Since when has "power fantasy" become a compelling argument against game balance?

[(PSN)TheWanderer17]

1 hour ago, Aldain said:

Since people became complacent with what basically amounts to a /killall command through some Warframe abilities.

I'm convinced people don't actually want to play Warframe, they just want rewards for nothing at all.

Not at all. 

I just happen to find the game play fun and thus I play.  Part of what makes it fun is the power fantasy aspect.  Fast pace hack and slash with overlwhelming space magic.... surprisingly intoxicating.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good challenge/struggle but thats not why I play warframe.

_____

@Flying_Scorpion

I think what's odd about the discussion is that there seems to be a perception that there was once game 'balance'.  There never really was, it was always a power fantasy that made it so you can cut through enemies with ease once you get the current top level build. 

The only difference between then and now is how long it takes to 'top out' in an endless mission.  Our power level has hit a point where even 1 hit kill vs 1 hit death doesn't even stop us so in essence we can go indefinitely and never reach a limit.  That isn't a matter of 'balance' as is typically a discussion topic in games, thus you get met with the 'power fantasy' response because that is always what warframe was.

So I think if you actuality frame the conversation around 'limitations' of our power rather than 'balance' you might get a more robust conversation in the topic.

I want a power fantasy and I want a limit that truly challenges me.  That limit, which creates a sense of a challenge, should be attainable within an hour of endless mission game play.  Simply we need that power fantasy with the risk reward feeling back that used to be there.  But please don't refer to it as 'balance' because the term in my opinion is confusing and misleading.

[Yamazuki]

People that complain stating players "needing" to be balanced often ignore part of balance is balancing the enemy. Warframe has little to no interesting enemies to really balance around.

Warframe is also not restricted to melee/short range attacks unlike most action games. A little difficult to balance either players or the enemy when it just results in either dying instantly if either isn't actively moving. DE responded by adding shield gate, which suggests they're not interested in changing anything. For shooters, they often involve constantly hiding behind walls/cover, which isn't what Warframe is about. If I wanted to play hide behind a wall 90% of the time to not get 1 shot, I would've played games like The Division.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

4 minutes ago, (PS4)TheWanderer17 said:

Not at all. 

I just happen to find the game play fun and thus I play.  Part of what makes it fun is the power fantasy aspect.  Fast pace hack and slash with overlwhelming space magic.... surprisingly intoxicating.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy a good challenge/struggle but thats not why I play warframe.

I definitely find it exhilarating to press 1 button to wipe the entire room...

[(PSN)TheWanderer17]

8 minutes ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

I definitely find it exhilarating to press 1 button to wipe the entire room...

I mean if thats all you are doing that is pretty boring.  That is not how I play warframe, so I do not get bored.  I do like pressing the BOOM button every now and again though for that power fantasy feel.

Wisp 4 is my favorite power as it is in my opinion one of the coolest looking scenes when active and truly looks overwhelmingly powerful.  Makes the whole world look like it's on fire.  Simply amazing.  That's why I play warframe.

 

[Loza03]

One thing of note is that balance and challenge aren't the same thing. Lots of people making that mistake. Balance just means that it delivers the experience that is the most fun, and that it is the most rewarding. A good example is how Halo has attempted enhanced mobility, but it was highly controversial - leading to one video entitled, whereas in Titanfall 2, nobody complains there. That's because Titanfall is designed from the ground up to provide an enhanced mobility experience, and is balanced entirely around that, whilst many of the core aspects of Halo are distinctly not.

 

In Warframe, that experience could be said to be quite similar, alongside the specifics of the badass space ninja magician. Except it's not balanced. The game doesn't reward you for playing like a badass space ninja, at least not as much. It rewards you for spamming the same key over and over again and watching the fire works, disabling the game's AI in one way or another, or rendering yourself functionally immortal so you're never in danger. I would go so far as to say that, eventually, the game ceases to even really be an action game, since playing in that way is one of the least efficient methods of play in order to succeed by the metrics the game itself sets - acquisition of loot and mission success rate and time.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

4 minutes ago, (PS4)TheWanderer17 said:

I mean if thats all you are doing that is pretty boring.  That is not how I play warframe, so I do not get bored.  I do like pressing the BOOM button every now and again though for that power fantasy feel.

