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Marked For Death: Where We’ve Been, and Changes to Come


Marcooose
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40 minutes ago, Aldrr said:

Mark a tank enemy, release an AoE around it that kills surrounding marshmallows, or close to it.
Liking it so far.

And it's a conversation, bonus kudos for that. 🙂

I believe the majority of players are too busy killing to really sit there and mark a specific enemy, before the nerf I simply marked any target hit them with my stropha and the rest died and that was great because you didn't have to sit there and try the find the biggest target

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Just now, Grav_Starstrider said:

ALL OF THIS!!! Ability disposition is SO needlessly complex. Make Decoy or Mind Control actually worth using, or give us one of their better abilities, rather than just nerfing the "only good abilities" and giving them "dispositions".

YOu gotta understand, they're only using abilities that would not take away a warframe's signature-ness. If you take Loki's radial disarm away from Loki for Helminth, who in god's name would ever play Loki again. 

I think we all should just accept the fact that not all warframes will offer effective abilities, because with so many factors involved, that's impossible. I certainly wouldn't want DE to use Loki's invisibility or whatever good ability he has for other warframes because again, that would practically delete him out of the game. You may not be ok witht aht but a lot of people do. 

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1 minute ago, Pendragon1951 said:

I believe the majority of players are too busy killing to really sit there and mark a specific enemy, before the nerf I simply marked any target hit them with my stropha and the rest died and that was great because you didn't have to sit there and try the find the biggest target

people asked for it so what are they supposed to do, M4D was never THAT crazy of a thing to begin with, nerfs or buffs aside I never understood why people are so invested in it, who cares if it gets nerfed, not like most players are going to use the damn thing anyway because there are so many better options. But people care so much about ti for some reason and well...here we are. 

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2 minutes ago, SprinKah said:

YOu gotta understand, they're only using abilities that would not take away a warframe's signature-ness. If you take Loki's radial disarm away from Loki for Helminth, who in god's name would ever play Loki again. 

Explain War Cry.

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Should players be expecting Ability Disposition changes every 90 days? Seems like the route this is going. I feel like these are purely reactionary changes. Most of the time things get nerfed, they just get left to rot: Greedy Mag, Trinity, Shield Disruption, Maiming Strike, some weapon Dispositions, stagger on Amps, etc. If a trend could be started here to revisit previously over-nerfed mechanics, that would be a tremendous QoL.

The Helminth system will be inherently flawed with the power it delivers to some Warframes, and it might just be better to leave it alone or tweak weak abilities then try and balance the good ones. 

Edited by Voltage
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10 minutes ago, SprinKah said:

YOu gotta understand, they're only using abilities that would not take away a warframe's signature-ness. If you take Loki's radial disarm away from Loki for Helminth, who in god's name would ever play Loki again. 

I think we all should just accept the fact that not all warframes will offer effective abilities, because with so many factors involved, that's impossible. I certainly wouldn't want DE to use Loki's invisibility or whatever good ability he has for other warframes because again, that would practically delete him out of the game. You may not be ok witht aht but a lot of people do. 

Actually this brings up a really good point, or at least does to me in a roundabout way. I think the ideal for Helminth system adjustments should be less of a number-crunching game where abilities are nerfed or buffed (with some exceptions, Chroma's S.Scream really is a letdown compared to what it could be) but rather this would be a good opportunity for DE to look at the less-used abilities and ask themselves, OK, how can we put some general synergy on these so they're interesting to use with other moves?

For example, one of my favorite things to do is put pull and repelling bastille on Vauban, and then yank enemies into a trampoline that sends them flying. Is it good? Questionable. But it's funny as hell and I'd like to see more interesting combinations like that come out of the system rather than just flat damage/cc.

For example, Saryn used to be able to put spores on her Molt. Can she do that with Loki's decoy? If not, maybe she should be able to. Maybe Chroma's S.Scream should have a guaranteed chance to affect other things like popping Saryn's spores. Maybe Mesa's 1 could have some weird effect like adding lifted status when hitting enemies affected by powers like Molecular Prime/Spores/Nidus Maggots/Shooting Gallery etc. for a bit of CC and more stylish combos/kills on anything that's still alive after.

