Pablo acknowledges why better AI alone will not be enough for good difficulty in WF: We need to be nerfed first

[Zimzala]

4 minutes ago, Wearbe said:

Didn't mean to insult. I just found some really good humor in that. 🙂  Carry on, I'll go back to enjoying in the background.

I thought it was funny, thanks for the LOL.

[Felsagger]

5 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

So just more things that makes it less about WFs and more about just weapons instead of balancing a handful of actual outlier frames. Nullifiers were already seen as a cheap solution, adding more types of the same mechanic is not a solution. Arbi drones worked since they were different, the downsides are that they are too easy to kill, which is easily fixed by not being able to just AoE them to death aswell as them dying and taking all shielded mobs with them. It has still be the best approach to hinder us, far better than nulls. So I'd rather see the mechanics of the drones, demolysts and denial bursas getting expanded on as opposed to the cheap "solution" that is the null mechanic.

 

Less about War Frames? How? Do you stop playing with War Frames? No. The proposed game mechanics downgrades and upgrades your abilities because you trigger actions to make it happen. If you want your powers then you are forced intercepting these fields that are destructible. A shift of power happens. The War Frame powers remains as they are. However with the presence of null fields you have to depend on your skills of reaching, targeting and destroying these generators. Your tool kit of parkour is used completely dodging the enemy while you destroy the null generators. 

Tell me how this makes it less about War Frames and more about weapons? Adding containment fields is a practical solution that gives DE time thinking on a more though out solution. Balancing lots of War Frame into something satisfactory is an impossible job. Takes a lot of effort and lots of play testing that DE doesn't have. They are inclined towards their micro transactions and programmed obsolescence. They can't balance everything, it's impossible. 

Arbitration drones are nothing more than the interpretation of field boosts seen on the Orokin ship droids of the corrupted. The conception of the idea is nullification. Demolysts and Bursas are extended enemies with more firepower they can be included in the solution. But for odd reasons there is a lot of reticence improving the awful A.I. in War Frame. If there is no improvement in it then we will not know for sure what is going on. The solution is not cheap, it is the only one we have that provides some results forcing the player to intercept enemy units, select and prioritize. 

Demolyst and Bursas are just bullet sponges with greater endurance. There is no significant engagements on them at all. Tactical use of the A.I. is more favorable than just enemies with thicker shell, shield and health. It doesn't add or solve the problem. Pablo already said it, A.I. is not the only thing that solves the problem, it is the combination of factors like enemy types, enemy behavior, enemy load out, level design, War Frame ability cool downs and unscripted events of boss encounters. 

 

 

Quote

Massive null fields would just push us into an even more narrow meta composed of high HP frames that dont need their abilities and AoE weapons/melee. You'd have a meta consisting of Inaros, Atlas, Grendel, Hildryn and Khora pretty much, frames that can just ignore their active abilities and still retain high eHP and sustain while mowing through things with a melee or AoE gun. All in order to "fix" 5 other frames instead of simply just fixing them.

Again wrong. You don't know what you are saying. 

That's why we need stronger well designed enemies instead of lemmings that throw themselves in without reasoning any danger of our weapons and tactics. Enemy is almost unaware of our capabilities. They act blindly to our weapons. They don't even preserve themselves or try to do so. 

All frames are reduced to their basic movements, shield armor and health. Players must navigate their level and then target these null fields. Any weapon with few shots takes care of the problem. Any. But you forced the player to work for their powers instead of having a spasmodic spammer who simply stays for 12 hours in an endurance behaving like a rat. DE made this bed. We took advantage of it and now we are blaming ourselves. They gave us the abilities and frames, they settled this outcome to themselves because the path of less resistance will happen such as power creeping or meta building. 

Their lack of game design brought them here to this exact point. One of those reasons is that they are NOT play testing their game properly. Solutions are not maturing properly while exploits happens everywhere. DE seems to be busier banning glitch players than testing their game before release of new content. 

 

Quote

What we need are different types of units that punish different types of frames. So X is useful to help Y clear something that blocks its powers, while also having something that keeps X on its toes so it doesnt get stripped of crucial buffs. Just as we would need something that is punishing towards the high eHP frames, possibly something like a healing preventor, like mortal strike (-50% healing) or scourge strike (absorbs up to X amount of incoming healing) from WoW. A single type of mechanic like the null would not solve those things and it would not treat frames at all on a remotely equal level. The nulls work as they are, they just need to be given to each faction, but we dont need the mechanic expanded to other things, we need new and properly balanced ones.

I said exactly that few pages ago. 

Edited May 27, 2020 by Felsagger

[Corvid]

Maybe it's because I'm on the side that is constantly being mischaracterised, but I fail to see the humour.

[(PSN)sweatshawp]

The thread is still here? Surprised 

[Corvid]

1 minute ago, (PS4)sweatshawp said:

The thread is still here? Surprised 

Why? It's an ongoing discussion that hasn't really fallen out of relevance.

At least we're not artificially reviving it every week or so, unlike some threads that I don't care to mention.

[(PSN)sweatshawp]

5 minutes ago, Corvid said:

Why? It's an ongoing discussion that hasn't really fallen out of relevance.

At least we're not artificially reviving it every week or so, unlike some threads that I don't care to mention.

I stoped caring after the good old logger spam got irritating 

[(PSN)GEN-Son_17]

On 2020-05-26 at 10:39 AM, Aldain said:

Corpus Ice Planet exists so that is at least one thing wrong with an entire Tile set.