Wisp 4 is my favorite power as it is in my opinion one of the coolest looking scenes when active and truly looks overwhelmingly powerful.  Makes the whole world look like it's on fire.  Simply amazing.  That's why I play warframe.

 

For the record neither do I but that is what the majority do and call it gaming...

[Tiltskillet]

Since when has "power fantasy" become a compelling argument against game balance?

It hasn't.

[Voltage]

This slow trend evolved over time because of how DE has conditioned players. I don't believe Warframe was ever a balanced game, but the power ceiling did require hefty investment to reach there. We had Greedy Mag, Aimbot Mesa, Saryn Nukes, etc. However, back then, we had T4 void, daily capped revives, no self revives, the Void Key system, no shield gating, no Adaptation, no Inaros, no Magus Lockdown/Repair/Elevate, no Focus, half the Primed Mods, no Riven Mods, no Helminth abilities, etc. Warframe was still a power fantasy, but it was reeled in. Now what do we have? Well we still have the same enemies from long ago, heavily nerfed, we have insane survivability, dying is trivial and has no consequence, every single Warframe has an Operator to heal them, etc. We've just gotten way more tools with a higher power ceiling and the same enemies for 5+ years. Everytime DE wants to spice things up (like when Fortuna launched), players complained about the enemies being too tough. This happened to Scarlet Spear initially. DE has catered to this crowd and that's why there is never risk involved in a players actions and equipment past a couple hours into the game. Really bad loadouts manage missions, and optimized ones completely steamroll. It's just how the game has formed. People want maximum rewards for the least effort, and DE has said yes to that crowd.

[Zahnny]

DE and the a vocal minority of Warframe's community seems to believe that "power creep" is giving us anything new. As with other bad decisions like removing Universal Medallions from Conclave because of a vocal minority said it was unfair. And to this day I still fail to see why DE listened to the Conclave demands for that.

How often in Warframe do we recieve a new mods? Because the last I can think of was Glassmaker and they're all mediocre bandaid mods to weapons no one uses. Only the Bronco augment is useful. Beyond that, all we got was an attempt at moving some Conclave Warframe augments to Nora and they too were dissapointing.

[Tesseract7777]

1 hour ago, Voltage said:

This slow trend evolved over time because of how DE has conditioned players. I don't believe Warframe was ever a balanced game, but the power ceiling did require hefty investment to reach there. We had Greedy Mag, Aimbot Mesa, Saryn Nukes, etc. However, back then, we had T4 void, daily capped revives, no self revives, the Void Key system, no shield gating, no Adaptation, no Inaros, no Magus Lockdown/Repair/Elevate, no Focus, half the Primed Mods, no Riven Mods, no Helminth abilities, etc. Warframe was still a power fantasy, but it was reeled in. Now what do we have? Well we still have the same enemies from long ago, heavily nerfed, we have insane survivability, dying is trivial and has no consequence, every single Warframe has an Operator to heal them, etc. We've just gotten way more tools with a higher power ceiling and the same enemies for 5+ years. Everytime DE wants to spice things up (like when Fortuna launched), players complained about the enemies being too tough. This happened to Scarlet Spear initially. DE has catered to this crowd and that's why there is never risk involved in a players actions and equipment past a couple hours into the game. Really bad loadouts manage missions, and optimized ones completely steamroll. It's just how the game has formed. People want maximum rewards for the least effort, and DE has said yes to that crowd.

Sad but true. And to some it will never be enough still, until every last semblance of a challenge is stripped from the game. 