There's a lot of ways to make the less used abilities more cool/interesting/fun, which imo is more of a problem with a lot of them than just the numbers they put out.

Edited by Tavanaka
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7 minutes ago, SprinKah said:

YOu gotta understand, they're only using abilities that would not take away a warframe's signature-ness. If you take Loki's radial disarm away from Loki for Helminth, who in god's name would ever play Loki again. 

I think we all should just accept the fact that not all warframes will offer effective abilities, because with so many factors involved, that's impossible. I certainly wouldn't want DE to use Loki's invisibility or whatever good ability he has for other warframes because again, that would practically delete him out of the game. You may not be ok witht aht but a lot of people do. 

"not all warframes will offer effective abilities" hear me out though, if the Warframe with a lackluster Helminth offering isn't currently dominating the character-pick meta, they can buff the base abilitiy. Also I said one of their better abilities, not their absolute best ability. But even then, HA, who's going to replace, say, Fire Blast, Miasma, or Crush, with Radial Disarm? Warframes like Nyx and Loki are fun in their own right, but they're a bit far from "competitive". Their helminth offering could just be buffed a bit at base, to make more compelling and competitive Helminth System options, rather than non-options. Player chase is a great thing to allow. If there's a blatant meta (or metas to avoid, anti-metas), then where is the player choice? It's not an interesting option at that point, it's either using the only good option, or intentionally nerfing yourself. Getting them all on something remotely resembling equal footing would be better than leaving trash Helminth Abilities as trash.

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4 minutes ago, Tavanaka said:

Actually this brings up a really good point, or at least does to me in a roundabout way. I think the ideal for Helminth system adjustments should be less of a number-crunching game where abilities are nerfed or buffed (with some exceptions, Chroma's S.Scream really is a letdown compared to what it could be) but rather this would be a good opportunity for DE to look at the less-used abilities and ask themselves, OK, how can we put some general synergy on these so they're interesting to use with other moves?

For example, one of my favorite things to do is put pull and repelling bastille on Vauban, and then yank enemies into a trampoline that sends them flying. Is it good? Questionable. But it's funny as hell and I'd like to see more interesting combinations like that come out of the system rather than just flat damage/cc.

For example, Saryn used to be able to put spores on her Molt. Can she do that with Loki's decoy? If not, maybe she should be able to. Maybe Chroma's S.Scream should have a guaranteed chance to affect other things like popping Saryn's spores. Maybe Mesa's 1 could have some weird effect like adding lifted status when hitting enemies affected by powers like Molecular Prime/Spores/Nidus Maggots/Shooting Gallery etc. for a bit of CC and more stylish combos/kills on anything that's still alive after.

There's a lot of ways to make the less used abilities more cool/interesting/fun, which imo is more of a problem with a lot of them than just the numbers they put out.

Yeah, adding new, fun, synergy-capable mechanics to lackluster abilities would be a really fun alternative to just bumping up the numbers or switching to a better ability, yeah. My point was just that letting trash abilities remain trashy non-options because of how bad they are, and just being resigned to some Helminth Abilities sucking, would just be defeatist.

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So its going to be similar to what is was before but without the double damage bugs and stuff. I don't really understand but more so was okay with the idea of the crit chance but not the double damage. But, as far as the game goes, CC and aoe damage need to have certain factors, aoe damage must be effective. Effective damage is damage that for the cost of what your doing (Time, shots, energy, and set up). CC must include other factors such as armor strip, loot drop increase, damage vulnerability increase or something along those lines. Simply having cc is a waste when you can just eliminate the targets. The CC set up is just a waste of 50 energy. Marked for death before, rivalled the best aoe damage abilities in the game. But with the nerf it takes even more set up and at higher levels it is barely even usable. I've seen good builds for it but effectively it wasnt worth the cost. If Marked for death is just supposed to bring the area of enemies to low health, make it % true damage. Now that sounds terrifying to balance but the ability is already a scary idea to begin with. I understand what DE wants but I fail to see any path for this ability to take that does not include a swing one way or the other. 