That entire map is a jagged mess and is the worst looking map type even from a pure visual standpoint.

Honestly, I like the Ice tileset because of its large, explorative nature. It tells a nice story to me and that's a key component to level design. For newer players, the extra challenge of dealing with the extreme cold sapping your shields and health without the heaters taught you to not shoot recklessly. The complex areas to reach were great practice for parkour and the electricity in the water gave hints of nearby loot. I especially love how large they made the ship wreckage and how deep the corpus had to dig to get to a lot of it. 

Bottom line: EVERYTHING is subjective in Warframe and, the more years (!!!) we put into it, the more subjective we become. Mountains from mole hills are the norm in longevity.

[Felsagger]

1 hour ago, (PS4)sweatshawp said:

I stopped caring after the good old logger spam got irritating 

 

There's nothing much to talk about since DE is progressing slow with the releases. This topic talks about the main problems of War Frame. Many of them can be solved whenever DE decides to do so. It will happen when they see a heavy hit in their wallets. Right now they are resting in their laurels. 

[SneakyErvin]

2 hours ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Again, why does that mean Warframe needs to be the same as your average superhero game?

This is the thing I just don’t understand. People seem to think that Warframe needs to be like every other power fantasy, where balance is considered. Why does it need to be that way when there are already so many other games out there like that already?

I honestly do not understand why people are so down on Warframe being the way it is. Its supposed to be a chill out game you can play when you literally just want to play a game without caring too much. There is definitely room for that in an industry as homogeneous as this, where we get yearly churned out sequels of the same thing and where most game developers are trying to ape other popular games.

I doesnt have to be like a superhero game where we have a nemesis with a power level equal to or stronger than us. It is just that WF is so far beyond power fantasy at the moment that it can be dialed back alot without having any impact on the current gameplay but opens up the opportunity for challenging content to be added. It would also help DE to create content that lasts a bit longer. That is why we need balance.

As @Aadi880says.

Quote

If I were to be completely honest, warframe can no longer be called a power fantasy game. Its a megalomanic's game. Balance is completely out the window. 

And it couldnt be more true.

[TheGodofWiFi]

3 hours ago, Aadi880 said:

They have to force players to wait weeks for the next update. Players get bored, or find themselves nothing to do, and takes a break. Player retention has failed.

Thats always been the case though? In-between updates, players have always gone to other games. But they always come back and thats a sign that DE is doing something right. I don’t know of any other live-service game has such dedicated returning players each and every time. If it didn’t work, Warframe would have died off long ago.

Sustainability is something DE have been able to achieve in a very unique way IMO.

3 hours ago, Aadi880 said:

Failure of the Old Blood update caused another failure in the Rising Tide update, which carried on to the Empyrean update. Notice playtime on ALL of these was increased by giving extreme costs (Rising Tide), or giving bullet sponges (Empyrean), or by giving wait times (Rising Tide), or by using RNG (Kuva lich)

But thats a fault of DE, not the playerbase. The playerbase has shown that they are willing to keep coming back over the years despite the content draughts. DE feel the need to push these things out early, but the issue is that players prefer well-cooked updates as opposed to rushed out ones. The fact the updates were broken were what caused a lot more players to loose interest in the game.

We also do have evidence that management/communication at DE isn’t quite as top notch as most people would think, which is what can lead to slower/rushed updates.

2 hours ago, Corvid said:

Bit of advice: Never say "So what you are saying". It makes it clear that you're not responding to a person, but to a strawman of your own making.

No, its called summing up. And it is 100% what you are asking for. All you want is Warframe to be Old Warframe again. 
 

There is something called The Fallacy Fallacy.

2 hours ago, Corvid said:

My opinion, and that of most of the people asking for the game to be more balanced, is that it would be better somewhere between the two extremes.

And the fact is, that will never happen, unless DE want to loose a sizeable chunk of the playerbase who like the game as it is.

Warframe is at a state where it is near impossible to balance without majorly scaling back a lot of systems, effectively nerfing a lot of the game and that would annoy a lot of people. DE have so many frames and weapons in this game, its basically an overflow of OP. 

2 hours ago, Corvid said:

Also, the game didn't have trouble staying afloat when it came out. It had less players, but that was largely due to a lack of exposure at the time, not problems with the gameplay.

And you think the lack of exposure had absolutely nothing to do with the barely average gameplay and general state the game was in at the time?

Also, yes they did struggle to stay afloat as that was the whole reason for the Founders programme. They outright admitted without those funds they likely would have had to turn the lights off on the game. 

2 hours ago, Corvid said:

It's also not a very good "God simulator", given how inconsistent the experience is.

How is this a rebuttal? The general gameplay of Warframe makes you feel like a God. Thats where the main fun is for playing this game and its not exactly inconsistent.

Edited May 27, 2020 by TheGodofWiFi

[SneakyErvin]

2 hours ago, Felsagger said:

 

Less about War Frames? How? Do you stop playing with War Frames? No. The proposed game mechanics downgrades and upgrades your abilities because you trigger actions to make it happen. If you want your powers then you are forced intercepting these fields that are destructible. A shift of power happens. The War Frame powers remains as they are. However with the presence of null fields you have to depend on your skills of reaching, targeting and destroying these generators. Your tool kit of parkour is used completely dodging the enemy while you destroy the null generators. 

