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

[Marine027]

vor 4 Minuten schrieb (XB1)ALTBOULI:

I didnt find the game difficult myself, just needlessly grindy and long. Spending half a mission fire fighting, closing breaches and dealing with a ton of onboard invaders with huge amounts of health and armour wasnt fun and newer players without fully forma'd weapons, mods etc. That I had would have struggled for sure.

This so much, when people talk about challange here they basically want  the Saturn Six Wolf on every enemy, able ot hit them harder with big numbers, you not proove your skills and it is not challanging, just show taht you are able to mod right and often even use meta weapons.

Give good boss mechanics and things i need to interact with to take enemys down, make me able to use my envoirment as example, not some weak points like EIdolons only making certain weapons useful, or compelte ability immunity. Weak points can work tho like the glassmaker enmies now, only thing is they need ot be aoe immune i say or at least taka e far less damage of it.

Making you think to use your loadout more, use a mix of damage types and if primary is strong single shots i have a machine gun or beam as secondary or vice versa, something precise or fast for Nullifiers as example while other weapons deal with the rest, or Ignis as primary and strogn single target secondary for like Nox to destroy there helmets, etc. Nox are a good design in my eyes, as annyoign they can be.

[GPrime96]

7 hours ago, AbstractLemons said:

The kuva liches actually provide some challenge if you let them hi lvl 5 have you guys faced a toxin lick you have to actually watch for their hallowed ground like skill. I think bosses 

So I think they are already on the right track when it comes to liches design.

Would you say the same thing if you bring that kind of Lich into a Squad and being nuked by AOE of your Partners because of how Radiation is? Or the Defense Pod being one shotted.

Edited May 18, 2020 by GPrime96

[Midas]

18 minutes ago, (XB1)ALTBOULI said:

 

would still equate to a very minuscule amount of the player base. 

 

Minuscule imo not so much anymore. Those statistics need to be update, i'm seeing A LOT more players talking about it. 30 million players imo registered is another thing to consider. Not all those 30 million players play, heck, not even 100k people are on at the same time according to the steam charts.

I'll check tomorrow how the PC community is doing via squads etc...

Edited May 18, 2020 by Midas

[Shemarria]

word to the wise; NERFS ARE NEVER THE ANSWER.
Full stop.
That being said; having players have to THINK about how to complete a mission where life-support capsules unattended mean the grineer can contaminate them LOWERING your LS timer.
The unhealable damage to a frame by an enemy type...which requires you to hunt the offending unit down to be able to heal.
 

THAT works.  That isn't bullet sponging, that's making players think and plan.
 

THAT is "GOOD"
 

HARD NERFs to players and their gear are never good.  They should be DEAD last on any list.  Because it means when they are implemented; never mind the meta-1337 players... the "causal" gamer will howl (with good reason) that everything they have been working towards has been invalidated and made pointless.  THAT breeds resentment and rage.

DE, just stop it.

Pablo's on the right track here with some of his musings, I just hope the rest of the team (LOOKING AT YOU SCOTT), will stay away from the foam plastic darts.🤬

[Magus_Tahir]

The impression I got from the podcast was that Pablo considered the power fantasy to be part of the "special sauce" of Warframe, and that they as Dev's currently look for middle grounds with how they go about doing "nerfs" so to speak. I do not see them deviating from that standard of power fantasy as Steve has also mentioned that in other context during dev streams. 

In my opinion they should take what they have now, focus on integrating it together ergo less content islands and then save content islands types for the rogue like modes or Stalker mode make these types of content independent of the star chart similar to how derelict is off the beaten path. It would allow them to add variety without compromising whats in existance already or having to adjust 40+ frames which just isn't practical. 
 

In the end no matter what they do the players will always min/max to the path of least resistance and forge a meta. So long as power fantasy remains balance is improbable.

[CarrotSalad]

I wonder what Warframe would be like if all mission objectives and hackable objects were destructable by the players/warframes own weapons and abilities? It worked well on Goldeneye on the Nintendo 64.

