Proposed Balance Changes and Discussion from a Founder on the Sidelines.

[SuSpence26]

I was a Founder way back when Excalibur Prime was still being offered. I've watched this game make beautiful leaps and improvements, as well as some mistakes. I've also seen these various systems put into place over time and it's a lot to take in. I've watched content creators of all sorts give their own take on where the game is and where it's heading and I've come to some conclusions of my own. But I've been out of the game watching it from the sidelines for a couple years now. It's concerning. I'm very curious to hear everyone's takes on some key aspects including but not limited to:

• How you feel about the current state of the game's systems (i.e. Warframes, Enemies, stats scaling, Damage, specific systems like Conclave and Liches, and the overall game, etc)
• How you feel they could be improved

Right now Warframe to me is like a person who you love but has been on a toxic path of habit and actions while rolling with a bad crowd and you have to step away to let them help themselves because it's just gotten so bad and toxic for you. You might still try to offer help where you can but at the end it comes down to them. So I know this type of post is usually futile in terms of devs noticing or considering, but I hope it spawns more discussion and outcry to more practical ideas of revamping the game's systems. Based on what I've been seeing and my own two cents, this is my take:

• All this stuff! Too much stuff and too much being added before the old is tended to. Stop adding brand new stuff with the exception of skins and cosmetics for a while, and look at the issues of the current framework. The changes I propose would mess up other current systems if implemented on their own, and thus would only work if improved side by side. This is why we have an issue right now where optimized players are cutting through lv 100+ enemies like never before. Enemy endurance scaling decreased, but our damage remains as high as ever. We have to start with eh fundamental basics that affect both players and enemy like status, durability and damage and then move on to systems that scale from those aspects like mod and ability reworks. Then you can finally move to specific systems like Railjack, Conclave or Liches that can be tweaked to the new fundamental landscape of warframe and enemy edurance/damage balance. BUCKLE UP IT'S GONNA BE A LONG ONE.
• EDIT: The beginning of this part was poorly thought. A better course would be to keep current new content pacing (seeing as, maybe it's not as chaotic as I thought at 2am), but conduct revisions at a more fundamental level akin to the enemy scaling changes. 

 

Damage: I'm not 100% sure on where enemy damage scaling lies, but I know our damage scaling as players is out of control with the new enemy endurance scaling changes on top of our own survival tweaks and innate ways to prevent and reduce enemy damage as well as accuracy. We need some degree of rewarded power for optimization that feels ridiculous at most levels but after a certain threshold there needs to be a return of urgency from areas besides endless survival missions. Maybe you can slice through lv 80s on the star chart, but 100% is where you start to notice a fall off with optimization, but it's manageable, with the proceeding levels only very slightly more durable and lethal so that a lv 100 survival can feasibly carry out over an average number of waves. Actual in depth number scaling over X levels and such is not my forte, but maybe the changes I propose can be used as the foundation on how to tweak said scaling. 

• Physical Damage: Every weapon in game now only has one to two innate physical damage. Some physical damage mods now add the ability to proc a secondary physical damage status when the primary status proc occurs, change the physical damage type altogether, or both. Melee stances, similar to now, have the ability to deal a different physical damage type through certain combos and will play a pivotal role in weather it can deal only slash or both slash and puncture damage. Because of these changes, each physical damage type now deals +25% damage against any one health, armor or shield class and neutral to the other two before them enemy's natural damage reduction kicks in. A Puncture weapon will deal +25% damage against Alloy and Ferrite as well as Robotics and Machinery. This makes physical damage scale across factions, unlike elements which have specific niches against certain faction stat classes. Some mods increase "Base Physical Status". In exchange for this universal utility, there is no way to induce physical status on a target but most mods that add physical status will increase base weapon damage anyway. 
  • Slash: +25% damage vs enemy health. (Cloned Flesh, Flesh, Infested Flesh)
  • Puncture: +25% damage vs enemy armor. (Ferrite/Alloy Armor, Machinery, Robotic) 
  • Impact: +25% vs enemy shields. (Shields, Proto Shields)

 