Tell me how this makes it less about War Frames and more about weapons? Adding containment fields is a practical solution that gives DE time thinking on a more though out solution. Balancing lots of War Frame into something satisfactory is an impossible job. Takes a lot of effort and lots of play testing that DE doesn't have. They are inclined towards their micro transactions and programmed obsolescence. They can't balance everything, it's impossible. 

Arbitration drones are nothing more than the interpretation of field boosts seen on the Orokin ship droids of the corrupted. The conception of the idea is nullification. Demolysts and Bursas are extended enemies with more firepower they can be included in the solution. But for odd reasons there is a lot of reticence improving the awful A.I. in War Frame. If there is no improvement in it then we will not know for sure what is going on. The solution is not cheap, it is the only one we have that provides some results forcing the player to intercept enemy units, select and prioritize. 

Demolyst and Bursas are just bullet sponges with greater endurance. There is no significant engagements on them at all. Tactical use of the A.I. is more favorable than just enemies with thicker shell, shield and health. It doesn't add or solve the problem. Pablo already said it, A.I. is not the only thing that solves the problem, it is the combination of factors like enemy types, enemy behavior, enemy load out, level design, War Frame ability cool downs and unscripted events of boss encounters. 

Again wrong. You don't know what you are saying. 

That's why we need stronger well designed enemies instead of lemmings that throw themselves in without reasoning any danger of our weapons and tactics. Enemy is almost unaware of our capabilities. They act blindly to our weapons. They don't even preserve themselves or try to do so. 

All frames are reduced to their basic movements, shield armor and health. Players must navigate their level and then target these null fields. Any weapon with few shots takes care of the problem. Any. But you forced the player to work for their powers instead of having a spasmodic spammer who simply stays for 12 hours in an endurance behaving like a rat. DE made this bed. We took advantage of it and now we are blaming ourselves. They gave us the abilities and frames, they settled this outcome to themselves because the path of less resistance will happen such as power creeping or meta building. 

Their lack of game design brought them here to this exact point. One of those reasons is that they are NOT play testing their game properly. Solutions are not maturing properly while exploits happens everywhere. DE seems to be busier banning glitch players than testing their game before release of new content. 

 

I said exactly that few pages ago. 

Since you call them null fields I assume they are just nullibubbles stuck to a deployable, so yes it will be far less about the frames if these cover large areas. At that point the frame wont matter except as a weapons platform. You also forget that not all frames are created equally with the same potential for defense outside of their kits, same as not all of them being designed with the same potential is damage provided from their kit. Why should a Banshee that is already a far more active frame be punished the same as a Saryn, when the problem that needs to be solved is the Saryn. And why should Rhino, Nezha or Rev be punished while Atlas, Inaros and Grendel dont care a bit? Null fields are lazy because they dont really solve a problem. The null fields solve issues that are there because of 5 frames, that is not the correct way to solve the problem since they effectively #*!% over already active frames.

It isnt lots of Warframes that need to be balanced, it's 5 frames, Saryn, Volt, Enox, Frost and Mesa. Inaros can be included aswell since he has unhealthy survivability without needing abilities at all. Outside of that CC needs to be balanced, which is solved by something similar to arbi drones.

Adding nulli fields to larger parts of maps will not help to improve the A.I because it will just open up for a new 5 frame meta, nothing else. Anything that doesnt need to rely on powers will be used and nothing else. So you'll have a bunch of naturally tanky frame that go bam-bam or kaboom with their massive melee or AoE ranged weapons. The whole "heavier units will block the shield unit" is just wishfull thinking. How will they block a bullet jumping frame with a gun? They wont.

You clearly dont get the part I wanted added from the bursa and demos, that part completely swooshed over your head or you have no real experience with those mobs. What I wanted from them, which I also said, was their specific nullification mechanic, we arent talking about any old bursa here, we are talking about the denial bursa specifically. Their higher eHP matters since if you dont kill them quick they will strip your buffs, same deal with demolysts. Building further on that mechanic would be good, it wouldnt have to be durable unit that gets this, it could be a fast unit that requires something specific to take them down so they can be an interuptive part of the gameplay.

Regarding the "Again wrong". Read what I said regarding a new 5 frame meta and bullet jumps. No matter what A.I they wont counter that no matter how much they squat inside a massive null field. Reason we use AoE frames now is because it is the most efficient. Lock those and every other skill down with massive null field areas and you'll just see a shift to the next most efficient thing. Going for an all the eggs in one basket solution here wont work. The penalties need to be spread out between the mobs so one frame or frame type wont be the solution. Hence why null is bad since it embodies the whole all eggs in one basket approach.

And if you said exactly that, then why did you snow in on lazy approach number #1 (null fields) just a few pages later? All I've seen you talk about is imaginary "nullifiers in formation" and now this idea of covering massive areas instead with null fields. Where and what exactly did you say regarding sometime that involved a more diverse approach?

[TheGodofWiFi]

39 minutes ago, SneakyErvin said:

It is just that WF is so far beyond power fantasy at the moment that it can be dialed back alot without having any impact on the current gameplay but opens up the opportunity for challenging content to be added. It would also help DE to create content that lasts a bit longer. That is why we need balance.

The issue is that many people like the game for what it is now. An overblown extreme power fantasy.

At the end of the day, players can blow through content pretty easily in a lot of games these days. Warframe just does it slightly faster. 

The smart AI and clever tactics are literally not needed in this game. The thing that always baffles me is why DE kept introducing more and more stuff that made you more powerful if they knew it was going to make future content a cake-walk. 

