Does anyone understand DE's intentions?

[TARINunit9]

1 hour ago, Traumtulpe said:

 

1. Gas damage. It was a useful, but not dominant, element. Until one day DE nerfed into uselessness. Among the many things they changed about it, they removed it's scaling entirely. This was assumed to be a bug, yet after DE "improved" the nerfed element due to uniform complaints, this supposed bug remains still in place, and Gas remains a dead element still - likely for years to come, if the past is any indicator. Why just make things worse, and then leave them nonfunctional, broken, ignored?

 

1 hour ago, SneakyErvin said:

1. I dont get the idea behind the changes to Gas. It was a good element before and I see no reason why it changed. They could have even improved it to rely on both toxin and heat damage for the new gas proc.

They were trying to buff Gas, not nerf it. They just didn't do it right

[Wearbe]

7 minutes ago, (XB1)Hyperion Rexx said:

... in a constant state of panic internally rushing to get content out.

That's the game industry in a nutshell... since... forever.

[Loza03]

30 minutes ago, Wearbe said:

 

Between having a decent sized Chinese Player base AND the controlling Chinese money, I guarantee Chinese influence in a variety of areas, including the creative ones. Not that it really matters, though, since the Warframe universe was already quite alien before foreign money got involved.

There is going to be some creative effect, obviously, but nowhere near as direct as individual artistic choices. DE and Leyou's contract specified creative control. DE are the only ones in charge of making the actual game, which means any individual choices are up to them. Leyou's influence would be felt most at the overall direction level.

[Traumtulpe]

7 minutes ago, TARINunit9 said:

They were trying to buff Gas, not nerf it. They just didn't do it right

They removed it's ability to scale with elemental mods. That is not what you would do if you intend to buff something. If it was a mistake, why not revert it? We have told them, time and again, to no avail.

[Magus_Tahir]

5 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

They removed it's ability to scale with elemental mods. That is not what you would do if you intend to buff something. If it was a mistake, why not revert it? We have told them, time and again, to no avail.

I'd wager it's not exactly that simple. Small stuff that has been recommended in the past was fixed easily but I have a gut feeling the overall damage system is several layers deep and actually connected in ways we are not foreseeing directly. Given the nature of spaghetti code this is highly probable. They may have tested this internally and found that changing this one instance broke several other parts. Only way to know for sure is if they told us exactly how they are coding things, but they can't to do that since hackers would have a field day.

If my hypothesis is correct then they would have to pin down everything that broke and work backwards to find out why. Not a small task when you consider the small nightmare that Warframe is code wise. lol

I mean think about how many things break with patches it's inevitable. If they change something in the damage system the biggest core part of the game just to make one damage type usable after making it subpar and the entire house comes crashing down I think that would be a bigger problem don't ya think?

[TARINunit9]

15 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

They removed it's ability to scale with elemental mods.

I'm going to admit, I don't know what this means. A Gas proc does fixed damage?

[Traumtulpe]

1 minute ago, TARINunit9 said:

I'm going to admit, I don't know what this means. A Gas proc does fixed damage?

Almost. Heat procs, for example, deal more damage the more Heat mods you put on a weapon. In this example you would use a 90%, and a 60% mod, increasing the procs damage to 250%.

This was also possible with Gas before, though limited to only Toxin mods (Heat mods had no effect on the procs damage). Now however, neither Toxin, nor Heat, have any effect on it anymore. As a direct consequence, using only Heat, or only Toxin (as opposed to Gas from both), is straight up better.

[TARINunit9]

1 minute ago, Traumtulpe said:

Almost. Heat procs, for example, deal more damage the more Heat mods you put on a weapon. In this example you would use a 90%, and a 60% mod, increasing the procs damage to 250%.

This was also possible with Gas before, though limited to only Toxin mods (Heat mods had no effect on the procs damage). Now however, neither Toxin, nor Heat, have any effect on it anymore. As a direct consequence, using only Heat, or only Toxin (as opposed to Gas from both), is straight up better.

So a Gas proc deals fixed damage. That sounds like a bug, so it sounds like you should write (another) bug report

[Traumtulpe]

1 minute ago, TARINunit9 said:

So a Gas proc deals fixed damage. That sounds like a bug, so it sounds like you should write (another) bug report

You can still scale the damage with base damage mods (Serration) and faction mods (Bane), but since it is lacking a separate scaling factor (and reducing 2 mandatory mods to have next to no benefit), it cannot compare to other procs.

This has been widely reported, any inaction on this matter cannot be due to lack of knowledge. DE even publicly acknowledged Gas being subpar (in a Devstream no less), and changed it further in another patch without addressing this issue.

[trst]

Gas is the way it is for the same reason magnetic remained as a shield focused status and slash no longer ignores shields, it's to give the elements more of a niche. Where Gas is more effective vs Infested now due to damage resistances in its favor, scaling aoe range as infested clump up more than other factions, and the lingering gas clouds which only matter here due to infested still being soft targets.

Yes, from a meta prospective it's still bad because infested are still a joke of a faction but if the game was designed solely from a meta perspective we would be playing a very different game right now. DE doesn't balance from a meta perspective until something becomes detrimental to the (primary) casual audience or the game as a whole. While if the Infested ever get an update that makes them at all more dangerous then we have a tool at the ready to fight them.

