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

[ranks21]

ahh I left the game for a few months and theyre still trying to revive a dead horse >> balancing the game<< ??? really, since open beta went live and this nonsense reared its ugly head because certain players ego got crushed, they are grasping at straws all this time.

this power fantasy of a game will and never will be balanced. and just like every other video game, once you know the ins and outs of it, that game becomes easy for you to the point you can give valuable advice within the game play.

so if you don't like the imperfections of Warframe, then there are tons of games that's out there. surely youll find one to your likings instead of complaining here about what you came and enjoyed and ultimately will leave.

[Cloud]

On 2020-08-20 at 2:40 AM, TheTodesfall said:

I have over 4000 hours in WF and I haven't played in over half a year. I picked it back up because of hype over this new system, I think this just killed my hype for it, don't know if I'm going to keep playing anymore, this incessant philosophy of nerfing things that we enjoy or excite us is killing this game for me

you were going to leave anyway after giving the system a try, out of boredom.

[kwlingo]

On 2020-08-19 at 7:18 PM, 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.

This is exactly what Ive been saying all along but no one listens and just keep asking for everything for no investment of game time in a F2P.

[Void_Ocelot]

I don't know. Ask Mesa.

[Flying_Scorpion]

On 2020-08-19 at 7:54 PM, Voltage said:

This slow trend evolved over time because of how DE has conditioned players... 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.

Yeah it's like a child going to a grocery store and they want their parents to buy them candy, but if the parents don't do it, the child will cry and freak out. Then the parents cave in and buy the candy, reinforcing the crying/whining behavior. But this behavior is reciprocal in it's reinforcement. The child's crying temper tantrum is being positively reinforced by the introduction of the candy, and the parent's behavior of caving in and buying candy is negatively reinforced by the removal of the crying temper tantrum. So the child is reinforcing/shaping the parents behavior, just as similar as the parents are reinforcing/shaping the child's behavior. The way to break the cycle is to be aware of it and mindfully take control.

Imagine a graph, where on the Y axis you have power level, and on the X axis you have time. At the beginning, power was much more limited. Access to healing and energy was very restricted, and so was using your abilities. You had Excalibur, Mag, Loki, etc. Different weapons and warframes varied in power level, and they created a modest average. As time went on, DE added things, both above and below the power average. It's almost impossible to add something exactly perfectly balanced to a game as complex as Warframe. Anyways, whenever DE added something busted overpowered, how did the players react? They rejoiced! "YAY! Thanks DE! More stuff like this!" and whenever DE added something grossly underpowered, how did the players react? "Boo! This sucks! Buff x, y, z to be just as good as everything else!" What happens when DE buffs something to just below the power curve or even just slightly above it? "His animation time is too long! The second ability is useless!" So they buff it again until it's far enough above the power curve that it gets people to shut up. How do the players react whenever DE nerfs things? "Boo! I'm quitting your game! You guys suck as developers! WAH WAH WAH!" What does this do? It reinforces a constant increase in powercreep. And whenever DE caves in to this feedback, they're reciprocating their end of the feedback loop of reinforcing this upwards spiraling powercreep.

I sometimes make videos about Warframe and decided to make a video about this entire thread. You can see it here:

 

[Zebiko]

Warframe reminds me of dynasty warriors.  In both games, you slaughter many many enemies. And those enemies are basically moving punching bags. So, to make it interesting, a power fantasy approach is the natural route. POE has the same problem. 

 

I made a post in feebback selection about interactive combat. It's related. With more interactions and reactions, the power fantasy troupe wouldn't be the most interesting approach. Dark souls game is like the complete opposite example.

[Corvid]

Just to address one thing from the video: The Lich backbreaker wasn't the issue, it's the fact that it was RNG based. If it had been something the player could predict, prevent or react to with their in-mission actions, there wouldn't have been nearly as much of a backlash to it.

I think it's safe to say that most people don't like dying to a dice roll with no mitigating factors, no matter how inconsequential that death might be.

[Corvid]

19 minutes ago, Zebiko said:

Warframe reminds me of dynasty warriors.  In both games, you slaughter many many enemies. And those enemies are basically moving punching bags. So, to make it interesting, a power fantasy approach is the natural route. POE has the same problem. 

