Balance by availability, not output.

[Loza03]

Whenever DE tries to 'balance' something, it's either considered OP, or it's considered trash.  Over my years of play, I have come to believe that this is because everything is compared on one axis, how much raw power it offers the player in any given respect, because everything can be used as freely as everything else. That's a problem. If, at the end of the day, everything is compared in one field, then they can only excel in one way. That's why everything is either overpowered, the clear and distinct 'best' option, or it's 'trash' because it isn't. Attempting to counteract this through enemy health, status resistance, damage output or so forth is futile, because things are ultimately only compared along that singular metric.  Difficulty, in Warframe's present state, is merely a measure of what point on that scale something has to be in order to succeed. This is why Steel Path ultimately failed to truly satisfy players asking for challenge, because instead of offering or requiring new and interesting thinking and strategies, it just closed off old ones. Same for Arbitrations, same for Wolf, same for the Gokstad Officers. Other options for making enemies interesting (like AI or interesting enemy abilities) are ineffective because the power creep that's inevitable with such a system quickly shuts them down.

And to be honest? That sucks. In that respect, I completely feel for people who hate nerfs, because it never feels good to have something you worked hard for taken away. But it's an inevitability in Warframe's current environment. If it's not taken away by a nerf, it's because it'll be taken away by something that does the same thing, but better. Let's not try and kid ourselves - if something better comes along, and content starts being designed with the assumption you're using that better thing... then it has the exact same effect as if the original weapon, Warframe, ability or whatever was nerfed. I remember when Arca Plasmor was the hot stuff, everyone wanted to use it and it was one of the best weapons. Now ask - does anyone use the Plasmor anymore? When The Catchmoon, Fulmin and Quellor exist that do much the same thing but have bigger numbers?

 

I think with that, I've made a good case for why balancing purely by the output of something means everyone suffers at the end of the day. So, what do I mean by balancing by availability?

The idea of balancing by availability is, on paper, simple, even though in practice switching over to such a balance model would be complex and ugly. The idea is that, instead of Volt's 1 and 4 having the potential to be seen a comparable number of times in a mission, Discharge becomes a rare occurrence, whilst Shock can still be used more or less whenever you want. Discharge does not necessarily need to be made weaker in such a scenario - it can have the same level of game-changing effect it does now, but that effect is no longer considered to be the norm whilst playing Volt. That lets both powers shine as they now occupy different roles in Volt's kit. Likewise, the Bramma retains its signature level of output, but it's no longer considered to be the weapon you're running an entire mission with, but rather something deployed when necessary (or when something's just being REALLY annoying).

Different weapons and powers working on different levels of availability opens so many more ways for weapons to flex and stretch, reducing competition. It also opens doors for enemies and missions to have more diversity in them, because the world-shattering power creep that forces an enemy to have 23 million health and kill a player in 0.23 seconds to be relevant is gone. Imagine, if you will, Necramechs but without their stupid damage reflection gimmick, and that are legitimately a challenge to defeat.

 

That's a long word wall for a lot of idealism, so how is this achievable? What would be done to create a game where this is the norm? For this, I'll split the points I think are necessary into weapons and abilities.

Weapons:

Weapons I believe are easier to deal with in the current state. I think we have the tools to make a better system for weapons, but we just need the push to achieve it.

• Reduce the effectiveness of Ammo Mutation mods and/or limit the effect of ammo mutation to certain weapons.
• Each weapon now receives a different amount of ammo from their respective pickups, instead of a flat, universal number. The Bramma has paved the way for this already, but I think it's time to extend this to other weapons. Likewise, Scavenger mods increase these gains based on these standards.
• The output of a weapon is taken into account when this is decided and vice versa, as well as it's place in the overall progression. For example, weapons in and around the same bracket of MR are compared against each other - for example, the Hind and its Kuva Variant would be relatively similar in terms of ammo economy despite the Kuva Hind clearly being more powerful, since the Kuva Hind is a late game weapon compared with the early game regular Variant. The Kuva Hind's competition would be with the Tiberon Prime instead, one being more consistent but the other more powerful for example.