A funny idea is to make it a status spread so its not instantaneous damage but like Saryn spores. Increase the level of procs by 5 and give them to all targets, status tick damage is halved but can crit. This is simply a random idea for how to make Marked for Death not a full blown instant nuking ability but still give it room to scale or possibly make way for other abilities to combo with it balancing the cost per effectiveness idea. 

Either way, people will still be frustrated but it's the hope and care that I think we should look toward. We were heard that it was too strong, we were heard that it was nerfed too hard, now we must remain calm and give honest opinions that are without malice. And I am sorry if it doesn't turn out well, it will be something DE learns from when the ability starts growing cobwebs around it when its rework is almost as needed as a zephyr rework. 

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I'm concerned that by limiting it to maximum targeted enemy health values instead of the actual attack damage you're still preventing the power from properly affecting the surrounding enemies. You still have to fight against armor, shield gating and flat damage resistance, which means that the impacted damage will still be negligible at higher levels. Doubling a tickle just makes it a more annoying tickle, it still doesn't qualify as a proper attack.

It really feels at times like there's a lot of design choices made that have no bearing on the way anyone actually plays Warframe. Like, you want this power to be limited to maybe killing nearby weak grunts if you target the heaviest unit in the mob and you land with an attack that kills them in a single hit. Why? Why does someone on the design think that's fun, or an organic way to play Warframe at all? Why would I want a power that relies on perfect circumstances, timing and practice to kind-of-irritate a group of enemies? I'm reminded of the aborted IPS status rebalance from years back that would've changed (among other things) impact to a ragdoll based on damage dealt, and the use example given was a Loki on the Plains irritating a single heavy gunner by repeatedly knocking them over with a Vectis. It's stuff like that, and this now, that makes me wonder how much of Warframe is deliberately designed to be the frenetic technicolor nightmare that we love and how much is just the unintended consequence of players pushing the game to extremes in a way the devs never envisioned.

I'm not saying this because I'm hoping that some devs will reconsider their design choices with Marked for Death, I'm saying this because I'm hoping they'll reevaluate their design ethos entirely. There's too much of a disconnect between the game we're playing and the game some think we're playing.

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I'm more than happy with this.

To be honest I would have been more than happy with it being capped to 100%, as long as the Strength threshold to reach it wasn't obnoxious. Obviously double-dipping in certain damage bonuses would have been unintended and broken, but if the plan was always to kill a Heavy Unit to clear enemies around it, 75% wouldn't always be enough while 100% generally would be (particularly when dealing with, say, Eximus Strongholds).

Edited by Archwizard
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37 minutes ago, Jarriaga said:

Explain War Cry.

there are already abilities that I'm also unsure with, I do believe War Cry should not have been the one that got selected. Also Roar. There's a reason why they nerfed those abilities you know, so that there are still reasons to use Rhino and Valkyr. If they didn't tweak the numbers of Roar and War Cry, I doubt we'd see a lot of Rhinos and Valkyrs after, there'd be NO reason to play them, if we're talking about effectiveness. Who would bring Rhino to missions when you can bring let's say...a Saryn that can nuke entire maps (which I think is still a bit iffy...) with Rhino's Roar? YOu can argue that Rhino also has other good abilities but with how things are right now in Warframe, Rhino doesn't bring much to the table. His Iron skin is cool but compared to some other warframes that can go literally invincible and more, it's not THAT good. Also Rhino Stomp, it's great CC but it honestly can be detrimental becasue you'd slow down the pace of the game for your teammates, and you gotta manually kill them because that thing can't kill nothing. 

Mirage is to a lesser extent, she still has her great skill 1, but if they didn't nerf the numbers on her Eclypse, she'd be VERRRYYY close to be redundant. 

I strongly believe that they should've used Rhino Charge and Valkyr's paralysis or whatever instead of Roar and War Cry. 

