Warframe can´t have difficulty because it lost control over its basic systems

[Monolake]

A bit of history: back in 2013-14 Trinity Bless used to give global invulnerability, Frost Globe was impenetrable and enemies HP was capped at 65k.  DE realized these things broke the game and made any difficulty or 'endgame' practically impossible to create. Funny, DE only realized the problem with HP after an event where player went vs max level infested and still one-shot them, but Trinity was a hot topic on the forums and plenty of players didn't like that the ability was cheat-like, completely removing any danger to the players.

Fast-forward to 2020 and we are back to practically unkillable players and totaly neutered enemies scaling - enemies are more fragile than they've ever been. Except now we also have much much higher player power, energy on demand, crazy nukes and super-powerful weapons. Im not sure what DE gamedesigners are thinking, if they learned anything from the past and what they are trying to make WF into. 

[keikogi]

2 hours ago, Monolake said:

Yeah its a lost case, this mess is unfixable and I dont envy the developers (possible player durability is 'infinity' too)

The resource economy, including health is completely broken to the point that even the insane attrition rate of 50% maxHP/s is sustainable by the player.

2 hours ago, Monolake said:

But the worst part is not even the total lack of numerical balance, its the lack of gameplay behind it because there are abilities that just 1-button delete gameplay entirely or let the game play itself without player interaction - those are the biggest flaws. Warframe largely degraded from an action game into an idle farming one, and its not fun no matter the rewards (as the recent event showcased)

Unfortunately, Warframe does not design skill with such nonsense as down time or trade back for a good effect. Also the energy economy that was created to limit skills is broken on both sides (overly limiting for newbies and inexistent for veterans )

1 hour ago, Monolake said:

A bit of history: back in 2013-14 Trinity Bless used to give global invulnerability, Frost Globe was impenetrable and enemies HP was capped at 65k.  DE realized these things broke the game and made any difficulty or 'endgame' practically impossible to create. Funny, DE only realized the problem with HP after an event where player went vs max level infested and still one-shot them, but Trinity was a hot topic on the forums and plenty of players didn't like that the ability was cheat-like, completely removing any danger to the players.

The resource economy (health , energy and shield )broke in the day that corrupted mods were added into the game ( not due to their massive positive stats ). It broke due to bad math on reducing duration in DOT skills. Reducing duration in DOT skills used to reduce the interval between DOTs instead of reducing the number of damages procs. For those not aware trinity energy vampire did not pulse the remaining energy when the target was killed , so it was more similar to a weak energy regen over time effect , however using fleeting expertise and transient fortitude EV was closer to a full energy on a button. These same mods also created the monster that was pre rework saryn with a at the time really strong 1 key press nuke.

The Damage system on the other hand was born fundamentally flawed. Armor x Health fundamentally scales better than Shields + Health. Add that to the lack of standard scaling on warframe durability making it impossible to balance enemy damage output.  

2 hours ago, Monolake said:

Fast-forward to 2020 and we are back to practically unkillable players and totaly neutered enemies scaling - enemies are more fragile than they've ever been. Except now we also have much much higher player power, energy on demand, crazy nukes and super-powerful weapons. Im not sure what DE gamedesigners are thinking, if they learned anything from the past and what they are trying to make WF into. 

I wish DE had a huge black board called mistakes of the past and wrote something like don’t create skills that turn of the interaction between player and enemy(they tried to address invisibility making the player somewhat invincible them created the rift )  , don’t make stuff that scales into infinity (operator arcane )  , don´t hide basic quality of life changes behind a gear ( it took how many years to get vacuum on everything , took a few years to make it universal for sentinel and how many kubrows and kavats had to sufer in the freezer until fetch was released)

[DrakeWurrum]

Well I mean... it's not like there's other horde looter games that have successfully provided challenges to a powerfully built-up player that Warframe could look to for inspiration...

/s

[Zeranov]

On 2020-05-13 at 3:20 AM, DrakeWurrum said:

Well I mean... it's not like there's other horde looter games that have successfully provided challenges to a powerfully built-up player that Warframe could look to for inspiration...