 

Warframes/Abilities:

Warframes, of course, are a lot more difficult, since they're all expected to be roughly comparable in terms of output. However, I also believe there's more room to manouever, in particular by putting more focus on in-mission resource management rather than in-arsenal resource management, since that lets different frames not only have different energy economies, but also different means to achieve those economies!

• Like with mutation mods, Energy from non-gameplay sources (i.e. energy pads, arcane energize, Zenurik) is dramatically, and/or possibly dynamically reduced on a frame-to-frame basis - in the latter case, this should be noted in the arsenal! This also applies to support Warframes, to avoid making EV Trin too much of a requirement.
• Energy orbs become far more consistent to find, rather than through RNG drops. For example, energy orbs dropping from headshots, or big multi-kills. Possibly this varies based on weapon? For example, headshots for snipers, big multi-kills for things like Bramma?
• Energy orbs give a variable - but again, well-labeled - amount of energy based on frame. Some frames rely more on external sources, but some less so, and this is enforced through mechanics.
• Abilities like Smite or Fireball and even Mach Rush have their costs substantially reduced. Abilities which are designed to be spammable should be spammable. Likewise, certain big and powerful abilities have their costs increased..
• Not all abilities rely soley on energy as their limiting factors however. Some also have their ability to be spammed eliminated in a way that's baked-in. For example, Ember's Inferno being changed so that the DoT area it creates on enemies remains after death, but it cannot be recast until then. It still costs more energy than it does now, and still a substantial amount, but not as much as say, Discharge, which doesn't have that baked in. This is a similar philosophy to the MR point for weapons.
• On some frames, particularly those designed around using their abilities often, their weaker abilities are given the ability to regenerate energy, more than they cost if used well. For example, kills with fire blast or fireball regenerating Ember's energy. This has crossover with frames which get less benefit from external sources, so some frames rely more on their own performance, others rely more on energy orbs. This is good, because some frames straight-up don't have kits that work well with such a system (Loki, for example)
• Even within the above point, there's potential for variance. For example, some frames that rely on abilities could recover energy slowly but consistently like Limbo does now, whilst others could have very costly abilities, but proper ability use gives them big windfalls of energy right back, similar to Harrow.

 

I recognise that this isn't a panacea that fixes Warframe entirely. Enemies would certainly be a problem, and these changes don't fix the crazy power creep they have gone through. Nor does it actually fix all the Power Creep problems Warframes themselves present. And, whilst in the long run I think this could allow fewer nerfs, there's no denying that these changes would be huge nerfs right out the gate. But at the end of the day, something has to give first. There's many problems Warframe faces, and sitting around debating which gets addressed first just means none do. Giving frames a more reasonable baseline, even if it's one that's out of whack with the rest of the game allows the rest to be done. Problems would arise no matter which aspect of crazy power creep gets addressed first.

Warframe can still be a power fantasy at the end of the day. But a power fantasy that offers a more mechanically diverse experience benefits everyone.

[Proscriptor]

this is the cooldown concept.

the main distinction of warframe is that it's not cooldown based, but adheres to a much more traditional "mana" concept.

it's the identity of the game, and why it has fans in the first place. 

therefore it's not something that will be changed.

[Xylena_Lazarow]

The term you're looking for is opportunity cost. To their credit, DE is definitely trying this sort of thing. Mechs have limited availability and sacrifice frame parkour. Trumna has a 5sec reload. Balance problems arise when opportunity cost is removed. The damage ceiling of the Bramma wasn't the problem, its spammability and lack of downtime was. Gunblades aren't just shotguns that abuse melee mods, they're shotguns with infinite ammo and no duty cycle. Stat sticks are just free damage mods.

[Liljeman]

If people do want to keep the mana system the middle road could be to limit energy gains, there's such an abundant of energy in the game that all abilities might aswell cost the same.

[Proscriptor]

it doesn't matter what people want in the sense which you imply, this isn't a democracy, but a market

[Corvid]

1 hour ago, Traubenzuckr said:

it's the identity of the game, and why it has fans in the first place.