• Elemental Damage: The damage bonuses against specific enemy stat classes is still there, but now they are additive to the primary physical damage type dealt. This is because a mod that gives an Element no longer gives its own separate X amount of damage but instead adds its own efficiencies and deficiencies to the physical damage with its own separate status chance based on the weapons's base physical status chance noted as "Elemental Status" vs "Physical Status". You gain additional efficiencies toward some stat classes as well as additional efficiency against very specific stat types of certain classes at the expense of adding weakness or eliminating a previous efficiency. Enemies that are immune to status effects will still suffer the increased damage if the elements are effective toward their stat class. I.e. an armored status immune target cannot have its damage reduced, but it will still take 25% more damage from a puncture weapon.
  • Example: A 100 damage slash melee weapon with a base 25% physical status chance and a fever strike mod (now only costing 7 capacity and primed is replaced with Primed Virulent Scourge) would deal +25% damage vs Cloned Flesh (Slash) and neutral damage vs Ferrite Armor (-25% Slash +25%Toxin) but -25% vs Alloy (Toxin) with a 25% chance to proc the Toxin status effect.
  • Combining and Separating Elements: Combined elements would provide unique efficiencies and deficiencies across a broader spectrum to a higher potential damage and higher impacting status effects capacity compared to a single element at the expense of mod capacity and space, pretty much like now. However, putting a non element mod between two elements separates the two and putting three together acts as it does now with forming a combined element and then a single third element. This has an effect on how elemental status chance works and will be discussed later.

Status: As previously implied, status chance is now divided into physical and element status chances with their own separately displayed parameters. I.e. A slash weapon with fever strike would display a "Slash Chance" and "Toxin Chance" parameters. Status mods will now have several distinctions including mods that increase both types of status chances, all physical status chances specifically, all element status chances specifically, a specific physical status chance, and/or a specific element status chance.

• Status Chance Combo Examples: The specific element ones in particular will combine as long as the two elements are part of the same combined element. I.e. a 20% base Toxin chance combined with a "+50% Base Electric" mod becomes a 30% Corrosive chance. However, a 20% base Slash status weapon with separated "+50% Base Heat" and "+50% Base Toxin" mods now has 20% Slash chance, 30% Heat chance and 30% Toxin chance. The same two example mods combined would result in a 20% Slash and 40% Gas chance. The previous combination plus a plain "+Heat" mod now has 20% Slash, 40% Gas and 20% Heat. You get the point. These parameters combine their respective damage buffs and debuffs simultaneously, meaning stacking too many random elements collides with trying to be effective toward a specific faction, but combining very specific elements can bring your damage to absurd heights toward your specified targets. And you can get many potential status effects to proc at the expense of modding space. 

 

• Physical Status Effects: Only changed effects are listed.
  • Impact: EDIT 5/22
    • Vs Enemy: Stagger now has a 1 second cooldown. This mean the target wont "dance" as much while still allowing the addition of more procs toward the Parazon finisher chance. Said 10% Parazon chance is now 2x (20%) on a headshot proc and 2.5x (25%) for a heavy melee, warframe ability or charged shot. This means good aim and heavier blows are rewarded with a quicker finisher window in general but also guaranteed in half to a fourth of the procs. Also, since some heavy melee attacks and the like usually has some sort of guaranteed proc, you can combine a non-Impact weapon with a mod that unlocks Impact procs. Works best on heavier foes who would otherwise be standing after multiple procs. Not sure in terms of Bosses or what would be done to us players, but it's a start.
  • Puncture: EDIT 5/22
    • Vs Enemy: Now has +1 punch through on proc and also leaves a weakpoint similar but visually different to Banshee's Sonar at the area hit on a proc for 5 seconds that allows all damage dealt to it to ignore armor reduction (Not to be mistaken with armor class. like Alloy and Robotics) in addition to the stacking damage debuff maxed at 75% for 10 stacks. Additional procs in a short period will simply reapply a new weakpoint on where the subsequent proc was applied, meaning even weapons that deal puncture points in a chaotic fashion leave multiple angles to deal the increased damage. The punch through on a proc also means it could proc on multiple targets that are lined up properly.