/s

Well I guess there really aren't that many examples and they all have massive problems of their own.

Borderlands is a very fun co-op game, but its gun variety is mostly an illusion. It's like having the same gun over and over with random mods. Their boss design centers around nukes that reduce the player to 1 HP and the game's storydriven linear nature reduces its replayability.

Destiny has fantastic gun play and lore, but always had a content problem. Most items are reskins. The game does not value the players time by artifically limiting the levels of gear and it's monetarization hurt the grind of flashy vanitiy items by placing most of the good stuff into the item store.

The Division has incredible atmosphere and immersion, but their loot systems are extremly restrictive and many game mechanics are the exact opposite of Warframe giving not enough power to the player for the effort of specializing your character.

Atleast Warframe didn't make the mistake of centering the entire game around guns even if the name of the gerne "looter shooter" suggests it thus giving it more creative freedom, but that's not my point here. I just wanted to point out that every other product that comes close has many problems maintaining their player base. Maybe the root of the problem is how can you keep your players interested for an unlimited amount of time?

The solution might be a constant evolution of the game. I agree with the fine people responding to me that maybe I mistook the bandages for identity and the restrictions that arise from said bandages. I did not noticed them anymore after all the years. Careful limitation that doesn't make the game a chore creates meaningful choice. I hope DE reads this good discussion finding new insprirations for the next iterations of Warframe's core systems.

[blazinvire]

Good difficulty is going to need quite the overhaul, since difficulty typically boils down to a tug-of-war competition with the Time-To-Kill variable.

If it takes you 5 seconds to kill an enemy, and it takes them 5 seconds to kill you, that means you have 5 seconds to do something to buy yourself another second, which could be as simple as finding cover.
1 second to kill one enemy, and it takes 10 enemies 5 seconds to kill you, you still have 5 seconds to do something, but now you need to earn yourself 5 more seconds.
You can boil this whole thing down to maths pretty easily and get a nice TTK algorithm going, and even factor in variables like Movement Speed and how often you change direction to alter their accuracy and all kinds of fun stuff to ensure a steady TTK is maintained, and enable ways for the player to save themselves by capping variables.
The numbers are entirely irrelevant as long as the algorithm balances out and leaves the TTK somewhere agreeable.
Warframe's current TTK for both players and enemies is somewhere between 0.0005 seconds and 84 years.

So the energy system is gonna need an overhaul in some form to make ability use reliable/predictable.
Again, how often abilities are used is entirely irrelevant, as long as their impact on the TTK is managed appropriately, so you could theoretically strip Energy entirely and completely unrestrain ability use, as long as Crowd-Controls get Diminishing Returns, and there are viable counter strategies to Invisibility and Invincibility available to the enemy in not-obnoxious methods.

At risk of flying off on a tangent, totally unrestrained ability use is actually kind of fascinating, since CC would demand more self-restraint and tactics due to diminishing returns slowly invalidating it, Invisibility would require more stealth rather than an alternative to Invincibility, and Invincibility kind of flips the game on its side since now your job is negotiating the counter strategies.
As long as an algorithm is keeping TTK balanced by measuring your effective damage output against effective enemy health and such, whether or not you focused on gunplay or spamming abilities it'd only change the details, not the outcome.

[keikogi]

11 hours ago, blazinvire said:

Good difficulty is going to need quite the overhaul, since difficulty typically boils down to a tug-of-war competition with the Time-To-Kill variable.

If it takes you 5 seconds to kill an enemy, and it takes them 5 seconds to kill you, that means you have 5 seconds to do something to buy yourself another second, which could be as simple as finding cover.
1 second to kill one enemy, and it takes 10 enemies 5 seconds to kill you, you still have 5 seconds to do something, but now you need to earn yourself 5 more seconds.
You can boil this whole thing down to maths pretty easily and get a nice TTK algorithm going, and even factor in variables like Movement Speed and how often you change direction to alter their accuracy and all kinds of fun stuff to ensure a steady TTK is maintained, and enable ways for the player to save themselves by capping variables.
The numbers are entirely irrelevant as long as the algorithm balances out and leaves the TTK somewhere agreeable.
Warframe's current TTK for both players and enemies is somewhere between 0.0005 seconds and 84 years.

