'Balancing' Warframe

[Tekkarath]

Let me start by saying this: Certain frames and weapons absolutely need a nerf that goes without saying.  Whinge and cry all you like but if you can't tell when something is OP then you really shouldn't be allowed to weigh in on this subject.  That being said this is my personal belief:

Balancing Warframe only requires a more intelligent approach, once that appropriately would require a lot of hard work, but in the end I feel would be worth it *if* it could be accomplished.  Don't get me wrong, power creep can be dangerous, but handled appropriately I feel like we can accomplish harder (I.E. more fun) game play without needing to excessively buff enemies or nerf Frames/weapons.  The real ticket here is allowing the enemies to intelligently use the means already at their disposal more effectively.  At the moment the game consists of many enemies that are little more than road bumps, taking certain ones out might force you to slow down a bit, but in the end it's just a hiccup on your way to the end of the mission. Or worse, you simply ignore them because your objective is to reach the end of the map (I'm looking at you capture and rescue missions).

Now before I start running my mouth about changes, lets take a moment to recognize how many people would be upset that they couldn't simply fly through a capture/rescue mission for their void traces anymore.  Now promptly ignore those people, they do not want the game to be 'better' they want their dopamine fix when they break open a relic or sell some random garbage on the market for plat.  These kinds of people, while they do serve a purpose, will always settle into 'what's easiest'.  Once the dust settles they'll find the most min-maxed/meta way of doing things in this brave new world, so ignore any complaints they have.

I fully understand that rescue missions are the way they are because some people hate escort missions, AI can get stuck preventing completion of missions, and the default Warframe experience is 'gotta go fast'.  But I would much rather see a proper unit that has to actually make its way to the extraction, no teleporting, possibly with parts of the mission being defense-like where they lock down a door that leads towards extraction forcing you to defend the target while someone runs to some console somewhere to open the door.  It would also give certain frames a more meta role in rescue like Nova and Loki to move the rescue target over long distances or Volt to make them faster.

Similarly capture missions should be much more involved, a capture target shouldn't just be walking out in the open two maps over.  They should be guarded, maybe in a secure location.  Imagine a mission that is more Spy-like with multiple potential locations to check to find the capture target, if you can get in silently like a spy mission then you can possibly one shot them and get in and out quickly.  But if you set off the alarms on the way to them then they're swarmed with defenses, or possibly start bee-lining for an exit like they do now but with a group of enemies to defend them on the way.

That being said I'd like to take a look at a little something we've all looked over, that being the stats page at the end of a mission.  It could be an interesting factor in helping to create a bit more balance.  We've all played the 'whose better' game, where you glance at the stats occasionally, see someone has a slightly higher damage % than you and decide 'Oh looks like I need to kick it up a notch'.  It can be a fun little game to play on the side while you're mindlessly wiping enemies off the map.  But what if those stats had a hand in determining just how hard things are for you?  For example:

Is one player doing the majority % of damage?  Have most enemies focus on them, sending specialized units after them, bombard them with orbital strikes on outdoors maps, toss nullifier grenades at them to disrupt their abilities.  Hell maybe give Energy Leech/Parasitic eximus a special grenade or move to drain the entirety of a warframes energy in one move if hit.  If a nuke frame is killing most enemies then it should be their primary target, it's just common sense.

Majority of enemies being CCed? Activate some kind of experimental power damper that suppresses Warframe abilities for a minute or two then burns itself out or have enemies intelligently group up in nullifier bubbles, perhaps even allow bubbles to merge and become more powerful so that multiple nullifiers together make larger bubbles.  Different eximus units could change how the nullifier field works, an arctic eximus inside one could reinforce it to not shrink when shot and be stronger like the snow globe barrier they normally have, Arson eximus could expand the bubble with their blast, negating abilities in the blast range but 'popping' the bubble forcing it to regen as if it were taken away by gunfire, and so on.  Nullifiers should also be reworked to not do things like popping Limbo's bubble, only allowing enemies in the bubble to pass through it. With a change like this you could have an enemy in a nullifier orb walk into limbo's rift.  Toss a small nullifier grenade at the objective (effectively putting the objective back into real space) and presto, now all the enemies outside the Limbo bubble can shoot the objective again.  Of course, this would require enemies that were smart enough not to walk into a Limbo bubble in the first place. 

