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


Flying_Scorpion

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1 minute ago, Loza03 said:

Yes, you can do that, but that doesn't make it fun. Going up against over a dozen hitscan enemies that can oneshot you (which was my experience in earlier Railjack before Shield Gating) that take several seconds to kill isn't fun, but neither is dropping god mode on them. Powering yourself down stops being fun once you realise that the enemies aren't designed around doing that. Like it or not, every combat encounter is a two-way engagement - the enemies must be well designed.

And even then, even if you do find beating your head against a wall fun, you then come down to the fact that the grind complaint? That only gets worse if you power down. Because the boss fights are enemies too. And consider this - if you find getting timegated annoying when you're barely even trying, how fun do you think it is on try 300 when the boss is designed for OP players who are borderline invincible, and therefore can shred you in one and a half because you're only 'decently tanky', and that's still an order of magnitude lower? Or likewise, takes far longer because the boss designed to take orders of magnitude more damage?

The game, at the end of the day is about fun. Not about being able to do the thing, but for that thing to be fun. Fun is the start and end of this conversation, and if someone finds that the playstyle they find fun is no longer considered when designing the game, and the playstyles that are are also not fun for them, they have been left behind. And that is far too many at this time.

If you don't have fun when you power down or when you're overpowered, then the game is not and will never be fun for you. You're making sketchy arguments to validate the idea of balance being important as an objective truth.

The game will never, ever, be a tailored experience. For that to happen, the mod system would need to disappear and the enemies would need to be scaled around a narrow band of damage output.

Everything you're complaining about is easily mended by DE simply not catering to maximum output players, which is what I argued in the first place. Also you don't have to press randomize and try to beat the content with no-forma gear and only three mods on each piece. You're still supposed to make an effort, so if you're arguing that you should be able to beat the game with anything, then you've lost me completely; I have zero sympathy for that line of reasoning. Advocate for it if you want, but keep me out of it.

14 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

And here's where I think your concept of balance is, honestly, wrong.

See, I would consider both Team Fortress 2 and Overwatch to be balanced games, more or less. Yet Team Fortress 2 puts huge emphasis on individual performance and extremely powerful abilities (relatively speaking), whilst Overwatch does not, and this is despite the fact the games are in the same genre (down to the subgenre of 'hero shooter') and even having several characters who are alike in almost all but visual design - Widowmaker and Sniper being the most clear example, but Medic and Mercy share major similarities and I'm fairly sure Roadhog takes a breather from aersolised Sandvich.

How can both be balanced if they have such similar mechanics yet deliver entirely different experiences? Because balance is simply the means by which the developers ensure that experience is delivered. It is not rigid. It varies hugely from game to game. This can be seen by the one TF2 clone character in Overwatch that ceased to be so - Torbjorn. Torb used to be as 1:1 with Engineer as Widow and Sniper, but Engineers core design was innate to how TF2 is balanced - as a chaotic experience that relies on both extreme power highs and extreme power lows, alongside it being 12vs12. Overwatch was designed as an Esport - as deeply teamwork focused, so it balances its characters to have fewer strengths, but also fewer weaknesses, and drops the team size. Engineer was designed for chaos from the ground up, so the transplanted Torbjorn needed to be reworked for something that fit Overwatch.

Balance didn't kill Blizzard games for you - Blizzard's merely took on a different design philosophy you don't agree with. Balance was only how they achieved that design philosophy.

 

 

The irony here is that 'letting players have fun however they want' requires balance to achieve. Because Warframe doesn't. Warframe in Co-op lets one player take all the work from other players and actively prevent them from having fun, and in solo the same thing with extra steps. If you want players to have fun however they want, that innately requires that players will progress at roughly even rates and have similar success rates however they play.

Of course you think I'm wrong, because it's an opinion you disagree with. We're looking for completely different things in games.

All of the Team Fortresses are more fun than Overwatch. I include QTF in that.

Balance absolutely killed the Blizzard games, proven by the fact that Vanilla WoW is *MASSIVELY* popular and actually fun compared to retail. People reluctantly went back to retail because that's where the new content is and you can only do old content so many times, even if it resets.
Balance became their goal because people kept whining about their class not measuring up and in WoTLK it became a massive step towards making the gameplay terrible. As expansions kept being added, classes kept being watered down and in the last couple of expansions they removed more and more abilities from people and scaling the gameplay, making levels completely irrelevant.
It's not disagreeing with philosophy, it's understanding in hindsight how they screwed up. They did an admirable job trying to change things, but ultimately they failed by putting too much emphasis on balance.

Your last comment is an often repeated complaint that no one wants to admit is pointless complaining.
If you have trouble with people "ruining your fun" then your first obligation is to remove yourself from the game, make an effort to find people to have fun with playing, aka finding a clan and make friends. You will never be able to not be annoyed by people and it's your problem, not theirs.

