but you fail to realize that there will be no ground. So when you jump up to kill that one mob in that one specific direction, you will continue in that direction and fall into nothingness and be reset. Now imagine you really prefer to melee and you need to clear a while room. So now you are suddenly forced into another combat system just so the game can be built around a movement system. It would do nothing for the game since we still have the 50m+ AoE frames and other things. It would just end up being us stopping, going bam-bam-bam-bam or unleash a WMD power then parkour our way through an empty area. What exactly would be the point? 

I don't think anyone literally wants a "the floor is lava" scenario wheres theres no floor at all. But throwing in more areas like those parts of Gas city where you go outside on the broken stairs hanging down. I think some people just want a bit more space to be fluid. Theres a mix now, tight hallways, large area, small areas. 

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

36 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

Yeah, but people should also accept the limits that it sets on difficulty. We cant have both, no A.I will be able to perform to a standard where they can counter our movement options coupled with our pure power. Not even the most advanced A.I could because it would be limited by the rules of the faction it controls, which isnt the tenno and their frames.

You cant both have the cake and eat it, which is what people expect they can in WF. Certain aspects need to be toned downed if we want challenge and a "smarter" A.I.

So basically rollback years of others' hard work and innovation until we get corresponding AI to match.

So when will that be? 

[SneakyErvin]

46 minutes ago, (PS4)CrazyBeaTzu said:

I don't think anyone literally wants a "the floor is lava" scenario wheres theres no floor at all. But throwing in more areas like those parts of Gas city where you go outside on the broken stairs hanging down. I think some people just want a bit more space to be fluid. Theres a mix now, tight hallways, large area, small areas. 

The person I answered to wanted just that, rooms with no floors, flying mobs and only smaller platform. Hence why I said in the post you quoted that floating platforms would be a better thing than floating/flying mobs since it would respect melee and ranged equally. Instead of the small platforms of the gas city tiles we could have something more similar to what you might expect from a maximum security sci-fi prison kinda thing. Massive floating platforms with defense positions we need to get to in order to kill the enemies occupying them. They'd obviously need to rework the AoE frames in order to not have it cheesed instantly.

50 minutes ago, (PS4)CrazyBeaTzu said:

So basically rollback years of others' hard work and innovation until we get corresponding AI to match.

So when will that be? 

Rollback parts of the movement yes, if we badly want an A.I that has time to react to us more properly. It wouldnt be the first game nor the last where such drastic changes would have been made for the sake of better balance. Or they need to introduce super tough units that are much faster and agile than the rest that puts pressure on us, so we need to focus on them, that way the mooks will have more of a chance to attack us. Toss in some very lethal sniper units and actually harmful grenades/mini-rollers and we might be able to keep our movement and have a more challenging experience. Game either needs to slow us down or it needs to be turned into something very chaotic and deadly, while still not relying on just bullet hell and sponges.

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

30 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

The person I answered to wanted just that, rooms with no floors, flying mobs and only smaller platform. Hence why I said in the post you quoted that floating platforms would be a better thing than floating/flying mobs since it would respect melee and ranged equally. Instead of the small platforms of the gas city tiles we could have something more similar to what you might expect from a maximum security sci-fi prison kinda thing. Massive floating platforms with defense positions we need to get to in order to kill the enemies occupying them. They'd obviously need to rework the AoE frames in order to not have it cheesed instantly.

Rollback parts of the movement yes, if we badly want an A.I that has time to react to us more properly. It wouldnt be the first game nor the last where such drastic changes would have been made for the sake of better balance. Or they need to introduce super tough units that are much faster and agile than the rest that puts pressure on us, so we need to focus on them, that way the mooks will have more of a chance to attack us. Toss in some very lethal sniper units and actually harmful grenades/mini-rollers and we might be able to keep our movement and have a more challenging experience. Game either needs to slow us down or it needs to be turned into something very chaotic and deadly, while still not relying on just bullet hell and sponges.

I'm not sure if you do much Index, but I think they would be a step in the right direction: 

Now that I think about it.....I think Index Corpus have an entirely different AI. They repeatedly do very fast sidesteps that make me miss my shots all the time. They're actually kinda clever at times.