Now of course, enemies getting around CC would mostly involve nullifiers, but I feel like an argument could be made for certain enemy types having an innate resistance to Warframe abilities, such as decreased duration on Warframe abilities, or reduced damage from abilities.  It just makes sense that a Nox should be better at breaking its way out of Khora's chains or shaking off Volt's stun a bit faster than your average grunt, and it would change normal CC from 'stop everything and kill it' to 'stop the small frys so we can focus on the big problems'.

Harder enemies need to be more common, in more ways than one.  For one, why are all the really difficult corpus enemies only in Orb Vallis?  I've been knocked for a loop occasionally on some of the harder Vallis missions but meanwhile their ships and stations only have basic grunts and the occasional nullifier.  In the same vein, I know certain enemy types exist, and yet almost never see them unless I stay in a mission for thirty minutes.  More intelligent use of enemy types should go without saying, as well as improving on their anti-warframe strategies.  Obviously on the Corpus side most of their strategies would revolve around nullifying abilities and then taking the frame out while it can't defend itself, and yet they have no means to actually get you into the nullifier bubble other than just walking up to you.  It seems that a unit much like the grineer scorpion would be ideal to drag you in to it, yet they have nothing of the kind, similarly grineer commanders would be perfect for teleporting you next to a nullifier which could then activate while you were stunned stripping you of your protections.  Perhaps if they ever decided to join forces against the tenno we could see some of these strategies put to work.

 
Personally I'd love to see more combo attacks in general, like commanders teaming up with Drahk Masters.  Have a unit disarm the warframe, then teleport him across the map so they can't quickly get their weapon back (Frankly it'd be hilarious if other units could pick your weapon up and use it against you/other allies, obviously killing them would drop it so you could re-aquire it).  Then bumrush the Warframe with scorpions, noxes, eximus, whatever.  Aside from tactics, one of the main things that needs to change is the whole 'mindlessly running into combat'  The majority of units have guns, do they really need to be three feet from the objective/enemy?  Hydron/Helene isn't the best example because it has pillars blocking all four cardinal directions up top and has to be gotten close to when it's lowered, but there are plenty of defense maps where the objective can be seen from (and fired at) from very far away.  A Fastva build shouldn't even be an effective means of grouping enemies because they shouldn't be stupid enough to group up at a defense objective in the first place.

I'd love to see more weaponry that was effective at battling warframes, like Nox's stug slowing you down to make you easier to hit, perhaps even inhibiting double jumping/bullet jumping while you're affected.  For example, their Stug attack could stack up to three times, increasing the duration of the effect with each stack.  The first stack could slow you as it does now, the second could prevent double jumping, and the third prevent bullet jumping until the duration expires.  Making Nox a much more effective unit at forcing a Warframe into a battle they may not want to fight.

The other issue is enemy levels, I understand the need for a game to have increasing difficulty over time, but I would much rather see a more fluid and reactive increase in difficulty that was determined on player skill levels rather than +5 level per round or whatever.  If the enemy can't even touch the defense target in the first few rounds, then maybe there should be a much more drastic spike in enemy level for the next few.  Or, let's say we have a group of four on Hydron, an MR28 Saryn Prime, an MR6 Excalibur, and two Mid-teen MR people playing whatever.  Using my above guidelines the MR6 is obviously doing like 4% of the total damage, so the grineer are going to mostly ignore them.  The Saryn doing 70% of the total damage on the other hand is a major target, now imagine among all the level 40-50 enemies suddenly a level 100 scorpion and Nox are sent out targeting the Saryn, they'll attack whatever attacks them, but will prioritize heading straight for the MR28 player. Now sure, they may one shot the unsuspecting Excalibur on the path to Saryn, but that's what teammates are for anyway.  As long as their AI is good enough to move on once the Excalibur goes down and not stick around griefing him then I see no issues with the occasional death squad sent out to deal with the big fish in the pond.  Even without the added trouble of programming in all the 'targeting a specific player' stuff I feel like having the occasional high level enemy mixed in with the other enemies would be more fun.

A bit rambling, but I think I got the point across. More in depth game modes and more adaptive AI/enemy levels for a deeper and more satisfying game experience. Obviously I would rather see AI that can more intelligently work around OP abilities rather than having those abilities nerfed, but I also understand that programming AI to respond to a hundred different scenarios that various abilities can present wouldn't be easy. And yes I'm fully aware that more nullifiers doesn't equal more fun for most people, I'm mostly advocating for smarter usage of the technology, not necessarily more of the unit in question.