I completely disagree with what you think is balance or what's needed to make the game work. Sometimes you just have to let go of the reigns and see what happens. If you micromanage everything, you're balancing the gameplay to death.

What you're arguing is nothing I haven't seen a thousand times before. I completely understand where you're coming from, but you don't seem to understand where I'm coming from. You just assume it's wrong because things are balanced for "reasons". Yes they are and that's why we're having this talk in the first place and why people are bored, angry and want something, anything, to happen with the game.

Take it for what it is, if you get it, that's cool. If you think I'm wrong, then this is not for you. I probably know your viewpoints better than you do, I've certainly seen people make better arguments along the same lines and it just doesn't apply. I recommend playing single player shooters where everything is a tailored and thoroughly balanced experience.

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2 minutes ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

Nyx, Banshee, Limbo, Nova, Vauban, Frost, Hildryn, Hydroid, Nidus, Loki, Equinox, Excalibur, Gara, Ivara, Khora, Octavia, Revenant, Zephyr. 

Nyx: Chaos with Augment, decent option but the entire rest of her kit is meh.

Banshee: Last I checked her augment made Sound Quake even WORSE as CC... And it's already pretty damn bad in the context of the Open World.

Limbo: ONE lockdown location...

Nova: When it's one hit from a hitscan weapon her slow doesn't actually matter all that much.

Vauban: One of those fourish I was thinking about and actually probably a decent option assuming you don't get shot from outside the range because Open World.

Frost: Where the hell is his long term CC coming from exactly?

Hidlryn: Self Centered CC locks down a distant area?

Hydroid: I'm assuming you mean Barrage here because you can only have one Kraken and a high range Hydroid to try to lockdown a wide area is going to be VERY inconsistent about it.

Nidus: Long term CC where exactly?

Loki: Irradiating Disarm? Long Term CC? Dafuq? It's not going to lockdown fresh spawns at all. Are you talking Decoy? How the hell is that supposed to work?

Equinox: Irradiating Disarm problem all over again. You are not locking down anywhere you are not actively paying attention to even with the Rest and Rage augment. And if you are arguing for the Slash Proc... Hildryn problem again.

Excalibur: Where the HELLS is his enduring CC?

Gara: Glass Walls are not CC and I REALLY doubt you meant Spectrorage... I sure hope you didn't mean Spectrorage... Also, you only have one set of walls.

Ivara: How exactly are you locking down areas without active attention?

Khora: One of the fourish I was thinking of, Strangledome is pretty handy.

Octavia: One mobile CC point, at most two CC points in general, not usually enough range, survives Open World mostly by being invisible.

Revenant: Thralls? Could work... maybe...

Zephyr: I find tornado's incredibly inconsistent.

13 minutes ago, -CdG-Zilchy said:

Do you need more CC frames than that? You don't need to keep them coming one direction consistently, you just have to control them so they can't attack you, nothing more.

A. Nullifiers

B. Yes you do in fact need them coming in one direction only because otherwise you need to check every single spawn for Opticors and if there's multiple spawns at once I guess you just die if you guess which one has the Opticor wrong.

C. Most CC in this game doesn't get past 100 meters, very little of it can affect things you are not paying attention to right that instant, when you are regularly being engaged from 150 meters or more away with untelegraphed instakills VERY few frames actually have the sort of CC that is useful there.

 

Post nerf the Vallis is pretty handleable. Still die sometimes to random knockdowns from nowhere but mostly thing are either well telegraphed or not gonna kill you with no warning, especially post shield gate and slash change. But you have some... "interesting" solutions. My own solution has mostly been "Height" In the caves basically only the Raknoids retain that extra difficulty in answering and most everything else can usually be answered by either staying in Archwing(especially Amesha) or being on top of a mushroom tree.

 

There's parts of the Vallis(Caves, Corpus Bases, a few tight valley areas) where stuff is very dealable, but out in the open stuff gets REALLY painful.

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9 hours ago, Ethorin said:

Nyx: Chaos with Augment, decent option but the entire rest of her kit is meh.

Banshee: Last I checked her augment made Sound Quake even WORSE as CC... And it's already pretty damn bad in the context of the Open World.

Limbo: ONE lockdown location...

Nova: When it's one hit from a hitscan weapon her slow doesn't actually matter all that much.

Vauban: One of those fourish I was thinking about and actually probably a decent option assuming you don't get shot from outside the range because Open World.

Frost: Where the hell is his long term CC coming from exactly?

Hidlryn: Self Centered CC locks down a distant area?

Hydroid: I'm assuming you mean Barrage here because you can only have one Kraken and a high range Hydroid to try to lockdown a wide area is going to be VERY inconsistent about it.

