Marked for Death is worthless now

[shootaman777]

 

Can we get an o7 for M4D?

It's dead, Jim. Not even combining it with Tesla Bank/Tesla Nervos on the lord and saviour Booben can save it. Just tried it, even that combination could not handle an assorted crowd of level 100 armoured enemies.

[CopperBezel]

31 minutes ago, Raikh said:

The ability isn't fiction it exists. Its not a brand new thing just because you put it on a different Warframe.

The ability as an a la carte item to be installed on any warframe entirely was a new thing. Like, you could say that the Helminth system "nerfs" the ability relative to the frame you fed it in the way that a Hobbled Dragon Key "nerfs" your movement speed when equipped, but we'd actually call that a "debuff". Calling it a "nerf" in this case is pretending it's the same scenario as all of these weapons that got hit with the nerf bat a month after they were released, which is either disingenuous or something you're picking up from other people who are, because the word "nerf" is being used in two unrelated senses.

If DE had released the Bramma and it was, you know, not incredibly powerful, and during development it had had very high numbers and they'd decided to tune them down and we never heard anything about it, that also would not be an example of DE nerfing something because it was popular. Since, you know, it wouldn't in fact be any of those things. 

Just to restate the obvious, none of these abilities were ever designed with any intention of balancing them against any other individual abilities, because every ability that existed did so only as part of a package. It would be exceptionally lucky - or suspect - if everything just happened to transfer 1:1, and we don't generally expect copy and paste to result in good design. So if we knew nothing else, knowing that there were changes to these abilities would be a good sign - in contrast to, say, a situation where we knew that a gun got its numbers slashed a month after release, where that would be a bad sign knowing nothing else. 

7 minutes ago, Raikh said:

Power and popularity merely correlate, one doesn't causate the other. Taking popularity as proof of power is in the vast majority of cases a showcase of incompetence. If a choice is overwhelmingly popular, be that an ability, a weapon or a Warframe then you have to ask yourself first why it is so popular and where things went wrong. And especially given how these singular overwhelmingly popular things are appearing on repeat DE has clearly not gone to any lengths to investigate what exactly causes that popularity and learn from that. Accidents happen and it is good to correct those. But its all meaningless if you commit the same mistakes over and over again and just use the same misguided ineffective band-aid over and over without ever coming to understand the issue.

I really need to drill down on this, because we were still specifically talking about the Helminth abilities here. What they told us was that six abilities had the potential to become "the overwhelming choice" based on internal testing and outside feedback. You say that you're annoyed that they would tune something down for that reason. So within the terse description that something "has the potential to be the overwhelming choice" is something you consider a bad reason, and you specifically interpret it to mean that these abilities would be too popular, that DE further assumes that this popularity reflects power, and that the Helminth versions of these abilities got smaller numbers because DE thought they would be too powerful. 

Now, I've already explained that something being overwhelmingly popular actually has negative consequences irrespective of anything to do with "power", so I'm going to put that assumption aside for the moment, I don't think it's very important. But this internal testing is not DE sitting around looking at a spreadsheet of how many people are using the Catchmoon this week. They had all of the information. They were there. They didn't have to assume jack. If they looked at the choices people tended to make, and saw that this or that ability was too much to give up as an opportunity cost for using something else, or was giving too easy a one-size-fits-all solution, etc., they could readily find out why. I get that you're reading "overwhelming choice" as meaning the same thing as a raw popularity number, but like ... you don't actually have any reason to think that except that it's convenient for your argument, so stop doing that?

There are like three arcanes that are my "overwhelming choice" among all of my frames, and the reason they're so overwhelmingly chosen and I don't bother farming or buying a lot of other sets is that the cost of giving them up is dire in contrast to the paltry advantages I could get in their place. A Helminth system that worked that way would have be a disaster, actually making our frames less diverse than they were before it launched.

So I'm sorry, I don't think this adds up when you're telling me that DE shouldn't have problems like the Bramma or Xoris, and the one time they very visibly make an effort to not create that situation again, you're going to tell me that was also bad and toxic and hates the fans or whatever. I get why the mob thinks they're the same thing, because they don't give half a S#&$ whether DE tests anything as long as they never nerf anything. You aren't them, though. 