Keep in mind, these are just some random thoughts I had, I feel no need to defend my opinions or ideas.  If you want to discuss amongst yourselves feel free, if you want to nitpick at me don't bother I rarely return to the scene of my crimes (posts). I just felt like getting some random ideas out of my head after reading the Pablo thread, it seems premature to say improved AI alone wouldn't be enough for real difficulty.  Certainly improved AI doesn't count for much if you can wipe everything out in an instant, but that's why enemies have levels. With intelligent use of the systems already in place and (much) smarter AI I feel like minimal nerfs would be necessary (I'm looking at you Saryn). Sure I'd be a little pissed if my Vortex got cancelled because some smarmy corpus unit threw a nullifier grenade into it, but I'd also be kinda proud of the bastard right before I wiped him off the face of the planet, or moon, or space station, whatever you get the idea.

[(XBOX)EPOSSTYLE]

It sounds like you actually play the game to want and be able to define fun without trivializing the content...sadly DE doesn't play warframe. So coming to these conclusions won't ever manifest.  (It's the reason the patchnotes are larger than the gamecode) Invention comes from those in the field, streamlining and refinement comes from those who oversee? All I can say is keep putting your refined ideas into the ether and maybe they'll come to pass. As it stands I just don't think they get it...

An overall balance would do wonders and sew up a lot o dysfunction abroad. 

Also redo the basic physics portion. Slam, slamming into, fall, and pull damage is out of wack.

Edited June 6, 2020 by (XB1)EPOSSTYLE

[Chicken-Biryani]

Is there any need for a new thread on this topic... (Hate to be that guy but there are already a gazillion posts on this!) 

[AzureTerra]

36 minutes ago, Nehra96 said:

Is there any need for a new thread on this topic... (Hate to be that guy but there are already a gazillion posts on this!) 

Well if they post in a existing thread they have to share someone else's soapbox. And a lot of those type of threads a "Look at me i have idea" types.

[(PSN)robotwars7]

8 hours ago, Tekkarath said:

Now promptly ignore those people, they do not want the game to be 'better' they want their dopamine fix when they break open a relic or sell some random garbage on the market for plat.  These kinds of people, while they do serve a purpose, will always settle into 'what's easiest'.  Once the dust settles they'll find the most min-maxed/meta way of doing things in this brave new world, so ignore any complaints they have.

christ, how are you not suffering from altitude sickness on such a high horse?

like it or not, you can't just flatout ignore that many players, you'll make a salt mine. your heart might be in the right place, but this line makes you sound like a bit of a d0uche. anyway, I'd forget about an AI rework any time soon, that's gonna be way more work than DE is willing to undergo right now. 

[GreyDeath789]

Wow....

11 hours ago, Tekkarath said:

Let me start by saying this: Certain frames and weapons absolutely need a nerf that goes without saying.  Whinge and cry all you like but if you can't tell when something is OP then you really shouldn't be allowed to weigh in on this subject.  That being said this is my personal belief:

Balancing Warframe only requires a more intelligent approach, once that appropriately would require a lot of hard work, but in the end I feel would be worth it *if* it could be accomplished.  Don't get me wrong, power creep can be dangerous, but handled appropriately I feel like we can accomplish harder (I.E. more fun) game play without needing to excessively buff enemies or nerf Frames/weapons.  The real ticket here is allowing the enemies to intelligently use the means already at their disposal more effectively.  At the moment the game consists of many enemies that are little more than road bumps, taking certain ones out might force you to slow down a bit, but in the end it's just a hiccup on your way to the end of the mission. Or worse, you simply ignore them because your objective is to reach the end of the map (I'm looking at you capture and rescue missions).

Always "a more intelligent approach" with some magical "require a lot of hard work" leading to "the real ticket here is allowing the enemies to intelligently" challenge the players. If only DE could go out and pick up a "Easy" button to make this stuff happen...

11 hours ago, Tekkarath said:

Now before I start running my mouth about changes, lets take a moment to recognize how many people would be upset that they couldn't simply fly through a capture/rescue mission for their void traces anymore.  Now promptly ignore those people, they do not want the game to be 'better' they want their dopamine fix when they break open a relic or sell some random garbage on the market for plat.  These kinds of people, while they do serve a purpose, will always settle into 'what's easiest'.  Once the dust settles they'll find the most min-maxed/meta way of doing things in this brave new world, so ignore any complaints they have.

Yes, ignore all those players that don't agree with this post. All those "min-maxer" players are not the same players that spend incredible amounts of time finding what works best for specific missions, builds, etc...just ignore them.