I read a thread just the other week with people complaining about how nullifiers are too op, and scrambus/comba should be removed from the game. DE listens to these people too much, and then doesn't want to give us more power because they made the enemies too easy already. I still think self damage from launchers should still be a thing and was very disappointed when I heard they caved to those who don't like getting killed by their own AOE. I don't like instant revives. I don't like what the second one has done to the game especially in terms of how players view their lives now and their fellow Tenno's. Meh. 

[kevoisvevo]

2 hours ago, Aldain said:

So do I, but even if all of that was not a factor I have ZERO faith that many people wouldn't have just done the same Limbo thing.

I'm 100% convinced DE could make a fun, engaging experience with great and consistent rewards and people would complain that they had to do more than press 4 to get said rewards.

I have no faith in the community at large of Warframe whatsoever, maybe that's just my issue, but I keep seeing things that make me lose additional bits of hope I didn't even know I had left, and that has just made me utterly apathetic to the plight of people who want effortless powercreep.

well DE introduced powercreep in the first place, not the players. rivens, umbral mods, acolyte mods and now helminth system. i am 100% convinced DE cannot make a consistent fun engaging mode with great rewards because that would go against their very definition of long hours of grinding. it's the reason why so many things are locked behind many high paywalls with little to nothing to bring back players when they have accomplished that goal. look at steel path where the bosses and some missions are actually fun but the rewards are ass. scarlet spear where the grind was some of the worst i have seen in my life but the rewards was there only for an year. players are just powercreeping to get to the reward part after the fun drains out due to repeating the mission for the 70th time.

[Tesseract7777]

1 hour ago, Zahnny said:

DE and the a vocal minority of Warframe's community seems to believe that "power creep" is giving us anything new. As with other bad decisions like removing Universal Medallions from Conclave because of a vocal minority said it was unfair. And to this day I still fail to see why DE listened to the Conclave demands for that.

How often in Warframe do we recieve a new mods? Because the last I can think of was Glassmaker and they're all mediocre bandaid mods to weapons no one uses. Only the Bronco augment is useful. Beyond that, all we got was an attempt at moving some Conclave Warframe augments to Nora and they too were dissapointing.

It's because DE is afraid of a vocal majority (or minority, who really knows the stats?) of players who tend to be very loud and don't ever want to touch the slightest thing that could be called a challenge with a ten foot pole. Those players have forced them to strip the difficulty from the game over and over and over again. And because they won't stand up to those players for the health of the game, they feel they have made things too easy for the rest of us, and now don't want to give any more progression to the veteran players as they can already trivialize level 9999 Steel Path content. 

I'm not saying, btw, that you don't want a challenge. I'm sure you do. The problem is DE is afraid giving you more progression will make you bored, and making the game properly difficult for vets like you so progression feels necessary again will make that vocal majority of casuals run away.

[OniDax]

Well, if balance is the end all, be all, then the system shouldn't exist at all. DE has a hard enough time balancing the Warframes with their base abilities. They should just scrap the entire system and call it a day.

[(PSN)Madurai-Prime]

It's the same as people that think the game ends at level 60 and people shouldn't have to actually try at anything. 

Don't listen to both sides and do what you want.

[trst]

It's not nor was it ever but unfortunately people are entitled to their opinions I suppose.

It's certainly possible to have a game function both ways but it's typically relegated to some extreme end-game/post end-game content that completely breaks it or some broken rng item combo common in rougelikes.

But for Warframe it was always a powerfantasy and in the early days we just had to work to get there or actually needed to consider having a squad to run content. I suspect the reason some player mentalities began to change and/or crop up are the result of DE piss poor response to the ongoing powercreep. Which is to say we don't receive content remotely relevant to our current power levels until several years after it would have been relevant. Like Steel Path might have been actually hard content if we got it like five years ago.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

2 hours ago, Voltage said:

Everytime DE wants to spice things up (like when Fortuna launched), players complained about the enemies being too tough.