Nidus: Long term CC where exactly?

Loki: Irradiating Disarm? Long Term CC? Dafuq? It's not going to lockdown fresh spawns at all. Are you talking Decoy? How the hell is that supposed to work?

Equinox: Irradiating Disarm problem all over again. You are not locking down anywhere you are not actively paying attention to even with the Rest and Rage augment. And if you are arguing for the Slash Proc... Hildryn problem again.

Excalibur: Where the HELLS is his enduring CC?

Gara: Glass Walls are not CC and I REALLY doubt you meant Spectrorage... I sure hope you didn't mean Spectrorage... Also, you only have one set of walls.

Ivara: How exactly are you locking down areas without active attention?

Khora: One of the fourish I was thinking of, Strangledome is pretty handy.

Octavia: One mobile CC point, at most two CC points in general, not usually enough range, survives Open World mostly by being invisible.

Revenant: Thralls? Could work... maybe...

Zephyr: I find tornado's incredibly inconsistent.

A. Nullifiers

B. Yes you do in fact need them coming in one direction only because otherwise you need to check every single spawn for Opticors and if there's multiple spawns at once I guess you just die if you guess which one has the Opticor wrong.

C. Most CC in this game doesn't get past 100 meters, very little of it can affect things you are not paying attention to right that instant, when you are regularly being engaged from 150 meters or more away with untelegraphed instakills VERY few frames actually have the sort of CC that is useful there.

 

Post nerf the Vallis is pretty handleable. Still die sometimes to random knockdowns from nowhere but mostly thing are either well telegraphed or not gonna kill you with no warning, especially post shield gate and slash change. But you have some... "interesting" solutions. My own solution has mostly been "Height" In the caves basically only the Raknoids retain that extra difficulty in answering and most everything else can usually be answered by either staying in Archwing(especially Amesha) or being on top of a mushroom tree.

 

There's parts of the Vallis(Caves, Corpus Bases, a few tight valley areas) where stuff is very dealable, but out in the open stuff gets REALLY painful.

Nyx - Chaos with or without augment
Banshee sound quake can lockdown a MASSIVE area.
Limbo cataclysm is enormous
Nova is a LOT tankier than you think, learn how to build her. I did the entire Steel Path with Nova, can't be that squishy.
Vauban - if you get hit using Vauban, you're doing it wrong
Frost, I call it a frozen tuindra build, range and duration. Figure out the rest.
Hildryn - Pillage can lockdown enemies, add duration
Hydroid - you're a puddle using tentacles, not hard
Nidus - place the larva near you, nothing will be charging you down
Loki - invisible plus disarm, not hard to understand
Equinox - yes sleep plus augment, much more effective than you think. Alternatively you can use Maim to stun and take them out with the AoE charged with a toxin melee weapon.
Gara - walls are effective if you choose your battleground wisely
Ivara - clearly you haven't heard of noise arrows, or large duration and range sleep arrows. You're invisible, what do you think is going to attack you?
Khora - Ensnare obviously
Octavia - Mallet plus you're invisible
Revenant - yes thralls, plus you're invincible so who cares
Zephyr - Turbulence

A - go look at the Miter augment. And you're also only likely to encounter nullies in the Vallis if you're farming toroids, which again I wouldn't be bringing a primary for damage so I'd bring a miter.
B - Choose your battleground better, if you choose to stand in the open that's your own funeral
C - essentially if you're just visiting the Vallis for conservation, fishing, mining etc all you need is a damn silencer mod. If you're farming toroids, all you need is Khora. I find it impossible to die in the Vallis unless I do something stupid against Profit Taker. None of the other units are capable of killing a decently built frame.

Edit: Oh I forgot that stupid thermia fracture rubbish. I solo'd that with Mesa, then got bored and switched to Frost. That has nullies but it's not a challenge, you don't have to really kill that fast for those missions.

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12 minutes ago, Smilomaniac said:

If you don't have fun when you power down or when you're overpowered, then the game is not and will never be fun for you. You're making sketchy arguments to validate the idea of balance being important as an objective truth.

The game will never, ever, be a tailored experience. For that to happen, the mod system would need to disappear and the enemies would need to be scaled around a narrow band of damage output.

Everything you're complaining about is easily mended by DE simply not catering to maximum output players, which is what I argued in the first place. Also you don't have to press randomize and try to beat the content with no-forma gear and only three mods on each piece. You're still supposed to make an effort, so if you're arguing that you should be able to beat the game with anything, then you've lost me completely; I have zero sympathy for that line of reasoning. Advocate for it if you want, but keep me out of it.