The problem with that comparison is that in Dynasty Warriors, killing the trash mobs is rarely if ever the actual goal. You're usually either fighting to clear out a territory, or fighting another character that's on equal footing to you (sometimes having to juggle multiple territories across the map or fight under a soft time limit lest an ally be overwhelmed), with mooks being there mainly to provide energy for your more powerful attacks.

[Aldain]

1 hour ago, Corvid said:

The Lich backbreaker wasn't the issue, it's the fact that it was RNG based. If it had been something the player could predict, prevent or react to with their in-mission actions, there wouldn't have been nearly as much of a backlash to it.

I think it's safe to say that most people don't like dying to a dice roll with no mitigating factors, no matter how inconsequential that death might be.

The worst part is that several people outright said dying automatically was somehow BETTER THAN HAVING A QTE TO AVOID IT.

...Sorry, still got PTSD on that subject.

[Loza03]

1 hour ago, Zebiko said:

I made a post in feebback selection about interactive combat. It's related. With more interactions and reactions, the power fantasy troupe wouldn't be the most interesting approach. Dark souls game is like the complete opposite example.

In response to this, I'd like to link to an interview with Hugo Martin, one of the head designers of DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal. One moment in particular.

 

Power Fantasy is far more than just an easy romp through pathetic foes, and it certainly is not incompatible with masterful mechanics.

[killerJoke66]

On 2020-08-21 at 3:27 PM, SmokinDice said:

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

^this is the balance i would wanna see in this game 

[Flying_Scorpion]

1 hour ago, Loza03 said:

In response to this, I'd like to link to an interview with Hugo Martin, one of the head designers of DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal. One moment in particular.

I'm watching the video but what's the timestamp for the moment in particular that you're talking about?

 

I noticed that at 7:24 he says how their new movement system completely broke the game, because you could meathook and dash around and you were untouchable. The AI looked slow, but really it was the player that got faster but the racetrack remained the same. Sounds like warframe in some ways.

 

Wow I'm 17 minutes into it now and he's talking about engagement levels and he's absolutely nailing it. "Engage me. I'm bored." yep. How often do you play warframe where you are not engaged and are bored? Like you're just standing there while khora spams her whipeclaw into a group of CC'd enemies? Boring man. sleeping in my chair gameplay right there.

 

19:15 there it is! "The power fantasy that is earned is far more satisfying than the one that is just handed to you." Dude, Hugo Martin gets it!

[Loza03]

37 minutes ago, Flying_Scorpion said:

I'm watching the video but what's the timestamp for the moment in particular that you're talking about?

 

I noticed that at 7:24 he says how their new movement system completely broke the game, because you could meathook and dash around and you were untouchable. The AI looked slow, but really it was the player that got faster but the racetrack remained the same. Sounds like warframe in some ways.

 

Wow I'm 17 minutes into it now and he's talking about engagement levels and he's absolutely nailing it. "Engage me. I'm bored." yep. How often do you play warframe where you are not engaged and are bored? Like you're just standing there while khora spams her whipeclaw into a group of CC'd enemies? Boring man. sleeping in my chair gameplay right there.

 

19:15 there it is! "The power fantasy that is earned is far more satisfying than the one that is just handed to you." Dude, Hugo Martin gets it!

Weird. I thought I linked it so it'd go right to the section I wanted to share. Hm.

Either way, It seems to have worked out.

 

Edit: I'd also like to add, 'tons of damage and hitscan'. I'm not pointing fingers at Steel Path Grineer here... I'm pointing fingers at the Grineer in general. Hitscan just ain't that fun to fight in most cases (there's situations where it works, but few and far between)

[Flying_Scorpion]

This is a great video. It's making me want to buy Doom: Eternal. I'm 26:06 into it and he says "I'm speaking to the devs right now. I really feel like any dev out there is gonna relate to this." then he goes on to explain that frustration is okay. Yet sometimes developers want to take frustration out of their game. "Ask the team that lost at basketball if they're frustrated. It doesn't mean they're going to stop playing basketball." Yep, this is a strong contrast to Warframe, where the players are practically being coddled.