 

• Elemental Status Effects:Only changed effects are listed. ADDED 5/22
  • Gas:
    • Vs Enemy: Additional procs now also decrease enemy accuracy by current Blast's scaling up to 75% at 10 stacks. Gas as it is now is pretty underwhelming compared to other damage focused status effects. The added utility gives it a niche utility while also having its own innate effectiveness against its enemy stat classes. With my proposed system it would be possible to combine Gas and Viral procs on the same weapon.
    • Vs Player: Now also lowers accuracy by 30% for 6 seconds.
  • Blast:
    • Vs Enemy: Target is knocked back and also knocks down enemies within a ? meter radius of the affected target leaving them vulnerable to finishers. The dreaded "dance" of irremovable Impact is kicked up a notch on the more optional Blast status where it is more intentional and controllable with status chance augmentation. 
    • Vs Player: Stagger for 1 second.

ADDED 5/22

That's all I got for right now. But I look forward to seeing where the discussion could go, and I'm open to suggestions (not that they're gonna make it to the devs, but it helps give me more perspective).

 

 

 

Edited May 22, 2020 by SuSpence26
Continuation and Tweaks

[RamonLLLL]

Bruh, from Founder to Founder I will tell you that people here will murder criticize you for further suggesting changes to the "balance" and the damage system because it is so deeply rooted in the mechanics there's no way it will not be met with backlash from mildly inconvenienced minmaxers

Edited May 22, 2020 by RamonLeeYJ

[SuSpence26]

9 minutes ago, (XB1)TyeGoo said:

I already express my feelings after reading "drop everything but cosmetics and fixes".

After 5 years of actively playing with mission time of almost 5k hours, cosmetics are the most redundant thing in this game. Basically it will die if they do as you told.

They're already revising, and the last updates, especially this year have addressed half a decade old issues. Which is a great thing. But dropping everything to revise is NOT the way to go.

--

I'd say to de to continue what they're doing right now. Only 1 to 2 frames a year, a couple weapons, maybe a quest (like the upcoming) and revise, revise, revise, revise. (No cosmetic spam though, it's irrelevant after I own hundreds of armors, syandanas and skins.

I actually have to halve agree here. I am still working on the post, but my though process on the "drop everything" part was porrly thought. Their new content pacing maybe isnt as bad as it seems. But Id still say  revisions at a more fundamental level akin to what they did with enemy scaling would un-clutter and make room to streamline a lot of systems imo.

[JackHargreav]

44 minutes ago, SuSpence26 said:

• How you feel about the current state of the game's systems (i.e. Warframes, Enemies, stats scaling, Damage, specific systems like Conclave and Liches, and the overall game, etc)
• How you feel they could be improved

In general everything is fine.

Except status. Because of enemies that are immune to status effects. It just limits weapon choice and variety.

[anarchy753]

Personally I would like impact and puncture to be much more relevant. Though I don't think this happens by limiting weapons to one damage type only. Diversity should come from damage types being rewarding to use in different ways rather than "right well it's a grineer mission, I HAVE to use puncture to do S#&$." This is exemplified by the highly powerful expel/cleanse/bane/smite mods, which are used by nobody because people simply don't enjoy having to adjust their loadout on a mission to mission basis just for different factions.

Also even in your concept, impact is the turd in the corner next to slash, which affects all factions heavily, and puncture which is at least somewhat useful vs corpus as well as grineer. That's not balanced if slash is still head and shoulders above everything else.

 

For Liches I personally hope they incorporate them better.

First, remove larvalings from basic missions so new players can't accidentally set an endgame enemy on themselves. Make a mission like "hunt a kuva larvaling" to spawn them, maybe make it follow the Kuva Fortress nodes around like siphons.

Then make liches present in all missions on the nodes/planets they infect. Start them at maybe base level +10, and scale them up to level 100 at a rank 5 lich. This only takes effect when a player with a current lich is hosting the node, but can affect nightmares, invasions, siphons, fissures, anything which occurs on an occupied node.