[Corvid]

8 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

 And it is 100% what you are asking for. All you want is Warframe to be Old Warframe again. 

Wrong. I want Warframe to be Warframe again.

9 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

And the fact is, that will never happen, unless DE want to loose a sizeable chunk of the playerbase who like the game as it is.

Considering that they're constantly losing players anyway (as I mentioned ages ago, the concurrent player growth is a literal order of magnitude lower than the rate of new profile creations, indicating heavy haemorrhaging), I'd say that trying to make the gameplay more engaging is worth that risk, especially since DE's need to create newer, more ambitious expansions to keep players from dropping the game has started to outstrip their ability to make them in a short enough time.

Basically, they stand to gain a lot more than they stand to lose in terms of sustainability, especially since the vast majority of players will simply adjust to whatever changes are made. As has happened every other time a balance pass has occurred.

15 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Warframe is at a state where it is near impossible to balance without majorly scaling back a lot of systems, effectively nerfing a lot of the game and that would annoy a lot of people. DE have so many frames and weapons in this game, its basically an overflow of OP.

Actually, as mentioned, the number of problem items is relatively small (less than a quarter of the frames currently in the game, and less than a tenth of the weapons), and most of them would be fixed with a few fairly basic changes (Line of Sight limitations being the most obvious starting point).

You're making the task out to be a lot greater than it actually is, especially since DE have already started doing rebalance passes over the various items over the past year and a half (namely, the two sets of Weapon rebalance updates last year, and the two Warframe Revised updates in the past few months). They even had the explicit stated goal of reining in the upper outliers to a more reasonable power level, so it's mostly just a matter of keeping that trend going.

22 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

And you think the lack of exposure had absolutely nothing to do with the barely average gameplay and general state the game was in at the time?

It was mostly due to a lack of marketing budget and a relatively sparse amount of content. If the gameplay was "Barely average", it wouldn't have experienced the steady growth that lead to its current state.

25 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

Also, yes they did struggle to stay afloat as that was the whole reason for the Founders programme. They outright admitted without those funds they likely would have had to turn the lights off on the game. 

It was DE that was struggling to stay afloat due to a lack of available work, not Warframe. Once Warframe hit Open Beta, the company's financial situation stabilised, and thus the game's future wasn't really in question any more.

May I also take this opportunity to appreciate the irony of someone trying to tell a Founder what DE's situation was like at the time?

29 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

How is this a rebuttal? The general gameplay of Warframe makes you feel like a God. Thats where the main fun is for playing this game and its not exactly inconsistent.

Again, Outliers. The general gameplay is a 3rd person shooter with heavy hack-and-slash elements with a few basic stealth features thrown in for variety. That is how it is consistently portrayed in pretty much all promotional material. A few frames being able to overwrite that and turn the game into a Clicker does not change that.

[(XBOX)ShonOfDawn]

4 minutes ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

The issue is that many people like the game for what it is now. An overblown extreme power fantasy.

Your overall point is a pretty interesting take on the other side of the discussion, but still there is numerical evidence that a sizable portion of the community cares about challenge and balance. By that no one means souls-like difficulty or WoW-like balance, but simply a combat experience in which player input matters, even if slightly, instead of having your build in charge of the entirety of gameplay, with you pressing a single button every once in a while. Warframe offers few ways to reward the player intrinsically, through its gameplay and through the choices players make in combat. That comes from the twofold issue of having a limited portion of the roster able to totally trivialize enemies with the press of a button, and the lack of units that provide such opportunities for skillful, rewarding play (just Nox with his headshot vulnerability, and maybe nullifiers with their shootable drone), that allow you to satisfyingly dominate enemies through competence and experience. I'd argue that moving towards solving these two issues would largely improve the experience, while removing nothing from the power fantasy. It's alright to prioritize the latter, but DE shouldn't pander exclusively to those players that want everything dead instantly with no effort whatsoever. That might be extremely enjoyable to a select few, but in the bigger picture it just hurts player retention by incentivizing fast, grind-heavy missions, one-sided public sessions in which the meta dominates, cheap enemy mechanics, and ultimately, unsatisfying, boring combat.

[Zimzala]

Just now, (XB1)DOMPATRIOT said:

It is awesome that there are a lot of calm, non- threatening debates (most of them).

But it is sad to know that DE will just ignore all of this...

We know they don't ignore it.

It's very sad IMO to think that DE is not already aware of the ideas presented here and that they are not also aware of the issues they face.

Companies are not mob-ruled (unless mob owned, I guess) and that includes game companies.

Nothing said here has not been on a game forum previously, really.

Just because DE does not do what loud forum posters want and say they did for proof, does not mean they don't incorporate the feedback, nor does it mean they did not already have the idea in the pipeline, or that perhpas they were even inspired by something here.

It's sad to me to think otherwise as it is terribly belittling of a successful game company to do so, IMO, it's a destructively negative outlook.

[DeMonkey]

1 hour ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

The playerbase has shown that they are willing to keep coming back over the years despite the content draughts.

This is evidently untrue, as already mentioned both here and elsewhere across the forums. 

1 hour ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

All you want is Warframe to be Old Warframe again. 

Pretty sure we just want Warframe to be Warframe, not afk simulator or cookie clicker.

1 hour ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

And the fact is, that will never happen, unless DE want to loose a sizeable chunk of the playerbase who like the game as it is.