[Aldain]

7 minutes ago, Flying_Scorpion said:

Yet sometimes developers want to take frustration out of their game

It often depends on if the frustration is relevant to the game design or just plain bad.

For example, Kuva Lich backbreakers contributed nothing to the actual quality of the Kuva Lich system, it was a death solely for the sake of a death and caused a needless and pointless frustration to players.

Compare that to hard encounters in Doom 2016/E where the deaths are caused by the player's mistakes and not a 1 in 8 chance of dying after the actual fight was technically completed.

DE often overshoots it I will admit, but there needs to be a point to the frustration and not just frustration for the sake of a quota.

[Flying_Scorpion]

That's a really good point, and Hugo addresses it too. He says the difference between putting the controller down and continuing to play when you're frustrated is whether it was the game screwing you over, or if you screwed up and you know how to fix it.

[Aldain]

15 minutes ago, Flying_Scorpion said:

He says the difference between putting the controller down and continuing to play when you're frustrated is whether it was the game screwing you over, or if you screwed up and you know how to fix it.

100% the truth.

That's why people will die 1000 times in a good roguelike but not bother with a game that is poorly balanced and designed.

[Goodwill]

Let me humor an argument here. Let's say this game is meant to be a straight up power fantasy and we are mass murdering machines of destruction - then can we get in-game lore and dialogue to reflect that?

For example, Grustrag 3. They are commed in as a big threat we should avoid, but really they are a joke and we just wait for them to pop in to one-shot them in the face. Same thing with Stalker. I'm surprised he hasn't hanged up his scythe yet.

If we are going straight power fantasy, maybe start to develop the game's internal consistency to reflect that. Even Dynasty Warriors is more intuitive when it comes to battle feedback where most of the time other officers would be consistently praising you and calling you the strongest. However they could also tell when the overall tide of battle was against you or when you may be struggling and have dialogue appropriate for the situation (to an extent).

All I'm saying is that DE needs to choose what they want Warframe to be and the game needs to reflect and feel that. The gameplay itself, we are reality bending gods. But nobody in-game seems to recognize us for what we can do. Why do the Corpus still fight us as it should be obvious by now that there is more to be loss in engaging with the Tenno and their Warframes. Only faction that makes any sense to fight against us is maybe Orokin and Infested being mindless drones ready for the slaughter.

 

[Nash]

On 2020-08-19 at 9:05 PM, Aldain said:

Careful with that thought process, I also disagree with several design choices that are considered "hard" by some standards, for example I completely dislike the structure of Profit-taker as a fight, it is mostly just a barrage of nonsense in every direction with a variable damage shield that only serves to pad the fight time. The entire fight is a mess top to bottom imo and is in my top 3 worst Warframe boss fights.

Similarly I have/had a massive distaste for the Wolf of Saturn Six, who was the definition of a damage sponge with no real threat until DE put 3 immortal mooks throwing massively damaging firebombs at players. Despite how players like Zilchy showed that they can be pushovers under the right circumstances it was disgustingly obtuse if you weren't prepared, which for a boss that invades randomly is insanely intrusive and forced players to carry around gear they otherwise wouldn't want.

The Steel Path imo was also the single most boring, useless and redundant addition to Warframe in a long time, mainly because it just boiled down to hitting the multiply key on a calculator a few times and called "hard".

I'm of a very unusual opinion that both the insane ceiling and the basement-level floor of the game need to be brought closer to a middle ground, we need a baseline, something that is considered expected for bare minimum functionality and can be compared to a reasonable ceiling, and we can't reach that with people demanding nerfs for everything or other people demanding things be stupidly spongy out of spite and parading things like endurance missions with level 1000+ enemies as a standard for what is good.

To boil it down, we need to stop the rampant use and abuse of multiplication as the only form of "difficulty" metrics, we need less effortless shutdowns and to realize that a boring spongy enemy is not a serviceable alternative to a paperweight enemy, they are just two excessive extremes that solely want nothing more than the absolute elimination of the opposite side.