To be more specific: I find I have the least fun using high-end strategies, and using low end strateies, but I also find that using those strategies is consistently less fun in newer content, particularly those with newer enemies. Those enemies consistently appear to be designed for a higher degree of power creep (a good example are the Gokstad Officers on release), and so that, to me, lends credence to the idea that designed enemies for the power crept gameplay and the heights of power are less fun to use other strategies on.

 

DE cannot simply stop catering to maximum output players without also removing that maximum output. If they leave that maximum output in the game, and start designing around the middle of the road, then... well, that's actually pretty similar to where we are now. People feel like the loot they have is less fulfilling, that the gameplay doesn't change from update to update because you just do the same thing you've been doing for the past hundred hours (or that DE stopped using the on-foot gameplay they came for) and that the grind balance is flawed. That's what bad balance is. Bad balance is the failure to properly deliver the experience intended. In Warframe, that revolves around combat and looting, and overpowered gear causes problems for both.

17 minutes ago, Smilomaniac said:

Of course you think I'm wrong, because it's an opinion you disagree with. We're looking for completely different things in games.

All of the Team Fortresses are more fun than Overwatch. I include QTF in that.

Balance absolutely killed the Blizzard games, proven by the fact that Vanilla WoW is *MASSIVELY* popular and actually fun compared to retail. People reluctantly went back to retail because that's where the new content is and you can only do old content so many times, even if it resets.
Balance became their goal because people kept whining about their class not measuring up and in WoTLK it became a massive step towards making the gameplay terrible. As expansions kept being added, classes kept being watered down and in the last couple of expansions they removed more and more abilities from people and scaling the gameplay, making levels completely irrelevant.
It's not disagreeing with philosophy, it's understanding in hindsight how they screwed up. They did an admirable job trying to change things, but ultimately they failed by putting too much emphasis on balance.

I don't play World of Warcraft, so I'll admit that I can't attest to that. But I do have experience in Overwatch and TF2, which is why I kept the discussion there, especially since you indicated that the design philosophy is similar. Nevertheless, if I had to hazard a guess, it's that the philosophy that works for Overwatch doesn't work for WoW because they're different games, and thus balancing decisions made in service of that don't serve to make the game more fun for the playerbase. But, again, I can't say for certain, because I lack the experience.

What I know for sure, however, is that it's impossible to just say 'TF2 is more fun than Overwatch' because they're designed to do different things and appeal to different audiences. Overwatch is designed to be an Esport - TF2 isn't. At the end of the day, game design comes down to tools. Tools are not good or bad in and of themselves, it is how they are used. Balancing decisions - the use of those tools - that are good for one game are bad for another, because what is fun for one game is not fun for another.

31 minutes ago, Smilomaniac said:

Your last comment is an often repeated complaint that no one wants to admit is pointless complaining.
If you have trouble with people "ruining your fun" then your first obligation is to remove yourself from the game, make an effort to find people to have fun with playing, aka finding a clan and make friends. You will never be able to not be annoyed by people and it's your problem, not theirs.

I completely disagree with what you think is balance or what's needed to make the game work. Sometimes you just have to let go of the reigns and see what happens. If you micromanage everything, you're balancing the gameplay to death.

What you're arguing is nothing I haven't seen a thousand times before. I completely understand where you're coming from, but you don't seem to understand where I'm coming from. You just assume it's wrong because things are balanced for "reasons". Yes they are and that's why we're having this talk in the first place and why people are bored, angry and want something, anything, to happen with the game.

Take it for what it is, if you get it, that's cool. If you think I'm wrong, then this is not for you. I probably know your viewpoints better than you do, I've certainly seen people make better arguments along the same lines and it just doesn't apply. I recommend playing single player shooters where everything is a tailored and thoroughly balanced experience.

Let me try repeat myself, but be clearer.

If I understand your claims correctly, you want specific builds and playstyles to be more powerful than others, more successful than others and to generally be better than others. You also want everyone to be able to play however they want.

As far as I understand it, however, these are mutually exclusive design philosophies. If specific builds are more powerful, more successful and better, then players who do not want to use those builds and playstyles are disincentivised for doing so by receiving less loot and having a much longer grind experience. Likewise, in order to encourage people to play however they want, then every style of play must be equally as rewarding and engaging as each other, and no one playstyle so dominant that doing otherwise will produce a much less fulfilling experience.

Balance is merely the tools by which those design philosophies are achieved. Nothing more, nothing less.

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16 hours ago, Flying_Scorpion said:

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

Since people started having a really warped perspective of a power fantasy in games. To some, a "power fantasy" is being able to waste hoards of enemies at no effort and with no threat. But really satisfying power is nothing if not earned. If there was never any threat or or effort, did you win because you were powerful, or did win because your opponent was incredibly weak?