11 hours ago, Tekkarath said:

I fully understand that rescue missions are the way they are because some people hate escort missions, AI can get stuck preventing completion of missions, and the default Warframe experience is 'gotta go fast'.  But I would much rather see a proper unit that has to actually make its way to the extraction, no teleporting, possibly with parts of the mission being defense-like where they lock down a door that leads towards extraction forcing you to defend the target while someone runs to some console somewhere to open the door.  It would also give certain frames a more meta role in rescue like Nova and Loki to move the rescue target over long distances or Volt to make them faster.

Changing how rescue missions work to make them 'harder' in some cases sounds like a good idea. Perhaps the early rescue missions (Earth) could be like they are now...low level enemies but the higher level nodes could introduce some of the concepts mentioned. Then comes the question of how do you get people to stop using Earth rescue for a Nightwave task? "Complete a rescue mission with enemies of level 30 or higher that has 3 blocked doorways on the way to the extraction"???? Still, introducing more 'parts' to a rescue could be fun but the rewards would need to be evaluated as well.

11 hours ago, Tekkarath said:

Similarly capture missions should be much more involved, a capture target shouldn't just be walking out in the open two maps over.  They should be guarded, maybe in a secure location.  Imagine a mission that is more Spy-like with multiple potential locations to check to find the capture target, if you can get in silently like a spy mission then you can possibly one shot them and get in and out quickly.  But if you set off the alarms on the way to them then they're swarmed with defenses, or possibly start bee-lining for an exit like they do now but with a group of enemies to defend them on the way.planet, or moon, or space station, whatever you get the idea.

Changing how capture missions work also could be a good idea. Yet, should the early capture work like they do now and the other additions get added to higher level nodes? The Nightwave question and rewards concern still exist. Still, introducing more 'parts' to a capture could be fun as well.

11 hours ago, Tekkarath said:

That being said I'd like to take a look at a little something we've all looked over, that being the stats page at the end of a mission.  It could be an interesting factor in helping to create a bit more balance.  We've all played the 'whose better' game, where you glance at the stats occasionally, see someone has a slightly higher damage % than you and decide 'Oh looks like I need to kick it up a notch'.  It can be a fun little game to play on the side while you're mindlessly wiping enemies off the map.  But what if those stats had a hand in determining just how hard things are for you?  For example:

Is one player doing the majority % of damage?  Have most enemies focus on them, sending specialized units after them, bombard them with orbital strikes on outdoors maps, toss nullifier grenades at them to disrupt their abilities.  Hell maybe give Energy Leech/Parasitic eximus a special grenade or move to drain the entirety of a warframes energy in one move if hit.  If a nuke frame is killing most enemies then it should be their primary target, it's just common sense.

<bunch of stuff about making enemies harder...some of it based on the magical "AI", others based on weapons/abilities of the enemies>

Giving enemies the ability to determine which warframe is doing the most damage seems a tad unbalanced. Unlike enemies...each Tenno can have a build that may or may not mean it is causing the most damage. So if an enemy sees a Rhino and also knows that Rhino is doing the most damage the enemy attacks that Tenno. Yet, if a Rhino is built to buff and CC would the enemy know it isn't doing the most damage and therefore not attack the "tank" frame? What about a Loki that has OP weapons and is destroying everything on the map...the enemy know that the invisible Tenno is the one causing all the damage instead of doing some CC because...why? The general concept of "smarter" enemies is fine...but implementing it would be difficult if it was based on data from the current mission. If it was simply based on the warframe type (Rhino..oh no...a tank...kill it first) then that would be more reasonable.

11 hours ago, Tekkarath said:

The other issue is enemy levels, I understand the need for a game to have increasing difficulty over time, but I would much rather see a more fluid and reactive increase in difficulty that was determined on player skill levels rather than +5 level per round or whatever.  If the enemy can't even touch the defense target in the first few rounds, then maybe there should be a much more drastic spike in enemy level for the next few.  Or, let's say we have a group of four on Hydron, an MR28 Saryn Prime, an MR6 Excalibur, and two Mid-teen MR people playing whatever.  Using my above guidelines the MR6 is obviously doing like 4% of the total damage, so the grineer are going to mostly ignore them.  The Saryn doing 70% of the total damage on the other hand is a major target, now imagine among all the level 40-50 enemies suddenly a level 100 scorpion and Nox are sent out targeting the Saryn, they'll attack whatever attacks them, but will prioritize heading straight for the MR28 player. Now sure, they may one shot the unsuspecting Excalibur on the path to Saryn, but that's what teammates are for anyway.  As long as their AI is good enough to move on once the Excalibur goes down and not stick around griefing him then I see no issues with the occasional death squad sent out to deal with the big fish in the pond.  Even without the added trouble of programming in all the 'targeting a specific player' stuff I feel like having the occasional high level enemy mixed in with the other enemies would be more fun.