[SneakyErvin]

40 minutes ago, (PS4)CrazyBeaTzu said:

I'm not sure if you do much Index, but I think they would be a step in the right direction: 

Now that I think about it.....I think Index Corpus have an entirely different AI. They repeatedly do very fast sidesteps that make me miss my shots all the time. They're actually kinda clever at times.

Yep, mobs behaving more like the index enemies wouldnt be too bad. Just make them tough enough aswell and they could be really annoying.

[kwlingo]

14 hours ago, (PS4)CrazyBeaTzu said:

Because enemies scale upwards......Do you think people want Saryn for a Lith Defense....lol?

Let me ask you, was the game playable before Saryn was introduced to the game?

If not than I know why you need frames like Saryn, kill one enemy to kill the rest of the herd (entire map clear). When did killing enemy in LOS was a shame in any game?

[STUVash]

Le 15/04/2020 à 02:21, ChasmanianDevil a dit :

 But everything else stayed the same. None of the tilesets were updated to accommodate this drastic change in game mechanics,

Jupiter pretty much fit the fast pace Tenno to me. Most rooms are pretty big, in some of them there are huge gaps between the platform that you can cross with bullet jumping or by wall jumping or by walking on wires. Most doors have a trap setup as a blue laser, you can shoot the emitter and pass with no damage or walk through and get damage but none stop your track

If you don't care for the consequence you pass through poison clouds, fiery flames, and electricity shocks but you get hurt. If the damage on traps were to scale people would acknowledge its existence, but I guess it's plenty enough if enemies are also attacking you.
There also some specific missions where taking your time is required. Like Spy missions, you can't just rush bullet jump spamming, you have to time your movements to avoid traps, lasers, wall latch at the right time for a specific code pattern, hide behind objects, wait for laser doors to open.

They can still use their old tileset when restricting our movement, whether in specific mission type or a specific maps. Say these grinner corridors in grinner stations and ship. Sure we can cross them easily, but it doesn't matter that much if you slam yourself to the door. Just segmenting the whole map with corridor is enough to restrict the power you could have over the enemies.

If we have a large room with walls and high ceiling. It would be VERY easy for you to sneak by wall jumping the near the ceiling, enemies won't see you there. But if the ceiling isn't high enough, like in those grinner corridors, well you're gettin shot now. Doesn't matter if you're fast, everyone can spot you.

I'm not worried, they know Parkour 2.0, or rather Bullet Jumping pretty much screw over most maps. If they keep working with that in mind like they did in Jupiter rework, I think it's a really good direction for the ground missions.

Edited April 24, 2020 by STUVash

[Currilicious]

I like that I can plough through hordes of enemies with minimal effort.

I like that I can load up any decent combination and even take unconventional setups and still beat the mission.

I like that I can hop into missions without needing to LF <insert class here>.

Most important of all, I like that I do not need to farm for the next BF Tenno Gun version X to progress.

So I guess challenge and difficulty is a not why I play this game. In fact, making the game more difficult and hence stressful, makes it less appealing to me since I play after work as a means of winding down.

[(PSN)CrazyBeaTzu]

10 hours ago, kwlingo said:

Let me ask you, was the game playable before Saryn was introduced to the game?

If not than I know why you need frames like Saryn, kill one enemy to kill the rest of the herd (entire map clear). When did killing enemy in LOS was a shame in any game?

Oh sweet, another "purist" who thinks you only need Excalibur and a Skana. 

You're right, man. I'm gonna go ahead and delete my 20+ frames because that would make me a true Warframe player.

[Hollow_Knight]

On 2020-04-15 at 2:15 PM, DealerOfAbsolutes said:

The art team probably takes a lot of pride in the environments they make, but those environments clash with parkour mechanics. So much irregular geometry you can't scale. So many railings you can't climb over when you think you can. So many jagged edges that kill momentum. There are not enough walls to make Photon Jet or Arcane Aracne useful. The parkour in Warframe is a lot easier than say Gunz the Duel, but that old game had a lot of simple geometry that meshed well with movement. A lot of levels in Warframe just aren't designed for fluid parkour unfortunately.

I agree with you here, wall running (hopping, whatever we're doing these days) has always been tricky to do, but with the newer tilesets there's so few neat flat surfaces that  it's really only useful for getting around in some very specific instances.

Before we even get to Plains and Vallis...