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40 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

DE cannot simply stop catering to maximum output players without also removing that maximum output. If they leave that maximum output in the game, and start designing around the middle of the road, then... well, that's actually pretty similar to where we are now.

They can and should. It's not where we are now, they've rolled out a long line of nerfs for a good long while, reigning in what some think were the most powerful things and some that weren't, but were only whined about a lot, one example being the Tonkor.

42 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

if I had to hazard a guess, it's that the philosophy that works for Overwatch doesn't work for WoW because they're different games

It doesn't work for Overwatch, it's plagued with constant rebalancing in attempts to deal with meta setups. The only solution they haven't tried is to up the numbers on everything and try again from there. Might work, might not, but it'd be a lot more fun. What they've succeeded at, is making a broad appeal game with an extreme emphasis on everything surrounding the game, essentially fluff, visual design and so on. It's a literal success, but it's not a good one.

I'm happy to concede that it's subjective, but I don't agree that it works well for them.

47 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

If I understand your claims correctly, you want specific builds and playstyles to be more powerful than others, more successful than others and to generally be better than others. You also want everyone to be able to play however they want.

I want merit based builds, so if you design it to be powerful, it will be powerful. If you can concoct a ludicrously powerful build (which is possible atm with Mag), then you deserve to absolutely ruin everything in the game to your hearts content. If it becomes popular, so be it, if people spent the effort to forma everything to achieve it, they deserve it.
When I say people should play however they want, I don't mean they should succeed regardless. Making more ways viable to approach missions in variable ways could be one way of doing it, such as allowing a frame like Baruuk to incapacitate/sleep an entire elimination mission and counting it as a success.
Sure, it's probably easy, but it's also a unique approach to a mission.

54 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

As far as I understand it, however, these are mutually exclusive design philosophies. If specific builds are more powerful, more successful and better, then players who do not want to use those builds and playstyles are disincentivised for doing so by receiving less loot and having a much longer grind experience. Likewise, in order to encourage people to play however they want, then every style of play must be equally as rewarding and engaging as each other, and no one playstyle so dominant that doing otherwise will produce a much less fulfilling experience.

Balance is merely the tools by which those design philosophies are achieved. Nothing more, nothing less.

They would be mutually exlusive, but you didn't understand, so it doesn't apply to what I'm saying.

Yes, some people will be turned off from the game and others will find it more interesting. Sometimes you make hard decisions and pick one group over another. Sometimes some warframes will be useless and others will be the best. That's reality, you can't please everyone, nor should you try to, because it ends up in what Blizzard has done; Watered down gameplay.

Not every style of play deserves to be valid and/or rewarding, that's a utopian ideal that I do not support. If you have the mods and forma, there is no warframe that isn't good enough to beat everything, so it's not even a concern. It might not be rewarding because abilities are rarely changed, but them's the breaks.

Balance is overrated and highly subjective. It's used as a crutch for people to whine about the game, which on this forum is almost always.

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2 hours ago, SenorClipClop said:

To some, a "power fantasy" is being able to waste hoards of enemies at no effort and with no threat. But really satisfying power is nothing if not earned. If there was never any threat or or effort,

You've been playing too long.

 

Go make a new account and see how little effort Warframe is.

 

This is like saying "I'm lvl 9999 with 40 million stats in Disgaea 5, god this game is so easy!"

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15 minutes ago, Ethorin said:

You've been playing too long.

Accurate.

15 minutes ago, Ethorin said:

Go make a new account and see how little effort Warframe is.

This is like saying "I'm lvl 9999 with 40 million stats in Disgaea 5, god this game is so easy!"

I'm referring to gameplay effort, not grind effort. I'm saying that the biggest element in an effective power fantasy is skill, in being good at the game, typically on a mission-to-mission basis. Me trivializing hordes of enemies in Warframe has very, very little to do with skill and everything to do with understanding how Mods work and having them to work with. The vast majority of the collection I owe my power to was not won through skill or effort, it was won through patience doing the same thing over and over that I could get through just as fine at MR5 as I could at MR20. Or I just grinded out Prime junk ,traded that and bought the stuff for plat.

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25 minutes ago, SenorClipClop said:

I'm referring to gameplay effort, not grind effort.

...There's a reason I said "Disgaea 5".

26 minutes ago, SenorClipClop said:

doing the same thing over and over that I could get through just as fine at MR5 as I could at MR20. Or I just grinded out Prime junk ,traded that and bought the stuff for plat.

Runescape, both versions.

 

Look, if you're bored of Warframe that's fine. But just because a game says "the challenge is in making a good build" doesn't mean that game is bad.

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12 minutes ago, Ethorin said:

But just because a game says "the challenge is in making a good build" doesn't mean that game is bad.