29 minutes ago, Grav_Starstrider said:

"not all warframes will offer effective abilities" hear me out though, if the Warframe with a lackluster Helminth offering isn't currently dominating the character-pick meta, they can buff the base abilitiy. Also I said one of their better abilities, not their absolute best ability. But even then, HA, who's going to replace, say, Fire Blast, Miasma, or Crush, with Radial Disarm? Warframes like Nyx and Loki are fun in their own right, but they're a bit far from "competitive". Their helminth offering could just be buffed a bit at base, to make more compelling and competitive Helminth System options, rather than non-options. Player chase is a great thing to allow. If there's a blatant meta (or metas to avoid, anti-metas), then where is the player choice? It's not an interesting option at that point, it's either using the only good option, or intentionally nerfing yourself. Getting them all on something remotely resembling equal footing would be better than leaving trash Helminth Abilities as trash.

You never know dude, I'm just saying, I think it's better to not risk warframes becoming redundant with those choices. You're right, POTENTIALLY not a lot of players would probably touch Radial Disarm that much but it's still an option, it's still an ability that Loki's quite known for, I think it's best to not leave things to chances. Plus it's not like they're ever gonna do it, DE said they will never use ultimate abilities for Helminth, and rightfully so I believe. 

Though if you ask me, a lot of lesser abilities can potentially be fixed with augments, and with multiple augments you can really do a lot of creative and interesting things, so I'd say eventhough in hindsight, a lot of abilities like Decoy and what not can look pretty useless, there are augments that can make them pretty damn decent options. You can argue that "Oh but I don't want to use an augment to make an ability decent", honestly I'd rather have augments, as a mean to offer players A LOT of different directions you can alter your ability with, than simply one-directional buffs that you can't do much with. Augments fix a lot of issues with the lesser Helminth abilities, while they won't exactly be better options than let's say...Roar or Helminth Strength or whatever, they're not NOT viable. There are a lot of augments for lack luster abilities out there that would honestly work REALLY well with other warframes, no need to do much about the base abilities.

In terms of buffing the base abilities? Yeah I agree DE could do more with some of Helminth's more lackluster abilities like Decoy, and what not. But I'd rather they buff those abilities to give them synergy for their respective warframes, than some number changes that affect everything. It'd make abilties that would get instantly replaced (like Spectral Scream, Decoy, Mesa's 1, etc..) not SO replaceable. SOmething like...make Decoy gives Loki's evasion or something like that idunno. Related to all this I dunno but yeah thtat's sth...

My brain is kinda melted rn so I hope what I replied to you with reflects what you wrote to me...

Edited by SprinKah
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36 minutes ago, SprinKah said:

I never understood why people are so invested in it, who cares if it gets nerfed,

Well here is maybe the reason, you mark a guy and everyone basically dies around him, who doesn't like an effective nuke:) I'm pretty sure anyone with any sense would have known it would be nerfed, I think the real problem was how hard it was nerfed that's all, personally I had only put it on one Warframe just to test it so not a big investment for me.

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23 minutes ago, Gene_Freak said:

It really feels at times like there's a lot of design choices made that have no bearing on the way anyone actually plays Warframe.
snip
I'm reminded of the aborted IPS status rebalance from years back
snip
I'm not saying this because I'm hoping that some devs will reconsider their design choices with Marked for Death, I'm saying this because I'm hoping they'll reevaluate their design ethos entirely. There's too much of a disconnect between the game we're playing and the game some think we're playing.

This is exactly why they should talk to the design council more, who I hear have been drastically underutilized. They should consider using them more, and expanding the council to include players or content creators that have proven that they know parts of the game inside out. Get more varied experiences and wisdom from people that aren't their staff members. ONLY making decisions based on their own play experience, statistics, and cherrypicked feedback, is how we get "Khora's healing was an exploit and we patched it" when it was a nerf to an intended feature. There seems to be a MAJOR lack of communication and oversight for decisions at DE, and their glassdoor-equivalent reviews support that assessment. They need a better process for making sure the game is consistent, from the ground up, and in the best shape that it can be.

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8 minutes ago, Pendragon1951 said:

Well here is maybe the reason, you mark a guy and everyone basically dies around him, who doesn't like an effective nuke:) I'm pretty sure anyone with any sense would have known it would be nerfed, I think the real problem was how hard it was nerfed that's all, personally I had only put it on one Warframe just to test it so not a big investment for me.