Lastly, greatly improve rewards for attacking a lich, so as to encourage facing the harder enemies/missions over leaving them at level 1 for extended periods of time.

[BitingTiger]

3 hours ago, SuSpence26 said:

• How you feel about the current state of the game's systems (i.e. Warframes, Enemies, stats scaling, Damage, specific systems like Conclave and Liches, and the overall game, etc)
• How you feel they could be improved

I won't go into too much detail about Warframes issues as it's been beaten to death and buried by a lot of content creators that don't deserve to criticize Warframe before they reëvaluate themselves.

Warframe has fundemental issues both for new and old players but allow me to break that down from both these sides:

New Players:
New players are the bread and butter of Warframe right now, they can on their own bring back Warframe to the position it once had if the experience they get is worthwhile to invest time in and teaches them the fundementals.
This teaching is the biggest issue with new players however, When a new player is done with Vor's prize (the questline you follow to get your liset operational and get the piece of virus vor put on you off your warframe their question will be "what now?". They've just been put into a ship with systems they just barely scraped the surface off, a star chart that doesn't have a clear goal and worst of all a very minute understanding of the world they are in.
Hand holding in games is not okay and absolutely frustrating, but the same can be said about throwing the player into a pit of snakes with a twig and a rock and telling them to just figure it out. This frustration is the reason many new accounts are stagnant around mastery 3 to 5 since there's no clear incentive to continue playing as it all just seems like it's constantly the same.

I'd fix this with a change to the "Vor's prize" questline where after you kill Vor you'd find the person that was actually pulling the strings. A level 50 boss that's in a solo mission who will kill the player regardless what he does, this boss' goal isn't to kill the tenno race but find a worthy fight. Thus this boss would start a new quest where the boss will taunt the player from time to time but wait in Phobos for the player to reach him to see the player at it's peak. The strength of a Tenno against the most power hungry Grineer. This boss would have a 100% chance to drop the War blueprint. Why the War you ask? because it's a very strong sword. I remember back when i completed 'the second dream' the Broken War sword was the strongest weapon i had at the time. It would be a great show of how this Grineer would be since he's using War to fight while drowning out Hunhow's voice out of it.

 

Old Players:
This one isn't as big a text as the previous one but it's still very important. Old players are starting to get bored of the game. There's not much to do besides leveling gear since most new content is an isolated resource island. Gara for example can only be farmed in PoE, so can Revenant. Wisp who drops from the Ropalolyst can only be farmed in Corpus tile-sets and not even all of them. Garuda can only be farmed in Fortuna, same as Hyldrin. There's too many separate parts that try to be a complete package that it's not worth the time to invest in any of them. And even if you do invest time in it, once you farmed the frames and weapons there's not much reason to go back. DE just stop with the isolated farming islands and actually make something that benefits the entire game not a small percent of it.

 

Now let me go to other issues i have with Warframe as a whole. Keep in mind these are my personal gripes and they might not be an issue for you.

Cetus and Fortuna Standing:
I absolutely hate this part. Who thought it was a good idea to put a cap on standing based on mastery? I as a mastery 18 player can only gain 19K standing per day, when the 2nd last rank up needs 99K STANDING. What must that feel like for mastery 5 players? 6K standing daily? Is DE out of their mind? Why does this standing have a cap of 19K  for mastery 18 when Focus farming has a cap of 330K????

Forma, reactors and catalysts:
We can all agree that Forma, Reactors and Catalysts are the most important upgrades you can have, they allow you to optimize your weapons, frames, sentinels, kavats and a whole lot more. So why are they that frustrating to get? Relic missions are a pain, not because they don't give you something you can use. Quite the opposite but because you have a higher chance of getting a prime piece than a forma. And even then you have to craft them with a daylong wait or you could... you know pay for plat and rush it.