This, this so hard, I've said time and time again Bosses need more Dangerous telegraphed attacks, as much as I LOVE Profit-Taker shes hot ass dookie as well as any other boss because she barely telegraph the attacks that actually do the most amount of damage to, her damn turret and her homing missles. If attacks were slower and had fix animations instead of homing on to you, plus doing more damage to make up for the speed I'd actually be pleased, and would open up more build variety. But most of the time you are just sitting around tanking its pretty damn ridiculous. Bosses in WARFRAME general lack so many fundementals its ridiculous. Varying Wide Range telegraphed attacks, HP, Movement, and mechanics that apply to the fight maybe 1-2 a fight that don't entirely depend on invincibility the overuse of it without speeding up the process becomes weary on the mind, prime example of this is Safi'Jivas Sapphire star of the Emperor it speeds up as the battle progresses becoming near instant cast at the last stages of the fight, and actual generous good loot, but that'll never happen. Although seeing the animations of the new enemy units in Deimos does give me hope.

[MouadSaqui]

they don't want warframe to be dark souls (even if its obvious its not gonna happen, they still dont want it to be dark souls), so... short answer is, both brain dead enemies and players make tons of cash, like .... the room-(cough)-baaa 😄 you think for yourselves, many reasons actually 

[(XBOX)ShonOfDawn]

10 hours ago, Loza03 said:

In response to this, I'd like to link to an interview with Hugo Martin, one of the head designers of DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal. One moment in particular.

 

Power Fantasy is far more than just an easy romp through pathetic foes, and it certainly is not incompatible with masterful mechanics.

Why can’t I like your posts multiple times. This is exactly it.

[(PSN)Yggranya]

11 hours ago, Flying_Scorpion said:

Wow I'm 17 minutes into it now and he's talking about engagement levels and he's absolutely nailing it. "Engage me. I'm bored." yep. How often do you play warframe where you are not engaged and are bored? Like you're just standing there while khora spams her whipeclaw into a group of CC'd enemies? Boring man. sleeping in my chair gameplay right there.

When you consider how vehemently some people on the forum are agains any nerfs or changes, maybe they like being bored? Maybe they watch netflix after they activate their ability and just occasionally check the screen? In fact, watching netflix/youtube/whatever while pretending to play seems to be an infestation in all MMOs.

[Nash]

13 hours ago, Loza03 said:

Weird. I thought I linked it so it'd go right to the section I wanted to share. Hm.

Either way, It seems to have worked out.

 

Edit: I'd also like to add, 'tons of damage and hitscan'. I'm not pointing fingers at Steel Path Grineer here... I'm pointing fingers at the Grineer in general. Hitscan just ain't that fun to fight in most cases (there's situations where it works, but few and far between)

they really need to swap the whole hitscan thing, I mean I don't mind some maplestory touch damage, but not all the time its precisely why maplestory recently as of late have been going for more puzzle like ways to damage you although that can't be applied to WARFRAME, I feel like the Grineer is better off going full blown melee with animated attacks with their guns or just allowing enemies that are hitscan to just be fodder you know, getting rid of the weird itch thats bothering you while you are fighting an actual unit that can kill you.

[ikkabotz]

The game isn't fun to play, it's literally that simple.

On the topic of relevancy, this game has been a cash cow push to the cash cow audience. This is another filler thread to a primary issue. DE have been tone deaf to it, seem dumbfounded on what it really is, but really that's a play on leveraging responses to maintain course on their status quo which is to take no action at all. I guarantee this won't get resolved. DE play dumb on this topic and enough people play into what they want to hear and in their wallet for them to get away with it. We're going on at least four years to the subject. What has fundamentally changed within the game? Not a lot. 

[Zebiko]

On 2020-08-22 at 8:20 PM, Loza03 said:

In response to this, I'd like to link to an interview with Hugo Martin, one of the head designers of DOOM 2016 and DOOM Eternal. One moment in particular.

 

Power Fantasy is far more than just an easy romp through pathetic foes, and it certainly is not incompatible with masterful mechanics.

Doom is about killing many brain dead, moving enemies too, but does have more interactions with combat, from what I seen of that game. And, the guy says the series was too easy and wanted to make the game harder. That power fantasy falls too easily into that easy route, and devs need to step back and reassess.