Not sure this classes as a fact, given it's not possible to substantiate. You guess it will.

Honestly though, anyone who walks away from a video game because the game started to require more than 2 brain cells from them? Not really that big a loss imo.

1 hour ago, TheGodofWiFi said:

And you think the lack of exposure had absolutely nothing to do with the barely average gameplay

The gameplay was hardly average. It's easy to look at all the good things we have now and didn't have then, but even comparing old 2014 Warframe with many other games, it had plenty only it was offering. 

And most importantly ofc, it was actual gameplay that required you to engage with the game.

Edited May 27, 2020 by DeMonkey

[Felsagger]

 

Fine. you want to get technical. 

5 hours ago, SneakyErvin said:

Since you call them null fields I assume they are just nullibubbles stuck to a deployable, so yes it will be far less about the frames if these cover large areas. At that point the frame wont matter except as a weapons platform. You also forget that not all frames are created equally with the same potential for defense outside of their kits, same as not all of them being designed with the same potential is damage provided from their kit. Why should a Banshee that is already a far more active frame be punished the same as a Saryn, when the problem that needs to be solved is the Saryn. And why should Rhino, Nezha or Rev be punished while Atlas, Inaros and Grendel dont care a bit? Null fields are lazy because they dont really solve a problem. The null fields solve issues that are there because of 5 frames, that is not the correct way to solve the problem since they effectively #*!% over already active frames.

The conception of the repertoire:

The repertoire is not conceived homogeneous and the repertoire where misconstrued by the impromptu of improvisation. The structure of the GAAS F2P nature of War Frame never conceived the completeness and the extension of this repertoire. The amalgamation of ideas, the island conception of a game that is based on three months addition of content doesn't provides sufficient time for a full integration of a member in the repertoire. The creation of outliers is likely to happen. The introduction of foreign philosophies and policies of War Frame design is likely to happen deviating the product original intent. The derangement caused by disparity produced a phenomenon called 'point of no return' in the design. 

When a developer bases his architecture on layers of systems then the risk of having unstructured amalgamation is very likely. The variables keeps adding and the attributes continues doing more branches even on similar class of War Frames. Offense, defense, support and personal support are the recognizable families distinguishable in the repertoire.  The existence of these families minimize the possibility of global solution of balancing and privileged player. Why? The conception of the game was structured into modules not into a continuum or a coherent whole.

War Frame has no restriction for the selection. Therefore some missions will reduce to pure triviality when one War Frame is selected. In League of Legends some Heroes are banned because players consider them outliers among many other strategic reasons. If this game ban or prohibit certain frame in any game type then a lot of people are going to feel uncomfortable with such regulations. War Frame passed the point of no return where balancing is attainable because the is almost impossible to find an homogeneous parameter that regulates the offense, defense, support and personal support families. If one condition is stressed over one family the other takes advantage making impossible a fair balance for all the families. 

Let me quote the reference: 

In that thread a player tried to design guidelines for the repertoire and the possible growth for it. To make matters more complex each War Frame has attributes that are attainable throughout modding. This provides more unexpected results creating fuzziness between the mentioned families of frames in the repertoire. The trial and error nature of the game throws out any possibility of an homogeneous solution or a global philosophy. This restrain proponents to local philosophies that arrives at the same place, improvisation. You struggled with my solution because it induces unwanted meta. 

At the current stage meta is the other problem that trivializes content, a well known illness of many frames. The structural complexity of this problem makes hard to predict design decisions that reverts on downgrades due to the adverse results. Why this happen? DE can't measure outcomes unless EVERY frame does the same damage despite the apparel of the ability, weapon, skill tree or mods in the load out. The probabilistic space of possible behaviors of the player becomes hectic and even novel due to the unusual combination of these systems (mods, riven rolls, tenno skill tree, weapons, actives and passives in a a war frame, war frame synergy). 

DE classified powers under the following parameters: 

1. Perception.

2. Upgrade or Downgrade (Buff or Debuff)

3. Damage. 

4. Mobility. 

Under these parameters you can classify almost all the frames but again we deal with the issue of invisibility, a well known issue that many frames had like Valkyr and Limbo. If a philosophy of balancing is applied then there is no homogeneous parameter that characterize all these families to an acceptable balance. We have the choice of a cheap solution that postpone the CACE problem (change anything, change everything) or you have the dictatorial condemnation of a downgrade that happens when a frame becomes popular. This system was devised this way because it causes some 'ill' behavior that motivates a 'stick and carrot' device by a programmed obsolescence. 

There is NO solution to the problem if the mechanics of the game continues adding new War Frames every there months or at least two frames per year. Overwatch is a game that goes over long periods of play testing when a new character is introduced to the repertoire. Why this happen? The mere existence of a new character distorts the overall balance of the repertoire minus the new character. Cheap solutions buys time, time that DE needs adjusting the environment for all the frames. What is this environment? The enemy types, the enemy A.I., the enemy load out, the level architecture, the bosses or particular characters and the occurrences. 

 

Quote

It isnt lots of Warframes that need to be balanced, it's 5 frames, Saryn, Volt, Enox, Frost and Mesa. Inaros can be included aswell since he has unhealthy survivability without needing abilities at all. Outside of that CC needs to be balanced, which is solved by something similar to arbi drones.