Nukes are...great I guess, it's great to clear rooms but then again...we got Saryn and what not, right? Who does the job soooo much better than M4D, waayy less complicated too. 

If you ask me, I wish Saryn's ult took as much effort as M4D but alas, it doesn't so in comparison to M4D, it's just so much better, alot of abilities are just a lot better and easier to use than M4D. I guess you're right, it was nerfed a bit hard (most of it was some code fixes tho because no matter how you see it, it really shouldn't have done billions of damage in red crits, math just didnt add up) but even before, it was probably still not as great as an option as a lot of other setups that already existed.

People say that it's fun sure, probably so yeah but I think most of them would use it for a few solo runs then just go back to old, way better setups anyway. 

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16 hours ago, [DE]Marcus said:

As many of you have likely been following, one of the most intensely discussed Helminth abilities has been Marked for Death. Upon releasing the Helminth, we knew that it would be a system that had the potential to shift strategies in Warframe drastically. Helminth is a system in the vein of what we find most exciting about creating a game like Warframe, which is to design something that feels truly exciting to us as Devs, and hopefully to you Tenno as players.

With the Helminth System, we knew that abilities/systems may need to be tweaked back and forth to help prevent anyone from feeling as though there was only one ‘good way’ to use the Helminth System. We’re still tweaking resource costs as we speak! A key part is ensuring the Helminth System aligns with how it should fit into the overall ecosystem of Warframe instead of dictating the ecosystem. 

 

This is far from the only way people were using Helminth, though. The data implied that Marked for Death was actually one of the least-used innate helminth abilities, and while it trended higher than most infused powers, that is almost entirely because of guaranteed access. It was hardly a dominant strategy, and almost exclusively used on a few frames, namely Ash. The tool wasn't even overwhelmingly powerful - The damage numbers were high, but it required a lot of setup and enemies that were vulnerable to finishers to be present, and could be wasted by trigger-happy allies.

 

16 hours ago, [DE]Marcus said:

Enter Marked for Death. When we discovered the several unintentional effects that Marked for Death was occurring we knew we had to act efficiently before more resources went into Tenno carving out a build for it, and for how this unintentionally insanely powerful synergizing ability may fit into a new niche meta. Marked for Death had several problems which added up to an ability that had a large AOE range, had mods stacking twice (yikes!), which led to distributing millions of unintentional damage.

The spirit of Marked for Death was to only consider the effective damage on the targeted enemy. It was intended that if you took out a heavy unit, enough damage could be dealt to units with lower health around to kill them (or come very, very close). It was not intended to use finishers that overkilled a unit with lower health that had enough MFD power to kill much larger and heavier units around it.

 

I'm not sure how this wasn't considered as a possibilty extremely early on. Even the community immediately pointed towards Fatal Teleport and similar burst damage tools as being interesting in combination with Marked for Death before release. You cannot honestly tell me that you simply forgot that we have extremely powerful single-hit damage tools like this in Warframe - Finishers are a core game mechanic. You HAVE to be able to consider these types of interactions to properly balance the game, and while there is admittedly a lot to keep track of, if you keep an ear to the community's heartbeat when you announce these kinds of things you'll have an idea of what interactions to look out for. Even without doing so, just looking at the math of the uncapped radial aoe damage that was Marked for Death should have told you that it was a bad idea, considering we have been able to break the damage cap for years now.

 

16 hours ago, [DE]Marcus said:

Our team made the decision to change Marked for Death, but based on community feedback and our own testing, the hammer was swung too hard on the changes - (compounded by the major fixes). The scenario we had re-balanced Marked For Death around was too rare to be useful and satisfying. We knew that the conversation was not over on Marked For Death, and we committed to taking another look to hopefully restore balance to this ability. Now that the facts have been laid out, here’s where that conversation continues today:

We are changing Marked for Death to start its base damage at 65%, which will cap at 150% with Mods.  Since the ‘Damage Type In = Damage Type Out’, this will scale well with certain damage types, specifically ones with DOTS s which is what we envision. 

Simply put: We’re bringing the damage back up!

The Dev work behind the scenes has already been completed, so we are now looking to submit the changes in a HF that will hopefully be going out next week with Helminth Bile changes as well!  