• Clever enemy placement (setup posts in some tilesets specifically for snipers. with 100-200 metres+ range).
• Throw unpredictable targets into missions that effect the flow of battle. (In goldeneyes case that was scientists or civilians. hostages that discouraged spray and pray).
• Shoot gas pipes or fuel barrels that flood the mission with toxic gas or combustable fuel.
• Make use of things like Turning off the lights, adding fog or screen distortion effects. To hide the true location of enemies.
• Suppression fire alone can be effective.
• Security cameras that were much more functional.
• Objectives and hackable computer terminals being destructable by players own weapons.

I liked the Jupiter rework with all the trapdoors.

[Hypernaut1]

Maybe the devs can trick everyone by buffing enemies and weaker frames instead of nerfing OP frames. Would serve the same purpose. 

[(PSN)sweatshawp]

 

[akrid45]

Never understand people that think that just because we want some challenge means that we want warframe to become like dark souls. It's like do you even play other games? Like if u do play other games u should know that just because a game has challenge doesn't mean it's dark souls level of difficult 

Secondly, we won't get challenge from making the enemies stronger, smarter etc. Because of how this game has become so the only option they have is to make the gamemodes harder which we all know the community would still complain about and ask for nerf 

Edited May 18, 2020 by akrid45

[George_PPS]

Pablo should be fired. If this horrible idea is implemented in Warframe more rampantly, players will riot and many more will leave. 

[George_PPS]

19 minutes ago, Hypernaut1 said:

Maybe the devs can trick everyone by buffing enemies and weaker frames instead of nerfing OP frames. Would serve the same purpose. 

100% agree. This should be the way to go from the very beginning about “balancing” anything. Players can accept and even welcome harder enemies but will hate facing the same enemies with crippled gears and loadouts.

[z3us32610]

9 hours ago, Gabbynaru said:

People are still here and it's been over 6 years. If they truly get bored as you say, it takes a long freakin' time for it to manifest visibly. But I don't see it. As long as the game keeps being super fun, people will keep playing it and will keep returning to it. Not everything needs challenge, you know? There are many games out there that are meant for relaxation, and Warframe is and has been one of them for a long time. It should keep being like that.i

I feel that having a bit of both would be a good compromise. Power fantasy will always be a part of warframe. Pablo made that quite clear. I think the people looking for "challenge" actually want something that isn't so easy it makes them drowsy. Not necessarily challenging, just not boringly easy.

[akrid45]

Also we know how this community is 

Any slight inconvenience that a enemy would be able to do against a player the community start hating on it. That was made pretty clear when the elite shield lancer was added and people started complaining about it's impenetrable shield and occasional knockdown on it's very easy to dodge grenades, with things like "iT sLoWs dOwn tHe FloW oF GamEplAy" and stuff like that and the knockdown was remove pretty much removing the one thing that made the unit a slight threat 

And let's not forget about nullies 

So no even if DE added enemies to counter us the community would just complain and they would be nerfed 

Edited May 18, 2020 by akrid45

[RamonLLLL]

2 hours ago, akrid45 said:

Also we know how this community is 

Any slight inconvenience that a enemy would be able to do against a player the community start hating on it. That was made pretty clear when the elite shield lancer was added and people started complaining about it's impenetrable shield and occasional knockdown on it's very easy to dodge grenades, with things like "iT sLoWs dOwn tHe FloW oF GamEplAy" and stuff like that and the knockdown was remove pretty much removing the one thing that made the unit a slight threat 

And let's not forget about nullies 

So no even if DE added enemies to counter us the community would just complain and they would be nerfed 

Bingo. The community doesn't understand what the term "balance" is, they don't know what they really want but they are very certain what they DON'T want. Any slight changes to what they're used to and they'll charge in here, hands sweaty, breath heavy and rapidly typing away on their cheetos-crumbled keyboard how it DE inconvenienced their Dynasty Warriors fantasy headass that prevented them from compensating for something else.

Edited May 18, 2020 by RamonLeeYJ

[-BG-StormFighter117]

Let the Dev fix the game. He knows better than any of us.

Reread RamonLeeYJ's post above me because you likely didn't understand Ramon the first time. Maybe wait 5min to let it sink in too. Why? Because its the truth you can't handle.

Edited May 18, 2020 by -BG-StormFighter117

[ZarTham]

Nerf them to the ground.

[blazinvire]

The Nerf War again...

Starting to get PTSD.