For someone with over 1000 hours played it is surprising you would suggest that an MR6 Excalibur could only do 4% of the damage in a mission. MR6 does limit the available weapons for a player but that doesn't mean they will only do 4% of the damage. A rank 30 Excalibur is a rank 30 Excalibur...MR6 or not... Give that Excal a Nikiana, Skana, or dual Skana, or even Galatine or Guandao...maybe a plain Kronen...mixed with abilities and watch things die. Sure, a Saryn is more likely to be killing more things if built properly but this "MR6 does 4% damage" mindset is surprising given all the text written to this point. But sure...discount players that are "only" MR6...

11 hours ago, Tekkarath said:

A bit rambling, but I think I got the point across. More in depth game modes and more adaptive AI/enemy levels for a deeper and more satisfying game experience. Obviously I would rather see AI that can more intelligently work around OP abilities rather than having those abilities nerfed, but I also understand that programming AI to respond to a hundred different scenarios that various abilities can present wouldn't be easy. And yes I'm fully aware that more nullifiers doesn't equal more fun for most people, I'm mostly advocating for smarter usage of the technology, not necessarily more of the unit in question.

The game mode changes seem interesting...but the "adaptive AI" is probably too much for any game. There are efforts to use AI to help improve games such as Electronic Arts working to make the NPCs more lifelike..but that is focused more on movement not necessarily interaction with the players/environment.

"Researchers at Electronic Arts—the company behind FIFA, Madden, and other popular games—are testing recent advances in artificial intelligence as a way to speed the development process and make games more lifelike."

Link to article about AI for more lifelike characters

Even if advances can be made via machine learning there is always to problem of the training a game AI to be 'smarter'...imagine ML training enemies being like the "Five Monkeys" experiment. Does it up with better game play and how long until the player learns to use this behavior for advantage?

Link to article that explains the Five Monkeys experiment

11 hours ago, Tekkarath said:

Keep in mind, these are just some random thoughts I had, I feel no need to defend my opinions or ideas.  If you want to discuss amongst yourselves feel free, if you want to nitpick at me don't bother I rarely return to the scene of my crimes (posts). I just felt like getting some random ideas out of my head after reading the Pablo thread, it seems premature to say improved AI alone wouldn't be enough for real difficulty.  Certainly improved AI doesn't count for much if you can wipe everything out in an instant, but that's why enemies have levels. With intelligent use of the systems already in place and (much) smarter AI I feel like minimal nerfs would be necessary (I'm looking at you Saryn). Sure I'd be a little pissed if my Vortex got cancelled because some smarmy corpus unit threw a nullifier grenade into it, but I'd also be kinda proud of the bastard right before I wiped him off the face of the planet, or moon, or space station, whatever you get the idea.

Got it...your post is the end of the "discussion"...no need for people to bother even reading them because they are right and people just need to adopt them without comment or consideration. Best for the entire world clearly.

Since you don't read the threads you start...you will miss my request....can you please tell me what I am suppose to think about this post since it is clearly the only input that matters...

Edited June 6, 2020 by GreyDeath789

[White_Matter]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the Dev's won't reimagine a 7 year old game from scratch.

Which a proper balance would require. 

Best case scenario we'll get new mission types with higher level enemies and some CC tweaks. 

At this point I don't even think they'll be able to unite all the content islands(open worlds, Liches, railjack and base game). 

[(PSN)Wil_Shatner_face]

On 2020-06-06 at 3:57 AM, (XB1)EPOSSTYLE said:

It sounds like you actually play the game to want and be able to define fun without trivializing the content...sadly DE doesn't play warframe. 

This notion is so ridiculously silly. Of course they don’t play it in their free time, it’s their job, do you spend your free time working on your job? But that being said it’s literally impossible to make a game without play testing it.

You have too much free time, OP. Go outside. Read a book. DE is never going to see this. 

[(XBOX)EPOSSTYLE]

On 2020-06-06 at 9:55 AM, (PS4)Wil_Shatner_face said:

This notion is so ridiculously silly. Of course they don’t play it in their free time, it’s their job, do you spend your free time working on your job? But that being said it’s literally impossible to make a game without play testing it.

A chef who doesn't taste their own dishes worries me?