 

The conversation isn't really about Marked for Death - It's about how lately, any vaguely new and interesting tool is kneecapped, especially after a heavy investment barrier to entry. You can't just let things loose into the wild in states like this and decide later that they're too powerful - things like this need to be tested and balanced before they go out, otherwise you're always going to irritate the people who put the time and effort into making a build around it, only to be burned later on, especially when you nerf things as heavily as you do. It encourages us to stick with old metas that we know are safe and to never try anything new - If we do play with the new toys, they might get taken away from us, and our resource and time investments wasted.

Edited by MasterControl
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2 hours ago, [DE]Marcus said:

Radial damage was never meant to exceed the target’s Health and this was our bad.

 

2 hours ago, [DE]Marcus said:

We are changing Marked for Death to start its base damage at 65%, which will cap at 150% with Mods

What.

You know what would've been great? Keeping the 75% and instead removing DoT from abilities from triggering it and then giving it a 1~2 second window that allowed to stack damage up to 75% of the target's health before exploding, which would make the ability far more viable for non finisher gameplay while still being stupidly strong because 75% still clears about 80% of the mobs on screen (and those that survive even at level 175 are still only 1 shot from dying) if you are not brain dead.

 

150% damage doesn't fix the issue that it only works with specific things, mostly finishers, it only promotes the outliers instead of a broader range of options.

The amount of effort to negate the previous changes could've been better used elsewhere that would've benefited more than a handful of angry people on reddit that will be angry no matter what you do anyway. It's ironic that people say that DE doesn't listen to feedback, perhaps it's because they are only trying to please the same handful every time, not the bigger whole.

Edited by God_is_a_Cat_Girl
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39 minutes ago, [DE]Marcus said:

As many of you have likely been following, one of the most intensely discussed Helminth abilities has been Marked for Death. Upon releasing the Helminth, we knew that it would be a system that had the potential to shift strategies in Warframe drastically

39 minutes ago, [DE]Marcus said:

Enter Marked for Death. When we discovered the several unintentional effects that Marked for Death was occurring we knew we had to act efficiently before more resources went into Tenno carving out a build for it, and for how this unintentionally insanely powerful synergizing ability may fit into a new niche meta.

"NICHE meta". Meta in a videogame refers to something that transcends all other available options. The obvious choice for everything. Niche refers to something applying to one specific, small area or environment. A few rare exceptions for a thing being able to exist. MfD was far more niche than it was meta. Ash, Banshee and Excalibur were that niche.

Ash, because while his 4 isn't bad, it is far too slow to justify the amount of energy it takes, and it will always be overtaken by Khora, Saryn and Mesa outside of long term endurance runs. MfD allowed Ash to cut out the middleman of wasting time and energy, in specific situations, while also being limited by line of sight. Ash is not a Warframe you see many people using anymore. The original MfD allowed him to be somewhat competitive again.

Banshee because of Savage Silence. A niche build on a niche Warframe who you see even more rarely than Ash. Did she even need it? No. The few people who use her know how well she scales, and her regular 4 is still a great AoE clear, even if it's fallen out of popularity due to Khora, Saryn and Mesa existing. MfD gave her another option.

Excalibur because of Radiant Finish and the fact that all exalted melee weapons took a massive hit with the melee changes. There's a reason Wukong's staff, his 4th ability is replaced in the Helminth System, and the fact that an "ultimate" ability is an easy choice for replacement should be a red flag. Thankfully Excalibur's 4 at least still works, thanks purely to Chromatic Blade existing, but MfD gave him another option.

Don't get me wrong, double dipping on mods was a legitimate bug. That needed to be fixed. The application of of everything else was absolute overkill, and simply increasing the base damage most likely isn't going to do anything to fix that unless the new MfD ignores armor. As is, you can use it on a Heavy Gunner, as suggested, and it does jack squat to the grineer around it. It fails to do what it's supposed to do, as explained by DE themselves. It will not kill any of the surrounding enemies as shown in it's in-game tool tip.

Due to a knee-jerk reaction based on click-bait youtube video's and forum threads, which were using the Simulacrum as a showcase, three competitors to a meta DE themselves obviously does not like went right back to where they were in the first place. And that meta is only reinforced by the decisions that continue to be made. 