"Nerf this one thing!"
"No, buff everything else so it's on par."
"I'm tired of killing everything in one hit."
"Well I don't want bullet sponges."
"Clearly the only option is one of two extremes."
"Buff Enemy AI!"
"Our abilities just turn off enemy AI or kill them instantly, we need to be nerfed."
"No! Buff everything else so it's on par."

The size of the numbers aren't the issue, it's the disparity between.
It doesn't matter that Chroma has a 4000% damage bonus, it just matters that it's 4000% more than everyone else.
Feel free to scale everything up to 3900% damage bonus.  But had you scaled just Chroma down to 100%, he'd be the only one needed changing, and the impact on the game as a whole would be exactly the same.

There's this thing called Time-To-Kill.  How long it takes to kill something, pretty simple.
If you deal 1 billion damage per second, and an enemy has 10 billion health, it'll take 10 seconds to kill them.
That's 10 seconds for them to do stuff like shoot their gun and use abilities, have a meaning impact on the game, provide content and engagement.
If the enemy deals 1 billion damage per second, and the player has 10 billion health, it'll take 10 seconds for them to kill you.
That's 10 seconds for you to save your own life, find cover, knock them over, use abilities and hit harder.
Just like that, you can estimate roughly how difficult a fight is going to be just by comparing TTK.
If TTK Player is lower than TTK Enemy, that means the fight requires work to survive.
If TTK Enemy is lower than TTK Player, that means the player has their power fantasy.

Now I'd like someone to try and estimate TTK variables when we have the ability to utterly prevent enemies from engaging with us, either because we're permanently invincible with no cracks in our armour, permanently invisible and enemies are utter buffoons and can't ever figure out where you are, permanently crowd-controlling them, or icing-on-the-cake: Endless Instant full-health heals.
It's quite literally impossible to threaten someone if their TTK is Infinite because you literally can't engage them, or the Window of Opportunity to kill them is less than 1 second before they've either completely restored all their health or they've already killed you.
Or how about, if one Warframe has 10 billion health and another Warframe has 1 billion health.  How do you challenge one and not crush the other?  Give them both 10 billion health!  Or both have 1 billion health.  Achieves literally the same result, the TTK disparity remains the same, you're able to customize an enemy to provide a challenge to both.

Keeping all of these things is going to require some seriously whack mechanics to try and bandaid your way around the Damage system to the point it's completely irrelevant, OR you can just fix the system so you have more than 0.0005 seconds to save your own life, and enemies have more than 0.005 seconds to do literally anything.
You don't even need the enemies to be alive for very long, just long enough for their impact to be felt, and you can keep your power fantasy of being a lawn mower.
And as long as players have an average TTK of around 5-10 seconds depending on defenses and abilities, people aren't going to need blisteringly overpowered things simply just to survive long enough to do ANYTHING.

[Sylonus]

It's a complicated subject, lack of -any- challenge does tend to lead to boredom, but challenge doesn't always have to be in the form of an enemy being dangerous or hard to kill, sometimes it can be a race against the clock, wading through lots of enemies, sometimes it can be a difficult enemy, or just solving a new puzzle the best way possible, discovering the meta, or learning it. Also not everyone necessarily craves challenge, I personally play for the power fantasy, optimization, and collection aspects, some play for fashion, or story, or any number of reasons, it's not that cut and dry that this is good or that is bad.

All we can do at the moment is vote with our posts, I personally think nerfs make me feel like I wasted time, rob me of fun, and I'd rather preserve my sense of power than any sense of challenge, but I think it would be foolish of me (or anyone) to claim that any choice here is objectively right or wrong. I wish the AoE weapon nerfs were reverted, the Catchmoon, Maining Strike, Zenistar, etc etc, but I realize there are those out there who would prefer Warframe Souls but, my guess is that they're in the minority though, and I wish they'd do more opinion gathering exercises (Like the informal survey they did.) about the direction of Warframe on subjects like these.

[DebrisFlow]

18 hours ago, Gabbynaru said:

People are still here and it's been over 6 years. If they truly get bored as you say, it takes a long freakin' time for it to manifest visibly. But I don't see it. As long as the game keeps being super fun, people will keep playing it and will keep returning to it.