[BRZZAFK]

2020/6/6 PM9点55分 , (PS4)Wil_Shatner_face 说:

This notion is so ridiculously silly. Of course they don’t play it in their free time, it’s their job, do you spend your free time working on your job? But that being said it’s literally impossible to make a game without play testing it.

I personally belief that SS event space mission is a prime example they dont play thier own game (enough). It doesnt take two seconds for nomal player to think up using limbo and they still end up panic nerf  .

[0_The_F00l]

I like the suggestions as a concept. 

But It does oversimplify some of the issues that exist and how to fix them.

Having a good idea and the means to implement them are two different things. 

[(NSW)Kirbys-Epic-Yarn]

Nothing should be nerfed. Being a power space ninjas better than bullet sponge enemies.

[SenorClipClop]

On 2020-06-06 at 10:57 AM, (XB1)EPOSSTYLE said:

It sounds like you actually play the game to want and be able to define fun without trivializing the content...sadly DE doesn't play warframe.

 

On 2020-06-08 at 1:27 PM, (XB1)EPOSSTYLE said:

A chef who doesn't taste their own dishes worries me?

 

A much simpler and more visible reason the devs wouldn't change their game to be more challenging at its core is because there are a lot of players who don't want that to happen.

Of course the Devs play their own game. They just don't play it like we do. Warframe is their baby, and they raise it best they can, try new things to help it grow, and play it to make sure it's something they can be proud of. They spend a ton of time on it. However, most of that time is very likely in making the game, so it's understandable if they don't rush home to play hours and hours of Warframe on their off-time like we do.

I imagine that when they design a thing, they focus on it with the goal of making it fit in the game, be fun to use, and give players a new way to enjoy the game. I feel that perhaps a developmental blindspot is in when such a new feature is set into certain contexts. Let's postulate that the upcoming Protea is sharp, snappy and buckets of fun to play. She's got great design, all that jazz.

First day: "But she doesn't outdamage Peacemaker, I have Arcane Energize so her 3 is trash, nobody needs her 4 if they just don't die, and she doesn't even have a looting ability to make her remotely worth using for anything. Worthless, grind out MR in a mission and abandon. DE doesn't even play their game."

As per this hypothetical, DE has designed a great frame, but it doesn't buff a long-suffering player's experience of grinding out Kuva for their Riven Market game. And that's the blindspot where, I believe, players fall into this idea that the Devs don't play their own game, if new features feed into raw fun and enjoyment instead of the grind or the powercreep that a player may want every new feature to affect, because that's what the game is about for them. Whether DE should do this more often is another discussion.

Edited June 10, 2020 by SenorClipClop

[Iceesar2014]

On 2020-06-06 at 5:33 AM, Tekkarath said:

Let me start by saying this: Certain frames and weapons absolutely need a nerf that goes without saying.  Whinge and cry all you like but if you can't tell when something is OP then you really shouldn't be allowed to weigh in on this subject.  That being said this is my personal belief:

Balancing Warframe only requires a more intelligent approach, once that appropriately would require a lot of hard work, but in the end I feel would be worth it *if* it could be accomplished.  Don't get me wrong, power creep can be dangerous, but handled appropriately I feel like we can accomplish harder (I.E. more fun) game play without needing to excessively buff enemies or nerf Frames/weapons.  The real ticket here is allowing the enemies to intelligently use the means already at their disposal more effectively.  At the moment the game consists of many enemies that are little more than road bumps, taking certain ones out might force you to slow down a bit, but in the end it's just a hiccup on your way to the end of the mission. Or worse, you simply ignore them because your objective is to reach the end of the map (I'm looking at you capture and rescue missions).

Now before I start running my mouth about changes, lets take a moment to recognize how many people would be upset that they couldn't simply fly through a capture/rescue mission for their void traces anymore.  Now promptly ignore those people, they do not want the game to be 'better' they want their dopamine fix when they break open a relic or sell some random garbage on the market for plat.  These kinds of people, while they do serve a purpose, will always settle into 'what's easiest'.  Once the dust settles they'll find the most min-maxed/meta way of doing things in this brave new world, so ignore any complaints they have.

I fully understand that rescue missions are the way they are because some people hate escort missions, AI can get stuck preventing completion of missions, and the default Warframe experience is 'gotta go fast'.  But I would much rather see a proper unit that has to actually make its way to the extraction, no teleporting, possibly with parts of the mission being defense-like where they lock down a door that leads towards extraction forcing you to defend the target while someone runs to some console somewhere to open the door.  It would also give certain frames a more meta role in rescue like Nova and Loki to move the rescue target over long distances or Volt to make them faster.