Really? Because I came here for the aesthetics, mobility, and the mix of ranged and melee combat. Those seem like they're the things that give Warframe its uniqueness. The game having a busted power economy (where you're either scrounging just to cast one ability or overflowing to the point where you effectively can't run out) was only ever a flaw to me.

[Proscriptor]

a lot of people came for the "busted power economy" knowing there are no cooldowns in this game which are a hated trope of MMOs, which they used to play

[Liljeman]

If it's a market DE should sell what's demanded the most, in a way making a democracy.

[Loza03]

2 hours ago, Traubenzuckr said:

this is the cooldown concept.

the main distinction of warframe is that it's not cooldown based, but adheres to a much more traditional "mana" concept.

it's the identity of the game, and why it has fans in the first place. 

therefore it's not something that will be changed.

I recognise that in the past this was a pretty major factor. However, I don't believe it represents something that should continue in modern Warframe. When the current system was introduced, the game was very different, and for the reasons I described, I do not believe it is healthy for the present state of Warframe.

DE have already demonstrated they are willing to be flexible on such elements before - for example, fully focusing on action over action/stealth hybrid - and I believe that the time has come to update core systems to reflect that.

2 hours ago, Xylena_Lazarow said:

The term you're looking for is opportunity cost. To their credit, DE is definitely trying this sort of thing. Mechs have limited availability and sacrifice frame parkour. Trumna has a 5sec reload. Balance problems arise when opportunity cost is removed. The damage ceiling of the Bramma wasn't the problem, its spammability and lack of downtime was. Gunblades aren't just shotguns that abuse melee mods, they're shotguns with infinite ammo and no duty cycle. Stat sticks are just free damage mods.

True, yes. I suppose Opportunity cost is the correct name, although I stand by my current choice as it involves less Jargon.

1 hour ago, Liljeman said:

If people do want to keep the mana system the middle road could be to limit energy gains, there's such an abundant of energy in the game that all abilities might aswell cost the same.

If I'm being honest, that's more or less what the suggestion comes down to, just with more detail on how that might be achieved in a way that doesn't also screw over weaker powers.

[Xylena_Lazarow]

45 minutes ago, Loza03 said:

True, yes. I suppose Opportunity cost is the correct name, although I stand by my current choice as it involves less Jargon.

Modern gaming is full of jargon. Don't fear jargon. It helps you state your point more concisely. I promise you that DE knows what opportunity cost is. Game balance discussions would be more productive and less salty if more gamers learned about opportunity cost.

[0_The_F00l]

i have made similar suggestions in the past cause "I have the biggest current number spewer with no downsides" as a mechanism to make players try something has poor sustainability from a design and gameplay perspective.

It leads to power creep spirals where you will eventually hit rock bottom or you will go back on the previous mechanic which will create backlash.

 

I assume DE is either no longer able to manage their monster of a game with all its different, obscure and sometimes unexpected results for balance ,

or its stopped caring about it and has accepted "whatever can sell to pay the bills with FOMO for the month then make it less effective or easier to get next month" commodity model.

They are still a business and i do not blame them for trying to make money , but as a player i dislike some of the things they have done and chosen to ignore.

 

I am in agreement with the ammo changes for the weapons , war frames are a lot lot more complex and cannot just be simplified to "make x ability cheaper to cast and let the frame generate energy by some mechanism "

Opportunity cost management as mentioned is very poor (as in cheap) in some frames that there is no reason to not have them on at all times and so utterly pointless (expensive) in other that the abilities are not even used over gun play.

 

[ShortCat]

Over the years I made similar suggestion which would lead to the same goal.

For weapons I suggested a battery system for reserve ammo and a complete elimination of all ammo drops. Main advanatagoes I see here is a convenient way for individual tweaks, no RNG drops as well as less visual clutter, due to colorfull boxes infesting mission tiles.

For energy I suggested base energy regeneration for every frame, with varying regeneration rate and ability cots (not the stiff 25/50/75/100 approach) adjusted for each frame/ability individually. While external & RNG energy sources like pizzas or orbs are removed. It would create 100% controllable energy environment. 