That´s a good way to put it. You can´t desing a fight if the ttk is somewhere in between 0.00005 and 84 years. 

 

12 hours ago, blazinvire said:

So the energy system is gonna need an overhaul in some form to make ability use reliable/predictable.

Energy is a bit a two part problem,first energy system have to generate gameplay. For example, Nidus 1 is a energy souce that generates a gameplay work , another example is titania 1 augument. What we have right now is the pointless zenurik dance , energy orbs given by rngesus and energy pads. 

 

12 hours ago, blazinvire said:

Invisibility would require more stealth

had an idead for an enemy type to deal with that. a enemy that can see invisble warframe but always show where it is looking at with a laser dot. This enemy also has a ink granade to reveal warframe. 

 

[blazinvire]

1 hour ago, keikogi said:

Energy is a bit a two part problem,first energy system have to generate gameplay. For example, Nidus 1 is a energy souce that generates a gameplay work , another example is titania 1 augument. What we have right now is the pointless zenurik dance , energy orbs given by rngesus and energy pads. 

I'm thinking you don't even need Energy, all of the resource systems Warframes like Nidus and Gauss can basically replace whatever they thought Energy might achieve; and honestly, if all they did was remove the energy system, the only thing that would actually change in the game's current state is that new players would be using more abilities, less people would use Zenurik, and there'd be less grinding for resources for energy pads.  The actual number of abilities being used wouldn't change, it would just reduce the pointless and rigid faff leading up to the endless ability use.

You could then customize each Warframe's kit so their resource system adds gameplay, like how Gauss's battery strongly encourages players to never ever ever sit still like they're a caffeinated squirrel, which fits perfectly with Gauss's theme.

53 minutes ago, keikogi said:

had an idead for an enemy type to deal with that. a enemy that can see invisble warframe but always show where it is looking at with a laser dot. This enemy also has a ink granade to reveal warframe.

As long as the enemy is reasonably easy to pick out of a crowd it'd work, though it's movement would need to be adjusted so they're easier to predict where they're looking, rather than a spasmodic flailing of a vision cone; also be kind of cool if the vision cone was tilted down slightly so it favours wall-clinging as a method of escaping them -and if wall-clinging didn't randomly have an expiration on it so you can just loom there like batman for awhile.
Maybe instead of ink grenades they have the Nox's gun that glues those annoying blobs on you that slow you down, which would also give away your position until you knock the blobs off.
Enemy AI could also get an update, that they'd get quicker at figuring out where you are the less you moved and the more you attacked, so it incentivizes repositioning and picking your shots.
Could also have different grades of invisibility, where some are like the Predator's invisibility, so you're easier to spot the faster you're moving, and completely invisible while perfectly still.

[(XBOX)GodMasterTP]

This entire post is useless when you take something like Diablo 3 in consideration. A game that has even higher numbers and is still somehow balanced, much more than Warframe.

And I can compare Warframe and Diablo 3 pretty much every damn time. 

[DrakeWurrum]

18 hours ago, Zeranov said:

Well I guess there really aren't that many examples and they all have massive problems of their own.

I was being sarcastic. Hence the /s

Nobody says these other games don't have problems of their own.

But many of them do successfully provide challenges to the player. Diablo and Path of Exile come to mind, in particular. Eximus units were a failed attempt to mimic Diablo's enemy modifiers.

DE had even accidentally stumbled upon something that provided a decent challenge to players, for a time, until the mechanics were learned and a "meta" strat formed (even then, it's still possible to mess up). The eidolon fights were actually fairly well done in terms of creating a fight that called for teamwork to overcome the fight mechanics.
The Orb fights proved that DE couldn't recreate that accident.

--

Honestly, I don't think Warframe's mechanics are at all anathema to challenging content. DE just sucks at designing challenging content. They don't know how to design enemies that can actually challenge us. Even the eidolons, which were a major step in the right direction, eventually proved to be easy simply due to us becoming familiar with the best methods of taking them down (but that's much like how raids in standard-fare MMO become easy over time due to learned mechanics).