I think a lot of these players that are remaining in the game after so long are doing this just because of sunk cost fallacy. They don't necessarly enjoy the game anymore, they are just in a psycological trap

Edited May 18, 2020 by DebrisFlow

[Corvid]

3 hours ago, Shemarria said:

word to the wise; NERFS ARE NEVER THE ANSWER.

Your "words to the wise" are the words of a fool. Nerfs are just as necessary as buffs when trying to balance.

[ShortCat]

@Jarriaganice post, thank you for the summary. It is refreshing to see/hear developers speak of their game. Unfortunately, I do not believe in those crocodile tears.

Discussed issue is as old as Warframe itself. When Pablo is talking about AI off switch, I have to think about Nova's MP, which exists since July 13th, 2013. DE created those problematic abilities and maneuvered themselves into present situation. All feedback on this matter has been effectively ignored for years. Words and following actions just do not match. When Steve humbly explained why Catchmoon received a nerf, I thought this could be a turning point. Month and a half later they release K: Nukor & K. Dramma, two additions which eclipse everything else by a mile, and then go even further beyond. Seems there is not only friction with the community.

Speaking of community. Being held hostage by a whiny and uneducated bunch is exactly what DE deserves. With all the devstreams and an incredibly active forum DE could not form a unified community. The very first response perfectly shows discrepancy within the player base. There are constant forum wars because players have their own visions of the game, as DE failed to create one for them. DE themselves have no final vision, how can they communicate how WF should be or ask for propper player feedback?
For some reason, Tweeter is a better source of information as well as a better platform for targeted feedback. Like Steve's survey. I learned about it from Shy's DevStream summary. Why?
Or "Khora bugfix". I do understand the change, I even agree with it. But where is the communication? Players are more willing to accept changes, if reasons behind them are properly explained and the direction towards the end product is made clear. At least, lately there are some attempts on explaination; end goal remains undefined though.
Even this topic belongs on a Devstream! That's what they are for.

My point is: nothing will change. Those interviews are a PR stunt to release steam within the community and gain some goodwill creddits. Target audience are players, who wish for an engaging and challenging experience, as those palyers are the loudest right now and require a pacifier. Power fantasy crowd is fine with the current situation. Community as a whole is extremely inhomogeneous and DE will never make a move to alienate a fraction of it, even if it means to create a better product.

[(XBOX)ALTBOULI]

4 hours ago, Midas said:

Minuscule imo not so much anymore. Those statistics need to be update, i'm seeing A LOT more players talking about it. 30 million players imo registered is another thing to consider. Not all those 30 million players play, heck, not even 100k people are on at the same time according to the steam charts.

I'll check tomorrow how the PC community is doing via squads etc...

Surely u understand the players u are seeing still only make up a minuscule amount of the player base?

[844448]

Ah yes, I think I missed something to add, in case of those who want difficulty, you may want to consider about our failure consequence

Whenever you fail a mission, you lose everything you get, only a few credits and exp gained as the consequence

Let's put it in simulation :

Let's say you played missions when the difficulty and challenge have been increased and you got those rare drops (condition overload, vengeful revenant, shedu parts, etc.), and because of one mistake, you failed these mission and now you're staring down your screen, seeing those drops disappear right in front of your eyes through multiple missions because of increased difficulty and challenge

Now, who's to blame for the failure other than yourself for not being able to do the mission? Is that what you want?

 

[Marvelous_A]

And sentient is dev's answer concerning this

[MonsterOfMyOwn]

Harder content will narrow the meta, being able to play anything is really relieving in waframe when you switch from other video games (Borderlands 3 endgame with less than half a dozen weapons useable in endgame while you have billions of different weapons ain't great tbh).

Also I don't want any cheese gameplay that screw your warframe powers and push AoE or high rof weapons "spray and pray" ain't fun : we already have nullifier spam when you play against corpus (or corrupted), or parasitic eximus spam when you play against infested, tbh past 1h in T3 / T4 defense / survival / arbitration against those two factions already lead to very specific gameplay.

The smart move DE did is disruption, in this game mode the demolyst are not totally immune but still hard to kill and not tedious bullet sponge, and you can actually fail to defend but have still have several attempts before losing.