If some frames are downgraded, other frames will automatically becomes meta. Hence the cycle repeats. If you focus your design resources on the game assets then you postpone the problem because the game itself shows quality in the engagements, a rich architecture in the stages, unexpected encounter with tougher enemies and environmental hazards or situation on certain levels. A good example are the levels in Lua or the levels in the gas giant Jupiter. 

https://www.warframe.com/game/warframes

Is it possible to organize 28 prime War Frames and 42 non prime frames under the same umbrella? If we go through the policy of case particularity, can we secure a fair balance for the rest of the War Frame without the issue of inducing unexpected meta on other War Frames. 

This problem deals with a "simple nature", a nature that is way too "elementary". Our behavior. We work under the principle of the superlative or power creeping. We work on the principle of "the principle of least work". We work on the principle of the "shortest distance". Humans tend to 'optimize' or mini/max. And there is another problem in our nature, we tend to cheat. This is why many design rules reduces to the principle of 'keep it simple and stupid'. A single variable can create cascades of unexpected consequences over other variables because all the variables are connected. 

Our only solution is the gradient approach. We augment or reduce intensities and parameters. This is actually what DE is doing, without success, for the last seven years. The problem passed the point of no return where DE prefers cheap solutions than deep remakes on the core game play. Every decision becomes a risk with liabilities and compromises. This happened throughout the last four releases of content. Now DE is more cautious releasing less content while they fix more performance issues in the game. 

Their only viable solution is our PREFERENCE not a scientific solution. Preferences are submerged in subjectivity and relativity.

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Adding nulli fields to larger parts of maps will not help to improve the A.I because it will just open up for a new 5 frame meta, nothing else. Anything that doesnt need to rely on powers will be used and nothing else. So you'll have a bunch of naturally tanky frame that go bam-bam or kaboom with their massive melee or AoE ranged weapons. The whole "heavier units will block the shield unit" is just wishfull thinking. How will they block a bullet jumping frame with a gun? They wont.

At this point we never faced a structured A.I. All they do is to behave like lemmings waiting for their decimation by our weapons and war frames. We haven't seen strict formations, we haven't seen speed in their reactions, we haven't seen behaviors where all the enemies are called back as an act of DPS focusing. We haven't seen the enemy coordinate themselves for effective attacks. We haven't seen enemies that preserves their own life. We haven't seen enemies that values their position. We haven't seen enemies selecting preferred weapon for maximum damage in their own restricted arsenal. Have you seen those? We haven't seen enemies that prioritize War Frames due to their damage level or level of invulnerability. 

We are making suppositions on the premise that War Frames will halt all form of A.I. without even trying a fair implementation of it. Pablo is weaseling out the problem by blaming the nature of the frames. His team never tried smarter A.I. His team never tried formations of enemy tiers. We can't discard a solution if the solution is not tried first. DE must work in the A.I because their A.I. sucks duodenum hard. That is a fact. 

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You clearly dont get the part I wanted added from the bursa and demos, that part completely swooshed over your head or you have no real experience with those mobs. What I wanted from them, which I also said, was their specific nullification mechanic, we arent talking about any old bursa here, we are talking about the denial bursa specifically. Their higher eHP matters since if you dont kill them quick they will strip your buffs, same deal with demolysts. Building further on that mechanic would be good, it wouldnt have to be durable unit that gets this, it could be a fast unit that requires something specific to take them down so they can be an interuptive part of the gameplay.

Then you support my argument. Enemies need a priority. I always prioritize taking down dangerous targets like those while the rest keeps doing mild damage. This is the exact philosophy of Doom Eternal. 

Read the board. This was discussed previously. 

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Regarding the "Again wrong". Read what I said regarding a new 5 frame meta and bullet jumps. No matter what A.I they wont counter that no matter how much they squat inside a massive null field. Reason we use AoE frames now is because it is the most efficient. Lock those and every other skill down with massive null field areas and you'll just see a shift to the next most efficient thing. Going for an all the eggs in one basket solution here wont work. The penalties need to be spread out between the mobs so one frame or frame type wont be the solution. Hence why null is bad since it embodies the whole all eggs in one basket approach.

A supposition. 

First engineers build the bridge then they test it. If engineers restraint themselves of building the bridge then they would not know what solutions are feasible and which ones are not. This is a principle in science 'you learn while you do.' 

 

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And if you said exactly that, then why did you snow in on lazy approach number #1 (null fields) just a few pages later? All I've seen you talk about is imaginary "nullifiers in formation" and now this idea of covering massive areas instead with null fields. Where and what exactly did you say regarding sometime that involved a more diverse approach?

Few pages ago. You do a lot of selective reading. Null fields and larger null spheres is one component of the solution, not the solution. 

 

 

Edited May 28, 2020 by Felsagger

[Felsagger]

42 minutes ago, Zimzala said:

We know they don't ignore it.

YOU WISH!!! 

42 minutes ago, Zimzala said:

It's very sad IMO to think that DE is not already aware of the ideas presented here and that they are not also aware of the issues they face.

They will be fully aware when their bank account receives a hit. 

42 minutes ago, Zimzala said:

 

Just because DE does not do what loud forum posters want and say they did for proof, does not mean they don't incorporate the feedback, nor does it mean they did not already have the idea in the pipeline, or that perhpas they were even inspired by something here.

I don't want them to do what I want. NEVER. 

At least I want them take decisions based on facts, science, proof, test playing, consensus and polls.I don't care if the outcome doesn't cater my preferences. I ask for quality in content. 

49 minutes ago, Zimzala said:

 

It's sad to me to think otherwise as it is terribly belittling of a successful game company to do so, IMO, it's a destructively negative outlook.