Plat forcing:
The last one allowed me to go right into this one. DE is forcing us to still pay plat for things that don't make any sense anymore or never did.
Old players already have little to do so why does a warframe still have a 3 day build time? when you had to wait at least another day to build the parts of the frame themselves. Plat being tradeable isn't an excuse for practices like this. You're still spending plat, you're just spending someone else's plat. Don't get me wrong here, i've thrown my fair share of money towards Warframe myself. But designs like this are not alluring in the slightest. Again alluding to new players since they're the ones who don't have the skins they want yet, when they go into the arsenal and want to change the appearance of their frame they are met with Plat prizes everywhere (or ofc steam's prizes for the player designed stuff). Syandana's cost plat, armors cost plat, skins and helmets cost plat even the basic color palette costs plat to fully unlock. The new player only gets 1 ROW OF COLORS to change up their warframe.
I've known many people who get into Warframe, see the cosmetic prices and just go "oh so this is a game that scratches for every penny it can get from you". 

 

3 hours ago, SuSpence26 said:

Stop adding brand new stuff with the exception of skins and cosmetics for a while, and look at the issues of the current framework.

I can't agree with you on this one, mainly because if only skins and cosmetics get added the content drought that already exists will become even more apparent and deadly.
I'd more just divide it up into two teams. One handles reworking and balancing together with fixing the framework while the other team focuses on new content like Warframes, weapons, quests, etc.

 

Let me end this on a good note though:
I love Warframe, and so do you for coming here on the forums. I don't criticize what i don't like or care about. I want to see this game rise up again and be the positive game it once was. But before that it needs some massive changes.

If there are things you disagree with please by all means quote me, i'd love to talk with you about it

Edited May 22, 2020 by BitingTiger

[(NSW)Evilpricetag]

3 hours ago, (XB1)TyeGoo said:

I already express my feelings after reading "drop everything but cosmetics and fixes".

After 5 years of actively playing with mission time of almost 5k hours, cosmetics are the most redundant thing in this game. Basically it will die if they do as you told.

They're already revising, and the last updates, especially this year have addressed half a decade old issues. Which is a great thing. But dropping everything to revise is NOT the way to go.

--

I'd say to de to continue what they're doing right now. Only 1 to 2 frames a year, a couple weapons, maybe a quest (like the upcoming) and revise, revise, revise, revise. (No cosmetic spam though, it's irrelevant after I own hundreds of armors, syandanas and skins.

I've been a pretty big money whale in Warframe I've gotten the impression that a 100 new player spending $5-10 on things is more important than the old timers still buying every PA, while still trying to pull us whales in...

Rivens are the only thing that can really convince my plat to vanish, a few Deluxe skins maybe.. so yeah our 3 month PA really can buy out the market eventually, but low value impulse buyers are still the biggest monetary investors.

But based on their value now they must be living like kings right? Why so many cosmetics? I wonder how much % the Chinese investors are taking in.

[(XBOX)Cram Duahcim]

3 hours ago, (XB1)TyeGoo said:

 

They're already revising, and the last updates, especially this year have addressed half a decade old issues. Which is a great thing. But dropping everything to revise is NOT the way to go.

Considering that they are working from home, and will be for quite a while still, it's the way it has to be. They cant do very much other then work on the things that are either deep in development before working from home, or revisit/revise things on the things they can. 

Its not that theyve dropped everything on purpose but it's the fact that they dont have full access to everything they need to do the job. 

[SuSpence26]

5 hours ago, BitingTiger said:

New Players:
New players are the bread and butter of Warframe right now, they can on their own bring back Warframe to the position it once had if the experience they get is worthwhile to invest time in and teaches them the fundementals.
This teaching is the biggest issue with new players however, When a new player is done with Vor's prize (the questline you follow to get your liset operational and get the piece of virus vor put on you off your warframe their question will be "what now?". They've just been put into a ship with systems they just barely scraped the surface off, a star chart that doesn't have a clear goal and worst of all a very minute understanding of the world they are in.
Hand holding in games is not okay and absolutely frustrating, but the same can be said about throwing the player into a pit of snakes with a twig and a rock and telling them to just figure it out. This frustration is the reason many new accounts are stagnant around mastery 3 to 5 since there's no clear incentive to continue playing as it all just seems like it's constantly the same.