No, it just means that it doesn't offer a challenge in the actual gameplay. Making your numbers more numbery isn't a challenge.

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1 hour ago, Smilomaniac said:

They can and should. It's not where we are now, they've rolled out a long line of nerfs for a good long while, reigning in what some think were the most powerful things and some that weren't, but were only whined about a lot, one example being the Tonkor.

They can't when the maximum power might as well be playing a different game. For perspective's sake, I'm looking at the likes of Lazy Tank Inaros or permanent stasis Limbo here. Playstyles which involve little to no interaction with enemies whatsoever - playstyles which beg the question of whether Warframe even qualifies as an 'action' game.

1 hour ago, Smilomaniac said:

It doesn't work for Overwatch, it's plagued with constant rebalancing in attempts to deal with meta setups. The only solution they haven't tried is to up the numbers on everything and try again from there. Might work, might not, but it'd be a lot more fun. What they've succeeded at, is making a broad appeal game with an extreme emphasis on everything surrounding the game, essentially fluff, visual design and so on. It's a literal success, but it's not a good one.

I'm happy to concede that it's subjective, but I don't agree that it works well for them.

Actually they have, it's called 'total mayhem'. Numbers up on everything, faster ult charge, faster ability regeneration and more health. And it is boring. Everyone takes way too long to kill and it just comes down to tons and tons of spamming shields, usually.

Trying to insert chaos into a game not designed for it is a bad idea. It works as a side mode, but it's certainly not a model to design the whole game around.

2 hours ago, Smilomaniac said:

I want merit based builds, so if you design it to be powerful, it will be powerful. If you can concoct a ludicrously powerful build (which is possible atm with Mag), then you deserve to absolutely ruin everything in the game to your hearts content. If it becomes popular, so be it, if people spent the effort to forma everything to achieve it, they deserve it.

Do they though? Do they deserve the worthless loot, the repetitive gameplay and faster burnout?

The short-term benefits of the power trip aren't worth core aspects of the game that are sabotaged by improper balancing. This isn't a single-player where the player is expected to drop the game eventually either, which is where this philosophy is most commonly seen - you're expected to play this game long term. If you can destroy content, that means you can destroy new content, which makes the new content less impactful because it requires nothing new from them and provides them with no new experiences because it's practically identical to play as every other piece of content, and what they get from it is objectively not as worthwhile as what they already have.

In order for a game like this to succeed, careful steps must be taken so that there is always room available to grow, preferably without compromising core gameplay loops, and Warframe has absolutely not succeeded in that respect. There's nowhere to go from here.

2 hours ago, Smilomaniac said:

When I say people should play however they want, I don't mean they should succeed regardless. Making more ways viable to approach missions in variable ways could be one way of doing it, such as allowing a frame like Baruuk to incapacitate/sleep an entire elimination mission and counting it as a success.
Sure, it's probably easy, but it's also a unique approach to a mission.

That'd be good, I agree, but it's also quite impractical, and doesn't necessarily address the above issue.

2 hours ago, Smilomaniac said:

They would be mutually exlusive, but you didn't understand, so it doesn't apply to what I'm saying.

Yes, some people will be turned off from the game and others will find it more interesting. Sometimes you make hard decisions and pick one group over another. Sometimes some warframes will be useless and others will be the best. That's reality, you can't please everyone, nor should you try to, because it ends up in what Blizzard has done; Watered down gameplay.

Alright, glad we've got that established. I disagree, but that's a different debate.

 

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There is no powerfantasy in Warframe since the most 'powerful' and efficient methods kill action gameplay and diminish player agency. So there is just dull grind and waitwalls. And the way to have any powerfantasy you have to do the opposite and underpower yourself and use inefficient weapons. And play solo.

A super-rifle that can one-shot enemies might be OP but feels fun and it's fine - cause you still aim and shoot it, it makes you feel like you are a powerful action hero. And it doens't ruin the coop since it wont kill every enemy at once so everyone in the squad can enjoy shooting enemies.  Contrast to: a carpet nuke that wipes the map  - you dont need to aim or even see the enemies, if just kills everyone, as it kills gameplay and reduces player agency to spamming a button - even an automated scrip could do it. Its efficient for farm but detrimental to fun. How other games do it - if they give you such powers they put heavy cooldwns and costs on it, so its still engaging because you need to time it right and feels awesome if you pull it off in the right moment and  position, while not ruining the game since you cant spam it. Power should come with limits and require decision-making or skill to use to still feel good.

Too bad DE doesnt understand it, they dont know how to make the powerfantasy right while keeping the game healthy and coop alive. Steve once said 'we dont want Homer's bird to play the game for you (reffering to 1-button kill-all spam), but then they forgot about it and started to add game-plays-itself abilities that ruined the game.