19 minutes ago, Raikh said:

But its all meaningless if you commit the same mistakes over and over again and just use the same misguided ineffective band-aid over and over without ever coming to understand the issue.

And yet somehow, here the community is. = P

[Raikh]

vor 20 Minuten schrieb CopperBezel:

The ability as an a la carte item to be installed on any warframe entirely was a new thing. Like, you could say that the Helminth system "nerfs" the ability relative to the frame you fed it in the way that a Hobbled Dragon Key "nerfs" your movement speed when equipped, but we'd actually call that a "debuff". Calling it a "nerf" in this case is pretending it's the same scenario as all of these weapons that got hit with the nerf bat a month after they were released, which is either disingenuous or something you're picking up from other people who are, because the word "nerf" is being used in two unrelated senses.

Not sure where you want with this. Subsumed Roar is a nerfed version of the original Roar it is derived from. Thats not misusing the term.

vor 28 Minuten schrieb CopperBezel:

Just to restate the obvious, none of these abilities were ever designed with any intention of balancing them against any other individual abilities, because every ability that existed did so only as part of a package. It would be exceptionally lucky - or suspect - if everything just happened to transfer 1:1, and we don't generally expect copy and paste to result in good design.

That is true. New ability combinations ask for new balancing considerations. These however should not ask what people might like and will be popular but if some of these new combinations might be too powerful and negatively affect gameplay. And if something is legitimately too powerful then I'd be fine with a nerf. Be it before or after release of the system.

vor 33 Minuten schrieb CopperBezel:

Now, I've already explained that something being overwhelmingly popular actually has negative consequences irrespective of anything to do with "power"

A lack fo diversity is harmful for a game, yes, but if sometihng is excessively popular, despite not being OP, then you will usually find a more fundamental issue with the choice at hand. Just trying to push it down numerically in hope that the statisitcs look better is like washing mold off a wall without ever investigating and fixing what caused it to be there in the first place. The issue will just pop up again and again.

I also never stated they were assuming something. They clearly have the usage data. Overwhelming choice is a vague term, but historically a lot of stuff saw nerfs reasoned basically entirely by popularity. Catchmoon was never stated by DE as too powerful. But it had absurd usage statistics. Investigating that is totally fine but if you don't find power to be the issue then nerfing the weapon might fix the statistics but doesn't fix the underlying issues which simply means it will inevitably pop up again and again and it did, to no surprise.

If you argue that i.e. Roar, MfD or whatever was enrfed because it was too powerful, then we cana rgue if it truly was, but I wouldn't disagree with a nerf based on it being too powerful, as long as the nerf is reasonable. Like with MfD, the numbers were clealry ridiculous, which turned out to be a bug, so it was doubly justified to fix that. But then they slapped 2 additional nerfs on top which basically ruins the ability and I simply think they went too far with that. And iirc they even mentioned that they will take another look at MfD in the recent devstream and thats great. I'm all for iterating on things.

vor 52 Minuten schrieb CopperBezel:

So I'm sorry, I don't think this adds up when you're telling me that DE shouldn't have problems like the Bramma or Xoris, and the one time they very visibly make an effort to not create that situation again, you're going to tell me that was also bad and toxic and hates the fans or whatever. I get why the mob thinks they're the same thing, because they don't give half a S#&$ whether DE tests anything as long as they never nerf anything. You aren't them, though. 

I can't say much regarding the Bramma. Xoris however is a weird case for me as it did not enable anything new or broke something. It was effectively QoL. Khora Whipclaw shenanigans haven't suffered from it being changed as far as I can tell, so it basically seemed mostly like a beauty check for statistics or idk. It doesn't seem to have improved the game in any fashion which is where I start raising eyebrows.

vor einer Stunde schrieb CopperBezel:

And yet somehow, here the community is. = P

Cute attempt at the analogy but it sadly doesn't work here. I'm not sure what war you want to fight here, but I have no interest in it. You seem to have clearly made up an enemy faction and try to win argument by pushing one into that faction which you simply decided to be wrong by default. Are there uninformed and unreasonable outcries? Sure. Is everyone that shares the same top level opinion on that change part of that? Far from. Same for the other side. There are very unreasonable defenses for certain changes. That doesn't however mean that all who agree with those changes fall into that category. I'm here to offer and discuss my opinions and the opinions of others on an indivdual basis. I'm not here to play faction war.