What they originally showed us of Railjack at Tennocon gave players hope that Railjack content could provide that level of teamwork and challenge, but... this again proved to fall short of what was promised as they made all the usual mistakes with their enemies.

Honestly, they could at least try throwing more enemies at us than they currently do. Give us a genuine horde to cut through. Most endless missions are spent looking for enemies to kill, instead of feeling like we're actually swarmed.

Edited May 17, 2020 by DrakeWurrum

[keikogi]

9 hours ago, (XB1)XG1anBl4derX said:

This entire post is useless when you take something like Diablo 3 in consideration. A game that has even higher numbers and is still somehow balanced, much more than Warframe.

And I can compare Warframe and Diablo 3 pretty much every damn time. 

You missed the point the point is the range of numbers is to hight and the game breaks down. If every warframe has   0,5 to 6 billion hp the game is balanceable if someone has warframes with EHP between 500 and 1 million the game cant be balanced because DE cant set any damage in any balanced point. Here a better explanatio by a comenter 

On 2020-05-16 at 9:15 AM, blazinvire said:

Good difficulty is going to need quite the overhaul, since difficulty typically boils down to a tug-of-war competition with the Time-To-Kill variable.

If it takes you 5 seconds to kill an enemy, and it takes them 5 seconds to kill you, that means you have 5 seconds to do something to buy yourself another second, which could be as simple as finding cover.
1 second to kill one enemy, and it takes 10 enemies 5 seconds to kill you, you still have 5 seconds to do something, but now you need to earn yourself 5 more seconds.
You can boil this whole thing down to maths pretty easily and get a nice TTK algorithm going, and even factor in variables like Movement Speed and how often you change direction to alter their accuracy and all kinds of fun stuff to ensure a steady TTK is maintained, and enable ways for the player to save themselves by capping variables.
The numbers are entirely irrelevant as long as the algorithm balances out and leaves the TTK somewhere agreeable.
Warframe's current TTK for both players and enemies is somewhere between 0.0005 seconds and 84 years.

I just used the game literally can´t display the damage number it means the the Devs did not intend to allow that much damage to happen. 

11 hours ago, blazinvire said:

I'm thinking you don't even need Energy, all of the resource systems Warframes like Nidus and Gauss can basically replace whatever they thought Energy might achieve; and honestly, if all they did was remove the energy system, the only thing that would actually change in the game's current state is that new players would be using more abilities, less people would use Zenurik, and there'd be less grinding for resources for energy pads.  The actual number of abilities being used wouldn't change, it would just reduce the pointless and rigid faff leading up to the endless ability use.

You could then customize each Warframe's kit so their resource system adds gameplay, like how Gauss's battery strongly encourages players to never ever ever sit still like they're a caffeinated squirrel, which fits perfectly with Gauss's theme.

I think that would be an ideal soultion but just having a good way to recoverying energy by warframe a=like some skill generating energy by hitting enemies with the harder skills to land or killing enemies with head shots or something like this. 

 

11 hours ago, blazinvire said:

As long as the enemy is reasonably easy to pick out of a crowd it'd work, though it's movement would need to be adjusted so they're easier to predict where they're looking, rather than a spasmodic flailing of a vision cone; also be kind of cool if the vision cone was tilted down slightly so it favours wall-clinging as a method of escaping them -and if wall-clinging didn't randomly have an expiration on it so you can just loom there like batman for awhile.
Maybe instead of ink grenades they have the Nox's gun that glues those annoying blobs on you that slow you down, which would also give away your position until you knock the blobs off.

it was an idea for the TUBEMEN of regor units. Old pich for them, they are suposed to be the Gruneer version of the combas. They had 3 types gunner one with the invisibility that I´ve described , one with the medic helmet that can purges debuffs and gives debuff imunity to debuffs purged ( has an audio cue and charge up time before purging the debuffs ) and at last a melee one that purges warframe buffs after two sucefull melee strikes ( has a jetpack to gap close )