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To some extent I think DE is at fault, because they themselves have pushed the notion of "power fantasy" when trying to excuse how trivially easy they've allowed their game to become in the past. However, the reason people advocate it (and I don't think that many truly do, as it's mostly just the same subgroup of people on the forums, and little elsewhere) I think is fairly simple: players in any game hate nerfs, and will fight tooth and nail against them, while latching onto any excuse to advocate against them. In this particular case, the convenient argument was power fantasy, despite the fact that Warframe is one of the very few games with a power fantasy that has proven unable to meaningfully challenge the player. The argument itself makes no sense, and falls apart the moment one looks at virtually any other game on the market, but because forums tend to act as an echo chamber, that's not relevant to the people who trot it out whenever talk comes of balancing some part of the game. 

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7 hours ago, Monolake said:

Too bad DE doesnt understand it, they dont know how to make the powerfantasy right while keeping the game healthy and coop alive. Steve once said 'we dont want Homer's bird to play the game for you (reffering to 1-button kill-all spam), but then they forgot about it and started to add game-plays-itself abilities that ruined the game.

You make some very good points, but I don't think this one is super accurate anymore. It certainly used to be, from about 2017 to 2019 with powercreeping of items and a disregard for players' ability to handwave Energy, the one limiting factor to our cheese. But the devs have more recently come out with features that deliver on power without making things idle: Gauss is a great example with his Battery mechanic; Ember similarly (though 4-spam is still whatever) and Wisp is effective when you are active with her. The Enraged augment even exemplifies their new outlook, with that extra power limiting itself with a flexible cooldown. Steel Path limits pizza use. DE is moving forward with more intelligent iterations. However, some older poor decisions are still around, and we're stuck with them.

I think we're stuck with Homer's bird playing the game for us with several setups because so many players would have aneurisms if that were no longer the case. Warframe needs to retain players and give them what they want, and so many of us have calcified their desire for lazy nuke spam, staking their interest in the game on it. Unless the devs take the risk of alienating a lot of players, we're stuck with this.

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7 hours ago, Monolake said:

Too bad DE doesnt understand it, they dont know how to make the powerfantasy right while keeping the game healthy and coop alive. Steve once said 'we dont want Homer's bird to play the game for you (reffering to 1-button kill-all spam), but then they forgot about it and started to add game-plays-itself abilities that ruined the game.

You make some very good points, but I don't think this one is super accurate anymore. It certainly used to be, from about 2017 to 2019 with powercreeping of items and a disregard for players' ability to handwave Energy, the one limiting factor to our cheese. But the devs have more recently come out with features that deliver on power without making things idle: Gauss is a great example with his Battery mechanic; Ember similarly (though 4-spam is still whatever) and Wisp is effective when you are active with her. The Enraged augment even exemplifies their new outlook, with that extra power limiting itself with a flexible cooldown. Steel Path limits pizza use. DE is moving forward with more intelligent iterations. However, some older poor decisions are still around, and we're stuck with them.

I think we're stuck with Homer's bird playing the game for us with several setups because so many players would have aneurisms if that were no longer the case. Warframe needs to retain players and give them what they want, and so many of us have calcified their desire for lazy nuke spam, staking their interest in the game on it. Unless the devs take the risk of alienating a lot of players, we're stuck with this.

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On 2020-08-20 at 2:16 AM, Flying_Scorpion said:

That is all. Feel free to trash me now because I said something that conflicts with your worldview.

Sorry... I can't. You bring up a very interesting issue here and regardless of whether anyone agrees or not... It needed to be said.... 

Soooo:

On 2020-08-20 at 2:16 AM, Flying_Scorpion said:

Warframe is an action game.

Actually it's more than that....

Like every single other game since 2008 (that's when I first noticed this trend) Warframe is an Action RPG... Or an Action Game with RPG Elements.... Or an Action Game with an Abstract Progression System based on Incrementing gameplay related numerical values in meaningless ways.

And il be honest with you... I think every game like this has Balance Issues simply because that is the nature of Abstract Progression Systems (RPG Elements).... 

Do you have any idea when was the last time we had a true honest to god Action Game ? Those things are hard to come by in 2020.... They sure as hell don't sell as much as the current design trend of tossing levelling up skill trees into everything.... 

Which is a shame because I love action games 😞

that being said... I don't think this is Warframe's actual problem... I mean it's obviously a factor. But I think the real problem is sneaker than this.

On 2020-08-20 at 2:16 AM, Flying_Scorpion said:

You know what separates edge of your seat "action" from falling asleep in your chair "action"? If the protagonist is actually put at risk. Like if they *might* actually die or fail or whatever. If the protagonist effortlessly overcame any semblance of a challenge, it would become predictable and boring

The problem with Warframe is the binary nature of how the go about Implementing Risks and Advantages...