 

 

None of this will ever happen though. New players are fond of this power creep trip (until most leave the game out of boredom 2-3 months later).
DEvelopers are not in a hurry to change anything in the first place. They seem to do well with their current development praxis filled with crunch, procrastination and aimlessness. All that talk about changes here or changes there is smoke and mirrors to feed unhappy sims with hope. Nor do I believe DE is even capable of doing so in the first place, since their own studio management as well as ineptitude stands in their way.

[Steel_Rook]

17 hours ago, Traubenzuckr said:

a lot of people came for the "busted power economy" knowing there are no cooldowns in this game which are a hated trope of MMOs, which they used to play^{[citation needed]}

I'd like to know where you're getting your numbers about how many people came to Warframe because it has S#&$ balance. Near as I can tell, most players are attracted to Warframe for either the art style, the general "space ninja" theme or the mobility. I'm sure there are people who enjoy the game because it's fundamentally broken and unbalanced, but I'd also argue that a fair number of those are mature enough to recognise that a well-balanced game has more longevity and is ultimately more fun than what amounts to playing with perpetual cheat codes. I love my Inaros, for instance, but I also recognise that his absurd survivability is an active detriment to the game's overall balance and produces an ultimately shallow experience in the long run. I use him, however, because DE don't really seem to care for decent enemy design and consistently create factions which just spam the player with ridiculous AoE. If the game's going to cheat, then so am I. That's not a selling point, however, but the cost of doing business.

 

3 hours ago, 0_The_F00l said:

I assume DE is either no longer able to manage their monster of a game with all its different, obscure and sometimes unexpected results for balance, or its stopped caring about it and has accepted "whatever can sell to pay the bills with FOMO for the month then make it less effective or easier to get next month" commodity model. They are still a business and i do not blame them for trying to make money , but as a player i dislike some of the things they have done and chosen to ignore.

They do still seem to care, as evidenced by Warframe Revised and Railjack Revised. Those are somewhat old updates, however, so it's possible they have indeed given up. We were, after all, supposed to have more of them... But then DE stopped talking about them and went back to cranking out half-finished grinds with some content attached to them. For what it's worth, I would definitely like to see Warframe's balance lean more in the direction of opportunity cost. Weapon ammo mechanics especially need a major rebalance. I'd personally merge all the ammo boxes into a single one (or at best a "Primary" one and a "Secondary" one), then bake ammo pick-up into each individual weapon rather than into the pickups themselves. Ammo Mutation can then serve as a multiplier on ammo pick-up.

For as much as people boo and hiss about cooldowns, I'm of the opinion that they're the best way to go - better than Energy by a country mile. DE seem to agree, because pretty much everything new coming out that isn't a Warframe has cooldowns on it. All the new Helminth abilities? Cooldown. Squad Restores on Steel Path? Cooldowns. When you don't have to worry about players spamming abilities, you can design abilities with weight and punch to them. I doubt they'll go all-the-way cooldown, though, because that would involve giving our abilities ANY kind of limitation and people don't seem to like their IDKFA taken away. It's not much of a game with unlimited health, ammo and energy, though.

[Proscriptor]

1 minute ago, Steel_Rook said:

Near as I can tell, most players are attracted to Warframe for either the art style, the general "space ninja" theme or the mobility.^{[citation needed]}

I'd like to know where you're getting your numbers about most people being attracted to Warframe for the art style, the general "space ninja" theme or the mobility.

[Steel_Rook]

2 minutes ago, Traubenzuckr said:

I'd like to know where you're getting your numbers about most people being attracted to Warframe for the art style, the general "space ninja" theme or the mobility.

Same place you are - my ass. Tell you what: you back your assertion in any way, and maybe I'll back mine up.