This! You have other great points in your post but I wanted to focus here. The quest systems needs to have a more guided progression. After Vor's Prize there should be a very obvious objective to progress through the charts but then you can still have quests that unlock at certain intervals that act as side-quests such as the Howl of the Kubrow or the quests that unlock Warframes. Said quests could also be boosted in quality to have more story telling. Not quite hand holding, but it at least gives you a direction as a new player on top of some other tasks to delve into.

I also liked your mention of a sort of "Big Bad" that taunts you at the beginning of and through your journey through the star chart. Maybe they could replace the Warframes you fight at the pylons that navigate you to the next planet, acting as that boss that gets progressively stronger as you fight him again and again. Doesn't even have to be Grineer, there's a lot of possibilities there.

[BitingTiger]

4 minutes ago, SuSpence26 said:

I also liked your mention of a sort of "Big Bad" that taunts you at the beginning of and through your journey through the star chart. Maybe they could replace the Warframes you fight at the pylons that navigate you to the next planet, acting as that boss that gets progressively stronger as you fight him again and again. Doesn't even have to be Grineer, there's a lot of possibilities there.

That sounds even better! I mentioned grineer as it's at that time the only faction you see but i'd be down for it to be Corpus or even an Orokin. 

[Galuf]

(I'm an excal prime founder as well)

I don't think that you can mix balance considerations and status/damage type considerations. You get the right concept, implement, then tune it. However everything has an opportunity cost, keep in mind that Warframe missions are player hosted and so an average PC should handle and broadcast the combat calculations to the others.

I understand your idea of spliting statuses chances per element, however it may create new issues:

- issue 1: streamlining. For example if a weapon is impact based it will be less good in terms of raw dps than slash and puncture, meaning it will suck ass except if there is content where looking to parazon finisher stuffs is meta

- issue 2: it creates too much calculations. I don't know if an average computer can handle that + everything else

My take is different. I think that all statuses should be equivalent in terms of dps added. For example slash puts a dot equals to the damage unmitigated why not making puncture apply a 10 stack debuff that gives extra 10% damage unmitigated per hit stackable 10 times, the fact that you have to work harder for damage is compensated by an enemy damage nerf. Why not making impact deal a burst of damage after a delay as well and making corpse shater ifif they die before the damage....(the stagger and dismembering from impact balance the fact that the whole damage bonus is delayed with a cc)

For elemental statuses, well radiation has 0 freaking impact in my games tbh, gas sucks now and on top of that the players use slash / viral / fire because it is the only viable combo between statuses atm(corrosive has its homes too). The main issue is that the game is not wholesome at all on this department. The first thing i'll make to balance all that would be to even the effects of combined effects against all factions, same from single elements. Maybe cold can not dot but it should increase damage taken somehow(maybe through exposure to other statuses) and honestly gas hasn't been playtested imho, it is just broken atm.

tl;dr; The game really pays its bad architecture in many ways and balance stuffs get shipped in pretty bad states. I sometimes miss the old rainbow way where everything got one shoted by hitscan gorgon and dies with all element effects on the body.

Edited May 22, 2020 by Galuf

[SuSpence26]

I would've never thought of the issue of calculation overload! That's an interesting take.

As for your status damage proposal So, you're looking at it more from a universal damage bonus that can be applied, but just through different means? Like with your slash vs puncture example where the delayed bonus adds up to the same as slash but it has added utility to compensate. 

Edited May 22, 2020 by SuSpence26

[Galuf]

il y a une heure, SuSpence26 a dit :

I would've never thought of the issue of calculation overload! That's an interesting take.

As for your status damage proposal So, you're looking at it more from a universal damage bonus that can be applied, but just through different means? Like with your slash vs puncture example where the delayed bonus adds up to the same as slash but it has added utility to compensate. 

Yes. At the end of the day, if we are nerdy enough to dip into minmaxing with damage types and status chances, there need to be an even field to play with or you end up all the ways with a kind of set in stone meta like we have now. Imho the overall value should be the same, trading immediacy for other benefits would be an elegant way of balancing things. Atm we toy with random effects and pick the ones that do not suck, basically we all do the same.

Edited May 22, 2020 by Galuf