This bit absolutely resonates. Fortuns was fun when it was released then salty tears flooded the forums cos casual players were dying, boo hoo. The whining babies of these forums have killed this game and now DE just cares about their money and bending over backwards for their complaints, see today's nerf of Helminth now requiring only MR 8, which I'm certain someone will still cry about.

[Hypernaut1]

8 minutes ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

This bit absolutely resonates. Fortuns was fun when it was released then salty tears flooded the forums cos casual players were dying, boo hoo. 

This is why i dont get why people are always saying "Its impossible for WF to be difficult" yet time and time again enemies are nerfed to the ground- because they are too difficult. 

Theres always talk about weapon nerfs, yet no talk about the insane buff our entire arsenal got when they got rid of scaling enemy armor. 

[-CdG-Zilchy]

7 minutes ago, Hypernaut1 said:

This is why i dont get why people are always saying "Its impossible for WF to be difficult" yet time and time again enemies are nerfed to the ground- because they are too difficult. 

Theres always talk about weapon nerfs, yet no talk about the insane buff our entire arsenal got when they got rid of scaling enemy armor. 

Drives me up the wall, so many good enemies nerfed. Hell first day of Fortuna I got my ass handed to me by a sniper with an opticor about 300 meters away(I could barely see him thru Rubico scope)  that 1 shot my frame and it was friggin awesome cos then I had to be aware of my surroundings and take down potential threats instead of annihilating the entire map in 1 go. We also had to be aware of rhe beacon level because the original level 4 raknoids with overshields hit pretty hard. I remember the old manics with slash procs, the original bursas etc, all nerfed into the ground to please the casual crowd who want to barely play the game to get their loot.

[stormy505]

4 hours ago, Aldain said:

People were literally complaining that they needed to actually play the game to get the event rewards

Warframe content is *fun* for maybe the first 5 times you play the mission, and that's being generous, after the 100th time of running the same exact mission over and over again and again, I'm not there for the gameplay, i'm there for the rewards. If you want to increase the time to takes to grind in warframe, do it on your own, no need to make everyone else suffer with you.

[Stormhawkaro]

hace 4 horas, Flying_Scorpion dijo:

Since when has "power fantasy" become a compelling argument against game balance?

SiNcE wArFrAmE iS a FuLl PvE gAmE aNd PvE gAmEs DoN't NeEd BaLaNcE. iF yOu WaNt BaLaNcE gO pLaY a PvP gAmE.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

2 minutes ago, Stormhawkaro said:

SiNcE wArFrAmE iS a FuLl PvE gAmE aNd PvE gAmEs DoN't NeEd BaLaNcE. iF yOu WaNt BaLaNcE gO pLaY a PvP gAmE.

That's an absurd statement to go with your absurd text. Of course PVE games can benefit from balance lol, it gives them better gameplay, replayability and longevity.

[Stormhawkaro]

hace 2 minutos, -CdG-Zilchy dijo:

That's an absurd statement to go with your absurd text. Of course PVE games can benefit from balance lol, it gives them better gameplay, replayability and longevity.

Exactly the point since that's an argument i read quite often here ln forums. I expected the dumb text to make the satire obvious but somehow it managed to fail.

[-CdG-Zilchy]

2 minutes ago, Stormhawkaro said:

Exactly the point since that's an argument i read quite often here ln forums. I expected the dumb text to make the satire obvious but somehow it managed to fail.

Oh I apologize. No I didn't realise lol, given some of the people you see post on here 😄

[(PSN)robotwars7]

6 hours ago, Tesseract7777 said:

We need a better balance. We can find a better balance. 

sounds to me like you're putting stock in us all somehow agreeing for once. I won't tell you what to believe, but personally I think we've more chance of Excal prime coming back than we do of agreeing on balance.

one gamer's balance is another gamer's tedium. 

 

[Marvelous_A]

It's a quite straightforward way to write an otherwise complicated argument.

Yes. Being a power fantasy (together with being a cooperative PVE game) is not a reason to throw game balance out of the window.