[(PSN)thegarada]

Weapons, to a large extent, do have what you are talking about. Many of the stronger weapons require MR13-14. And mutation is only used one handful of weapons, cuz these weapons would be unplayable without. Take Acceletra. You would run out after fight 15-20 mobs (at least in leve 50+). It only works if you have ammo mutation. Is this a good system? No, but I do not think the weapons system has issues in that sense. However, the vast majority of ranged weapons do not scale well beyond leveL 70-80. At all

As for the energy system, this is complicated. I am in favor of frames having energy regeneration, instead of relying on Zenurik or rage/HA. But the current system is needed by some frames to function at all, so they can spam CC and skills to stay alive. They lack eHP to go toe to toe with mobs otherwise. But sense they can render everything harmless you need to counter by creating nullfiers and arbitration drones. There are too many poorly designed systems tangled together. You cannot just remove one. The game would no longer work. You have to address all of them at once. Will this ever happen? Unlikely. It is to big of a task that I do not think DE will ever attempt.

[Proscriptor]

10 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Same place you are - my ass. Tell you what: you back your assertion in any way, and maybe I'll back mine up.

i have a better idea

i'll wait for the moment DE regears all of the game's systems for the cooldown-like concept

when they do, i'll back up my assertion with cold hard evidence

[Loza03]

12 minutes ago, Steel_Rook said:

Same place you are - my ass. Tell you what: you back your assertion in any way, and maybe I'll back mine up.

Please, being aggressive doesn't help anybody in the conversation.

1 minute ago, Traubenzuckr said:

i have a better idea

i'll wait for the moment DE regears all of the game's systems for the cooldown-like concept

when they do, i'll back up my assertion with cold hard evidence

With respect, as I said before, DE has already re-geared most of the game's systems. Sometimes more than once.

This is the game that the current Energy system was designed for, after all.

[(PSN)haphazardlynamed]

What like how Destiny2 handles Guardian Abilities?

no thanks, there's a reason I quit playing that game in favor of Warframe.

[Steel_Rook]

5 minutes ago, (PS4)thegarada said:

Weapons, to a large extent, do have what you are talking about. Many of the stronger weapons require MR13-14.

That's not actually what the OP is asking for. It was poor wording that they refuse to correct. Balance by "availability" is actually a very BAD idea because it creates major power gaps between different "classes" of players. Imagine if exploits like the Voidrig multi-stacking Exalted weapon crit bonus bug weren't fixed because "well, not many people know about it." Yeah, but more and more people will know about it as time goes on, so fix it now before people start relying on it and run roughshod over content. The same applies here. Just because a weapon is MR-locked to 14 doesn't mean it should be "better" than a weapon with an MR lock of 3 or 6. Not only does that artificially lower the pool of available weapons in the game, it also fails to address balance for players of MR 14 and up. Not all MR-14 weapons are created equal.

Now... I could see a "tiered" system where the same version of a weapon is available in multiple "tiers." MK-1, regular, Primed, etc. versions of weapons already kind of do that. The various Prisma/Wraith/Vandal/etc. weapons sort of work, though these typically offer a very different version of the same weapon - not necessarily a better one. Overall, though - at the end of a player's progression is where you need to consider balance. Once players have everything, THEN how do you balance weapons?

 

3 minutes ago, Traubenzuckr said:

i'll wait for the moment DE regears all of the game's systems for the cooldown-like concept

They already do. Watch their dev streams or interviews. Scott McGreggor has already talked about addressing some core, fundamental issues and described it as "breaking those bones." Granted, he spoke about damage buffs stacking multiplicatively in the Quite Shallow interview I can cite. Not a direct reference to Energy, but a reference to developers regretting a few core systems. Then there's Warframe Revised, which entirely gutted the special-case exception for Shotgun status, with a clear admission that the original implementation was a mistake. Then there's the simple fact that pretty much all newly-implemented abilities not on a Warframe have been limited by either cooldown or some other unique resources. Again - all new Helminth abilities are cooldown-limited. All of the new Entrati weapons have an alt-fire limited not by ammo but by a resource bar filled by using them.

If you require ALL systems to be redesigned at once before you'll acknowledge DE's attitude strikes me as intentionally ignoring evidence for the sake of propping up a foregone conclusion. Warframe's current state is not tennable. It's a question of whether DE will address it, not of whether problems exist.