Similarly capture missions should be much more involved, a capture target shouldn't just be walking out in the open two maps over.  They should be guarded, maybe in a secure location.  Imagine a mission that is more Spy-like with multiple potential locations to check to find the capture target, if you can get in silently like a spy mission then you can possibly one shot them and get in and out quickly.  But if you set off the alarms on the way to them then they're swarmed with defenses, or possibly start bee-lining for an exit like they do now but with a group of enemies to defend them on the way.

That being said I'd like to take a look at a little something we've all looked over, that being the stats page at the end of a mission.  It could be an interesting factor in helping to create a bit more balance.  We've all played the 'whose better' game, where you glance at the stats occasionally, see someone has a slightly higher damage % than you and decide 'Oh looks like I need to kick it up a notch'.  It can be a fun little game to play on the side while you're mindlessly wiping enemies off the map.  But what if those stats had a hand in determining just how hard things are for you?  For example:

Is one player doing the majority % of damage?  Have most enemies focus on them, sending specialized units after them, bombard them with orbital strikes on outdoors maps, toss nullifier grenades at them to disrupt their abilities.  Hell maybe give Energy Leech/Parasitic eximus a special grenade or move to drain the entirety of a warframes energy in one move if hit.  If a nuke frame is killing most enemies then it should be their primary target, it's just common sense.

Majority of enemies being CCed? Activate some kind of experimental power damper that suppresses Warframe abilities for a minute or two then burns itself out or have enemies intelligently group up in nullifier bubbles, perhaps even allow bubbles to merge and become more powerful so that multiple nullifiers together make larger bubbles.  Different eximus units could change how the nullifier field works, an arctic eximus inside one could reinforce it to not shrink when shot and be stronger like the snow globe barrier they normally have, Arson eximus could expand the bubble with their blast, negating abilities in the blast range but 'popping' the bubble forcing it to regen as if it were taken away by gunfire, and so on.  Nullifiers should also be reworked to not do things like popping Limbo's bubble, only allowing enemies in the bubble to pass through it. With a change like this you could have an enemy in a nullifier orb walk into limbo's rift.  Toss a small nullifier grenade at the objective (effectively putting the objective back into real space) and presto, now all the enemies outside the Limbo bubble can shoot the objective again.  Of course, this would require enemies that were smart enough not to walk into a Limbo bubble in the first place. 

Now of course, enemies getting around CC would mostly involve nullifiers, but I feel like an argument could be made for certain enemy types having an innate resistance to Warframe abilities, such as decreased duration on Warframe abilities, or reduced damage from abilities.  It just makes sense that a Nox should be better at breaking its way out of Khora's chains or shaking off Volt's stun a bit faster than your average grunt, and it would change normal CC from 'stop everything and kill it' to 'stop the small frys so we can focus on the big problems'.

Harder enemies need to be more common, in more ways than one.  For one, why are all the really difficult corpus enemies only in Orb Vallis?  I've been knocked for a loop occasionally on some of the harder Vallis missions but meanwhile their ships and stations only have basic grunts and the occasional nullifier.  In the same vein, I know certain enemy types exist, and yet almost never see them unless I stay in a mission for thirty minutes.  More intelligent use of enemy types should go without saying, as well as improving on their anti-warframe strategies.  Obviously on the Corpus side most of their strategies would revolve around nullifying abilities and then taking the frame out while it can't defend itself, and yet they have no means to actually get you into the nullifier bubble other than just walking up to you.  It seems that a unit much like the grineer scorpion would be ideal to drag you in to it, yet they have nothing of the kind, similarly grineer commanders would be perfect for teleporting you next to a nullifier which could then activate while you were stunned stripping you of your protections.  Perhaps if they ever decided to join forces against the tenno we could see some of these strategies put to work.

 
Personally I'd love to see more combo attacks in general, like commanders teaming up with Drahk Masters.  Have a unit disarm the warframe, then teleport him across the map so they can't quickly get their weapon back (Frankly it'd be hilarious if other units could pick your weapon up and use it against you/other allies, obviously killing them would drop it so you could re-aquire it).  Then bumrush the Warframe with scorpions, noxes, eximus, whatever.  Aside from tactics, one of the main things that needs to change is the whole 'mindlessly running into combat'  The majority of units have guns, do they really need to be three feet from the objective/enemy?  Hydron/Helene isn't the best example because it has pillars blocking all four cardinal directions up top and has to be gotten close to when it's lowered, but there are plenty of defense maps where the objective can be seen from (and fired at) from very far away.  A Fastva build shouldn't even be an effective means of grouping enemies because they shouldn't be stupid enough to group up at a defense objective in the first place.