Does that matter? 

Is DE successful? Is it as successful like Guerrilla games? Is it as successful like Santa Monica Studio? 

[844448]

7 hours ago, Corvid said:

As I've said before, we want Warframe to be Warframe, not "Mindless 1-button AOE Spam: The Game". Because believe it or not, Warframe wasn't always this unbalanced.

Quite sure this is already a thing even back in 2014 before miasma change back then when my neighbor told me that reducing miasma duration increases total damage dealt than making it longer or spore spam on your molt and kill everything

[844448]

6 hours ago, Aadi880 said:

The real problem is sustainability. DE wants to achieve sustainability (every private or public or third sector organization does), being able to make content whilst the players are enjoying existing ones. The longer player stays, the more profits DE can get to continue development, cycle continues, DE's happy, player's happy.

But if you complete the content in a single day (extreme example, realistically, its like a week), what will DE do? They have to force players to wait weeks for the next update. Players get bored, or find themselves nothing to do, and takes a break. Player retention has failed. DE makes less money. DE does not want to make their playerbase wait. (Trust me, no developer likes it when their customers are forced to wait). Less money results in less capital on development, and content gets rushed, comes out buggy. The vicious cycle repeats.

This has already happened. Failure of the Old Blood update caused another failure in the Rising Tide update, which carried on to the Empyrean update. Notice playtime on ALL of these was increased by giving extreme costs (Rising Tide), or giving bullet sponges (Empyrean), or by giving wait times (Rising Tide), or by using RNG (Kuva lich)

I bet DE realized this, and started revisits, which promptly broke the cycle. And started balance passes.

Unbalanced content is not sustainable, and cannot keep DE to continue developing warframe. DE has said so themselves, they want to find a middle ground, not make it unbalanced.

DE NEEDS you to keep playing, in fact, I'm willing to bet this was one of the reasons to included kuva lich and railjack in nightwave, not just to replace alerts, but make players play content which they otherwise wouldn't. 

And balanced is somehow sustainable? Tell me, what else in those balanced games if not random drops with random stats in it because even in a balanced game you will see people clearing all content in a week or less, then complain nothing to do in that game because they get all things in said content and then what? Busywork : The Game

Funny thing is, extreme cost, bullet sponges, wait times and RNG are used by other games and they get praise and for some reason warframe is bad for having it? Funny that people want warframe to be like other games while being outlier to not use the basic "sustainable" trick other games use

[Felsagger]

4 hours ago, (XB1)ShonFr0st said:

Your overall point is a pretty interesting take on the other side of the discussion, but still there is numerical evidence that a sizable portion of the community cares about challenge and balance. By that no one means souls-like difficulty or WoW-like balance, but simply a combat experience in which player input matters, even if slightly, instead of having your build in charge of the entirety of gameplay, with you pressing a single button every once in a while. Warframe offers few ways to reward the player intrinsically, through its gameplay and through the choices players make in combat. That comes from the twofold issue of having a limited portion of the roster able to totally trivialize enemies with the press of a button, and the lack of units that provide such opportunities for skillful, rewarding play (just Nox with his headshot vulnerability, and maybe nullifiers with their shootable drone), that allow you to satisfyingly dominate enemies through competence and experience. I'd argue that moving towards solving these two issues would largely improve the experience, while removing nothing from the power fantasy. It's alright to prioritize the latter, but DE shouldn't pander exclusively to those players that want everything dead instantly with no effort whatsoever. That might be extremely enjoyable to a select few, but in the bigger picture it just hurts player retention by incentivizing fast, grind-heavy missions, one-sided public sessions in which the meta dominates, cheap enemy mechanics, and ultimately, unsatisfying, boring combat.

 

A well placed observation. 

We should continue talking considering this. The magma or kernel of the game is the middle ground between the extremes of understanding the game and being a seasoned player that makes everything easy. The retention of the player is the business of DE and this game. Experts takes few runs doing long endurance for everything. They trivialize their experience while their willingness to stay reduces. 

The encounters, activities and quality in the engagement shows the path for a fair solution. Right now the game is in the red loosing a lot of payers. I've seen in my PS4 community a massive reduction of players. All of them are playing other games. I asked few of them why the left. Their answer is quite interesting. Many say, lack of content. Others talk about lack of substantial challenge and others simply reply that they are waiting for other games. 

DE seems to be dealing with an illness they provoked during the years. It was unattended. That agenda is the engagement with the enemy and how satisfying such experience is. Right now the game is in an awful state. This requires a full working force addressing the issue. Is either that or War Frame 2. At this point I perceive DE struggling few more years. Maybe After MR 30 they will be done taking a hiatus. If the game makes a good transition on the PS5 and Xbox Series X probably we will get three more years. A ten year mark is reasonable. 