[Proscriptor]

okay, when they've gone far enough down this path of injecting cooldown mechanics, so that the game is more cooldown oriented than mana-based ult spamming oriented, 

i'll back up my assertion with cold hard evidence

[Steel_Rook]

6 minutes ago, Traubenzuckr said:

okay, when they've gone far enough down this path of injecting cooldown mechanics, so that the game is more cooldown oriented than mana-based ult spamming oriented, 

i'll back up my assertion with cold hard evidence

OK, go ahead and keep moving the goal posts. I'm done responding to you.

[Proscriptor]

they won't be injecting cooldown mechanics further than they already have because of backlash

the mana system is the core identity of the product

that's why necramech exists in parallel to the warframes - they want to do it (rebalance the abilities with cooldowns), but they can't, and as a compromise they tacked a cooldown based pseudo-warframe on the side

this is just evidence for what i'm saying, that the core mechanics around energy won't be changing substantially

[Teridax68]

Suppose I play Frost. His 1 costs however much Energy, and freezes and damages enemies in a small AoE. His 4 costs a different amount of Energy, and freezes and damages enemies in a much larger AoE. Functionally, these two abilities draw from the same resource pool and achieve approximately the same thing, albeit at different levels of intensity. This makes for a binary decision: if one ability outputs more power relative to its Energy/casting cost, it becomes the one to use over the other, in pretty much every situation. If we go for the model where the 4 is vastly more powerful but the 1 regenerates Energy, the flowchart remains quite simple: spam 1 for Energy until the 4 becomes available, use that, then rinse and repeat. This remains just as simple with weapons, where if we can generate ammo at any level of consistency, it's a matter of using our strongest weapon until we run out, use the other until we gain enough ammo for the other weapon, and repeat that process.

Point being, while I agree that Warframe could benefit from significantly better balance and diversity of play, I'm not sure if balancing based on availability would be the best way of achieving that, because it doesn't necessarily address one of the more fundamental issues at hand, which is that there's a fair degree of redundancy in what we do, and missions themselves are frequently structured in such a way that only one thing matters at any given time: if we have lots of different ways of doing the same thing, of course we're going to use the strongest thing until we run out if we can replenish that thing later (and missions typically don't last long enough to matter if we run out anyway). If a mission only tests us on, say, our stealth, or our ability to defend an objective, then of course the frame that does that one thing better than everyone else is going to dominate.

As such, before limiting our ability to use weapons and cast, I'd probably look more into how every part of our arsenal can be given a distinct function. In the case of warframes, this should likely mean differentiating abilities so that they each do their own thing, and potentially even eliminating the entire notion of tiered and especially "ultimate" abilities, which never really gelled with a mana-based system (hence why so many frames end up being press-4-to-win). In the case of weapons, I think there's a significant amount of work that could be done to diversify their gameplay -- older weapons in particular are practically reskins of each other, and making some more powerful and expensive to use than others I feel would be more of a band-aid than a solution to their lack of real distinction. I'd also look into making missions test us on more than just a single form of power -- if a weapon required us to be good at protection as well as nuking somehow, that would allow more hybrid frames to shine, rather than just Saryn in some missions, Limbo in others, and so on. Mixing and matching multiple different objectives at random in a mission could, in this respect, potentially prevent us from over-relying on a handful of frames or weapons, in addition to just add more variation to our play. All of this may be too much to ask in a game where we have four abilities, three main weapons, plus a ton of other systems, but then again, this is a thread discussing a systemic rework.

[Loza03]

3 hours ago, (PS4)haphazardlynamed said:

What like how Destiny2 handles Guardian Abilities?

no thanks, there's a reason I quit playing that game in favor of Warframe.

In philosophy? Similar yes, although almost every game (including Warframe in the past) employs such a philosophy. Even DOOM, 2016 or Eternal has BFG ammo be rarer than ammo for the Shotguns. 

In practice? Cooldowns as Destiny aren't a part of the system as I have proposed it. I took more inspiration from real-time resource management as found in other shooter games like Halo.