I'd love to see more weaponry that was effective at battling warframes, like Nox's stug slowing you down to make you easier to hit, perhaps even inhibiting double jumping/bullet jumping while you're affected.  For example, their Stug attack could stack up to three times, increasing the duration of the effect with each stack.  The first stack could slow you as it does now, the second could prevent double jumping, and the third prevent bullet jumping until the duration expires.  Making Nox a much more effective unit at forcing a Warframe into a battle they may not want to fight.

The other issue is enemy levels, I understand the need for a game to have increasing difficulty over time, but I would much rather see a more fluid and reactive increase in difficulty that was determined on player skill levels rather than +5 level per round or whatever.  If the enemy can't even touch the defense target in the first few rounds, then maybe there should be a much more drastic spike in enemy level for the next few.  Or, let's say we have a group of four on Hydron, an MR28 Saryn Prime, an MR6 Excalibur, and two Mid-teen MR people playing whatever.  Using my above guidelines the MR6 is obviously doing like 4% of the total damage, so the grineer are going to mostly ignore them.  The Saryn doing 70% of the total damage on the other hand is a major target, now imagine among all the level 40-50 enemies suddenly a level 100 scorpion and Nox are sent out targeting the Saryn, they'll attack whatever attacks them, but will prioritize heading straight for the MR28 player. Now sure, they may one shot the unsuspecting Excalibur on the path to Saryn, but that's what teammates are for anyway.  As long as their AI is good enough to move on once the Excalibur goes down and not stick around griefing him then I see no issues with the occasional death squad sent out to deal with the big fish in the pond.  Even without the added trouble of programming in all the 'targeting a specific player' stuff I feel like having the occasional high level enemy mixed in with the other enemies would be more fun.

A bit rambling, but I think I got the point across. More in depth game modes and more adaptive AI/enemy levels for a deeper and more satisfying game experience. Obviously I would rather see AI that can more intelligently work around OP abilities rather than having those abilities nerfed, but I also understand that programming AI to respond to a hundred different scenarios that various abilities can present wouldn't be easy. And yes I'm fully aware that more nullifiers doesn't equal more fun for most people, I'm mostly advocating for smarter usage of the technology, not necessarily more of the unit in question.

Keep in mind, these are just some random thoughts I had, I feel no need to defend my opinions or ideas.  If you want to discuss amongst yourselves feel free, if you want to nitpick at me don't bother I rarely return to the scene of my crimes (posts). I just felt like getting some random ideas out of my head after reading the Pablo thread, it seems premature to say improved AI alone wouldn't be enough for real difficulty.  Certainly improved AI doesn't count for much if you can wipe everything out in an instant, but that's why enemies have levels. With intelligent use of the systems already in place and (much) smarter AI I feel like minimal nerfs would be necessary (I'm looking at you Saryn). Sure I'd be a little pissed if my Vortex got cancelled because some smarmy corpus unit threw a nullifier grenade into it, but I'd also be kinda proud of the bastard right before I wiped him off the face of the planet, or moon, or space station, whatever you get the idea.

Warframe already is too much farming (rng) and weapons do less damage lol! Even warframes are weak today. People are using frames that are interesting, multi-tasking and AOE is what people like. Heres only 2 or 3 warframes that are playable in long term and this is bad, and still even they have some negative sides. I remember when Ember had world in fire ability- this was actually very fun, just needed some buff. If Devs are to take us too seriously, then this game will fall in the Future. If to say directly, some players left cause Embers rework. Most of the frames for example (that i have) are useless and i do not use them at all.  Today, we have so much bad going on, like toxic and energy leeching from enemy, this leads us to use only certain frames. I do not wish to write so much about that. And kuva weapons trick is too much unenjoyable, just go for ordinary cause not so much difference to be honest, just waisting your time and money.

Ive been long to this game and nerfing already nerfed stuff (or making strong enemy more stronger) is not neccessary!

[RFaul]

On 2020-06-08 at 6:18 AM, BRZZAFK said:

I personally belief that SS event space mission is a prime example they dont play thier own game (enough). It doesnt take two seconds for nomal player to think up using limbo and they still end up panic nerf  .

Not sure it was out of panic. More like answering to community prayers of supplication... It was a nice call btw. It ended up "balancing" Limbo, Khora and resulted later in even more needed "balancing" to Vazarin school.