 

While the Kitgun change seems to be solely to fix what only appears to be an oversight in that the grips didn't affect the charge time. The current iteration of them makes sense as fire-rate has always affected charge-rates. Plus the community has been practically begging for better responses to balancing content and the obvious cost of this is making it detrimental to hyper-fast adopters. It isn't DE's fault that players went and stuck 5-7 Forma into kitguns within six days of their release.

As far as the Brash build being far stronger than a Tremor build now, again, DE doesn't balance from a meta perspective. Unless the Brash build is too overpowered where it gains a majority usage over other weapons we likely won't see more changes to it. Also if anyone cares solely for optimal dps then why not just build a new kitgun? It isn't remotely hard and neither is gathering Forma.

[TARINunit9]

9 minutes ago, Traumtulpe said:

DE even publicly acknowledged Gas being subpar (in a Devstream no less)

So they're working on it and just pushed it back in favor of Deadlock fixes, I wouldn't worry about it

[Traumtulpe]

Just now, TARINunit9 said:

So they're working on it and just pushed it back in favor of Deadlock fixes, I wouldn't worry about it

No. They said they were going to patch it. Then they patched it, and it wasn't any better.

The only thing they did, that was actually good, was to no longer make Infested (essentially) immune to Gas (Toxic Ancients), which was an astonishing oversight considering that Gas was now supposed to be good against Infested.

[Hypernaut1]

With so many choices, some will always be left behind. There's always going to be a best and worst. Gas would be great if all others didn't do anything. 

I

Edited June 23, 2020 by Hypernaut1

[Traumtulpe]

3 minutes ago, Hypernaut1 said:

Gas would be great if all others didn't do anything.

Can't argue with that logic.

[Aldain]

To answer the thread title...NOPE. Not even DE understand DE's intentions.

[Felsagger]

2 minutes ago, Aldain said:

To answer the thread title...NOPE. Not even DE understand DE's intentions.

 

Sustaining a business for seven years is not based on luck or improvisation. 

[Hayrack]

Yesterday I had Stalker spawn in spy vault. Today I had Void fissure spawn in spy vault. The intention is to pluck my damn nerves.

[DrBorris]

The first step in understanding DE's intentions is understanding that their intentions do not always transfer to implementation intact.

[32768]

I think old gas procs, that were actually doing toxin damage, were stacking with some warframe abilities and that way it was used to do some insane damage, like in mils. But i didn't use those builds, so i might be very wrong or misleading you. Better look into old gas builds and figure this out yourself.

So according to old posts, it was reportedly broken at least in some places, but that time, instead of nerfing frames it was broken on, apparently DE decided to nerf entire gas damage instead.

I can't say that i understand why in some cases DE nerfs specific warframes and in another cases they nerf the universe, perhaps they have their reasons. But you would be surprised how many people are asking for nerf and resilient to buffs. You'd think anyone would like to get a buff and dislike a nerf. Nope. Not the case.

[Aadi880]

I bet the gas changes was to prevent shields getting bypassed by toxin.

Though, interestingly enough, the AoE area left by the gas proc now makes them one of the best elements to use in arbitrations, as it can kill arbitration drones ticking through the shield gate. 

[Traumtulpe]

36 minutes ago, 32768 said:

So it was reportedly broken at least in some places

What you quoted is from years ago, and likely refers to the stealth multiplier. If I recall correctly it was x5 and has since been nerfed to x2, it also affected Gas like a Bane mod which has long since been changed as well. In short, it has not been relevant for a long time.

24 minutes ago, Aadi880 said:

Though, interestingly enough, the AoE area left by the gas proc now makes them one of the best elements to use in arbitrations, as it can kill arbitration drones ticking through the shield gate.

I tried this, however I found enemies under the effect of an Arbitration Drone to be immune to Gas procs, as are the drones themselves. Care to explain this strategy of yours?

[32768]

3 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

What you quoted is from years ago, and likely refers to the stealth multiplier. If I recall correctly it was x5 and has since been nerfed to x2, it also affected Gas like a Bane mod which has long since been changed as well. In short, it has not been relevant for a long time.

Maybe, i remember it was OP in some situations, but i don't remember in which ones and perhaps it isn't worth posting on forums if it still is.

I remember i was seeing gas in very unexpected places, like Acceltra with gas or some shotgun with gas, idk, i think i had gas on my Lesion before and it was slashing, like really f-ing SLASHING, but after nerf i didn't use it for a long time.

Edit: i think the biggest concern was that toxin is bypassing shield and IIRC armor (not sure on that one), so mass toxin is "too OP". But as i said, you probably need to look into old builds and maybe old threads on this forums about the time when they updated gas or not long before that.

Edited June 24, 2020 by 32768

[Tiltskillet]

10 hours ago, Traumtulpe said:

Seeing behavior that appears to go against reason, that would seem to inflict harm without benefit, the demerit of which should be impossible to overlook, just bothers me. Any attempt at an explanation is welcome.

More than any other single thing, I bet it comes down to

Small Team - - Huge Game.

 

[AzureTerra]

Gas has for me always been a useful element and for almost everyone else it seems it was a crutch that has left them floundering on the ground when that crutch was removed because it finally does its actual damage type on proc. 

[HeartPurity]

I dont even bother creating a primary kitgun now, after you found a fun kitgun then people get jealous and ask DE to nerf them again. Just use sheev or a walking stick.  🦙