 

[(PSN)sweatshawp]

2 hours ago, 844448 said:

And balanced is somehow sustainable? Tell me, what else in those balanced games if not random drops with random stats in it because even in a balanced game you will see people clearing all content in a week or less, then complain nothing to do in that game because they get all things in said content and then what? Busywork : The Game

Funny thing is, extreme cost, bullet sponges, wait times and RNG are used by other games and they get praise and for some reason warframe is bad for having it? Funny that people want warframe to be like other games while being outlier to not use the basic "sustainable" trick other games use

In theory yes. Balance in a sense of let’s say brining down saryns nuking abilitiy to hone it in and buffing other frames in accordance will allow for more variety. As much as most players claim to dislike the Meta looking at the most played frames it seems as if they enjoy it quite a lot. In theory brining such dominate top tier weapons and frames in Line with the rest of the game Allows for other items when if buffed or if not so utterly outclassed by an item a set of items of another item by a large margin can again result in more playtime of other things, because after all the higher tiers aren’t as dominant. While it’s true the best is still going to be the best of x y and z regardless. Balancing frames or weapons and brining those  tiers and junk into line  dosent really have a negative impact other then the upset “whining” players who are “complaining” that their poor “insert something here” can’t nuke a room  or aoe a small task force.

as far as balancing gameplay. Imo I think more engaging content for the masses could result in more enjoyment. They’ve stated more intrinsic rewards ( not intrinsics from RJ 😠 ) but we’ve yet to really see such. And I don’t think it really can be done at a very well level until we talk about the current level of content in game. It’s too easy. And whether it be opt in challenge or opt in difficulty  that test something other then a players ability to add serration or power str to a build. Or removing the items we worked so hard to get.(mind you the objective of this game is to collect these items to get as strong as possible)  would be great for sustainability. 

Well let’s look at warframes track history and it’s very let’s say odd playerbase. 

Players don’t like bullet sponges cause that’s most if all they’ve added to try to simulate difficulty because for the longest they neglected balance. 

Look at wolf 

old liches 

bosses (invincibility phase dmg invisiphase dmg repeat )

and more.  We bypass damage numbers that are insanse so they felt like enemy’s with high dr and health or armor pools would be a good counter. 

It is in theory but what else is there? Due to the amount of damage we due it’s hard to create much else and players would like something other than a bullet sponge to create a pseudo challege. Especially when we ourself are sponges as well.

people complain about rng on almost every game. (Just today I lost my tri rings on bdo even though I had a 80% enchantment chance on both of them. Don’t get me started about last weeks failed TET roulette I’m still recovering from chronic rage) but with warframe there is little engagement to begin with to many. With that being said if you’re not really engaged you see warframe as just rng grind kill repeat. And in most cases gamers hate rng. Heck everyone almost does

you mentioned extreme cost to which surprisingly I am against. But I do believe the energy economy does need to be looked at again. As we literally have unlimited energy at our finger tips. And while it’s fun for a bit. It just feels like your playing with cheats. While you don’t have to operater zen spam. You have energy pizzas which aren’t bad at all. But you have much much much much much much more ways to gain energy to go without it. So it just feels redundant to not use it.

but aye I don’t play the game right now or plan to again anytime soon this is just my view from a temporary out of commission Tenno 

[(XBOX)EPOSSTYLE]

We do not need to be nerfed...we need more nuanced tiers. De doesn't place enough energy into balance and logic across the board. They're in some odd place of wanting everyone to enjoy the content at once (Whiners inc. Strikes again). Pay your dues like everyone else,  sit down or play catch up. Contrary to popular belief everyone doesn't deserve a gold star! When everyone is, no one is. 

Rights of passage defines character in individuals. If u underplay that you wind up with unvetted fodder who can't play well, take the ball and leave...why? They haven't faced proper adversity to define themselves...hence politically incorrect, victimhood and crybabies abroad! 

Most wind up where they shouldn't be and complain at the end...why? Halfassed explanation of systems and meta. You just don't know how things work or if they can work...why? Mega under utilization of codex and targeted ID for finding what it is u want to know!

Hell just put and in game link to a specific website if your too lazy...something or rather but just try at least.

 

[(PSN)sweatshawp]

5 minutes ago, (XB1)EPOSSTYLE said:

We do not need to be nerfed...we need more nuanced tiers. De doesn't place enough energy into balance and logic across the board. They're in some odd place of wanting everyone to enjoy the content at once (Whiners inc. Strikes again). Pay your dues like everyone else,  sit down or play catch up. Contrary to popular belief everyone doesn't deserve a gold star! When everyone is, no one is. 

Rights of passage defines character in individuals. If u underplay that you wind up with unvetted fodder who can't play well, take the ball and leave...why? They haven't faced proper adversity to define themselves...hence politically incorrect, victimhood and crybabies abroad! 

Most wind up where they shouldn't be and complain at the end...why? Halfassed explanation of systems and meta. You just don't know how things work or if they can work...why? Mega under utilization of codex and targeted ID for finding what it is u want to know!

Hell just put and in game link to a specific website if your too lazy...something or rather but just try at least.

 

If we are trying to achieve proper balance we do indeed need to be nerfed.

assuming we are just complaining  or don’t know what we’re talking about because you disagree makes no sense 

Edited May 28, 2020 by (PS4)sweatshawp

[ShortCat]

10 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

Not sure this classes as a fact, given it's not possible to substantiate. You guess it will.

Honestly though, anyone who walks away from a video game because the game started to require more than 2 brain cells from them? Not really that big a loss imo.

In my opinion Warframe needs challenge as well as balance, however DE cannot just do it. This aspect of the game was neglected for years, while the power wheel spun faster and faster. As a result Warframe community is highly inhomogeneous, there are people who genuinely enjoy clicker like combat experience or gatcha like arsenal. Just take a look at the very first response.

Changing the game would mean losing those players. Happy and paying players. It would require balls of steel as well as a concrete vision in order to execute such drastic measures. Nobody in DE's upper management has those qualities.

Hard mode is all we can get.