As it is right now... Any time you aren't a mass murdering god then the potential for whatever it is you are doing has a very high chance of failing...

You need to have 80%+ Life Support at all times.

You need to use Chroma for Profit Taker...

You have to kill enemies within 5 Seconds of them appearing on your screen...

You have to lock down the entire room so that nothing moves....

 

If for whatever reason you aren't doing this... Failure comes so swiftly and you have no way to recover quickly...

Take the Life Support example... If you are in a Survival mission and Life Support is around 50% most of the time... A sudden dip below that value can easily spiral all the way to 0 because of a single mistake....

If theres Anywhere you are going to find the problem with Balancing this game... It's somewhere in there.

 

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I agree that game needs to be balanced problem is that DE cares about balance only when it suits them, for example rivens are really bad for the game balance and DE doesnt care because it brings them money, stat stick with amazing riven can make  some of frames extremly broken but DE ignores it, meanwhile they nerf some of helminth abilities that arent even close to rivens in how much power they provide, whats more this nerf doesnt even achieve what its supposed to achieve, over half of abilities are completly useless and even roar with just 5% bonus would better then them, and even if they removed the most popular choices from the new system I would still not take those abilties, I would rather take some of helmith abilities over them, for example single use ability power buff is still superior to majority of abilities we can get from other frames.

 

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17 hours ago, SenorClipClop said:

To some, a "power fantasy" is being able to waste hoards of enemies at no effort and with no threat

I don't know what you mean, I saw this old dude putting down ant powder the other day. What a legend. I could almost feel the power radiating from him as he set his trap to kill all the little buggers. And what's more, he knew it, he knew how powerful he looked. He flexed his biceps a bit just to show off, gave me a wink as well.

I'm not gay, but man was I tempted. I only wish I could be that powerful.

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11 hours ago, DeMonkey said:

I don't know what you mean, I saw this old dude putting down ant powder the other day. What a legend. I could almost feel the power radiating from him as he set his trap to kill all the little buggers. And what's more, he knew it, he knew how powerful he looked. He flexed his biceps a bit just to show off, gave me a wink as well.

I'm not gay, but man was I tempted. I only wish I could be that powerful.

It was at this point and time that Monkey realised... 

It was time to put down the crack pipe.

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On 2020-08-20 at 2:16 AM, Flying_Scorpion said:

Warframe is an action game. You know what separates edge of your seat "action" from falling asleep in your chair "action"? If the protagonist is actually put at risk. Like if they *might* actually die or fail or whatever. If the protagonist effortlessly overcame any semblance of a challenge, it would become predictable and boring. If the protagonist barely manages to overcome the challenge, it keeps you on the edge of your seat.

That is all. Feel free to trash me now because I said something that conflicts with your worldview.

since its inception I guess. thats the main driving point of the game, and powerfantasy hase NOTHING to to with gamebalance at all, a game can be balanced around those fantasies.. not dumb down the fantasy to achieve some false sense of balance when there are a huge majority of frames that just outshine old and neglected frames that have been left alone for years.

so where is your balance? why make everything grey and weak and boring, when you can just have the game be player driven, with player agency at its core AND THEN balance around that, give players new and exciting challanges.. not by making stupid enemys that are just immun to everything or kill you at an instance, but rather have compelling attack petterns and movements, stuff you need to work around but still be able to use your full potential to face those threads.. and let me face those threads with an equal power level for each and every single warframe

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10 minutes ago, SmokinDice said:

when you can just have the game be player driven, with player agency at its core AND THEN balance around that, give players new and exciting challanges.. not by making stupid enemys that are just immun to everything or kill you at an instance, but rather have compelling attack petterns and movements, stuff you need to work around but still be able to use your full potential to face those threads.. and let me face those threads with an equal power level for each and every single warframe

You're definitely smoking something, but I don't think it's dice.

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See here's the problem..... where is the line? 

At what point do you considder something to be falling asleep in your chair action vs edge of your seat action and at what point does edge of your seat action become eyerolling this is just dumb action? 

As Warframe stands the thing that keeps balance from being a thing is -drum roll ples- a total and complete lack of scaling and witthout that there can never be balance. Because it doesn't matter how much you balance the end game (insert lulz warframe doesn't has endgaemz) it will always trivialize everything that comes before it. 

Tho there is an inherent issue with scaling, in that you run the distinct risk of making everything feel samey. Which is worse the lvl 1 enemies feeling like they are made from paper machete or the lvl 1 enemies feeling just like the lvl 10 enemies that feel just like the level 40 enemies that feel just like the level 80 enemies etc. 

Which refreshes the initial question of "at what point do things shift from one state to the other?" which is entirely subjective~

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