At the same time, this is not a condemnation of Khora, Saryn and Mesa. Getting Khora to her full strength requires 15+ forma, two reactors and a catalyst, a specific roll on a Riven for a stat-stick build, a mountain of endo and credits for mods, and another mountain of time spent to farm up the mods and level everything. Saryn and Mesa might not require as ridiculous an investment, but even half of that investment is by no means small. As for MfD? Days of time-gates and annoyance with conservation just to unlock the segment allowing us to access Helminth. Days of time-gates on efficient feedings, thousands of resources and entire duplicates of Warframes to level Helminth enough to unlock MfD in the first place. That's all before the things required for the builds for each Warframe you're going to put the ability on. For all that investment, those things have every right to be as good as the are, or in MfD's case, were.

So where am I going with all this? I'll use a question to answer that.

What if every ability was good? There would be no meta. It would collapse on itself under the weight of pure preferential choice when it comes to builds and modding. By continuing to nerf anything that seems like it might be too strong, our available options shrink and that naturally pushes players towards specific set-ups. The current balancing philosophy of this game not only does nothing to mix up the meta, it is actively enforcing the meta that already exists.

That's why people are as annoyed with the Helminth System and what happened to MfD as they are. That's why things like the Catchmoon and Bramma were as popular as they were. They gave us something new and different to clear trash mobs with. A new option. MfD didn't even come close in terms of popularity or usage. I doubt simply allowing the base damage to scale a bit with mods will make MfD anything other than a one-off curiosity to try and discard, but I guess we'll see next week.

One final thing. I may be and edge case considering I've got close to 4k hours in game. But I am not alone in immediately being able to recognize why things like Mesa's 1, Chroma's 1 and Wukong's 4 are replaced with the Helminth System. Same thing goes for all points raised about Ash, Banshee and Excal. Same thing with why the meta is the way that it is. If the people in charge of balancing aren't capable of the same, perhaps it's time to try something different. Spending time updating, buffing and strengthening underused and outright useless abilities would send player engagement through the roof, as everyone would want to try out all the new options, combinations and builds available to them. Because as is, continuing to nerf things is only going to continue feeding the same cycle of annoyance and feeling like our time/ effort and resources are being wasted. Just some food for thought.

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48 minutes ago, Tavanaka said:

Actually this brings up a really good point, or at least does to me in a roundabout way. I think the ideal for Helminth system adjustments should be less of a number-crunching game where abilities are nerfed or buffed (with some exceptions, Chroma's S.Scream really is a letdown compared to what it could be) but rather this would be a good opportunity for DE to look at the less-used abilities and ask themselves, OK, how can we put some general synergy on these so they're interesting to use with other moves?

There's a lot of ways to make the less used abilities more cool/interesting/fun, which imo is more of a problem with a lot of them than just the numbers they put out.

The problem is they buff and nerf based on extremes not based on averages. If one frame has an "overpowered" or "unintended" interaction with certain abilities rather than fix the way those things interact they instead just nerf the entire ability because to them it is easier. They don't care if weak frames got better with MFD they will nerf based on the outlier cases that are too strong even if that means ruining things for everyone. They could have just changed how the ability interacts with finishers, but instead they nerf the entire ability into the ground. 

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I don't know what kind of drugs you guys are smoking at DE, but holy crap... It's embarrassing.
It's sad how you guys thought Marked for Death was an "insanely powerful synergizing ability".

You guys are creating an extremely unhealthy and unfun climate for the game, where players can't be seen having fun with a cool new toy without Mommy & Daddy taking it away a week later because it's not the one they wanted to see them enjoy.

Marked for Death made Ash a Warframe actually worth using over something else. And was maybe a compelling option for Excalibur or Wukong and such.
That's about it, chief.

But I guess, screw player choice or creativity and compelling options unless it's the ones approved by the boys at DE.

The DE art team? You guys are my heroes. The sound team? You guys are beyond amazing. The community management team? You people deserve a medal. I don't know how you do it. There's plenty of praise to go around, and not enough words to express it.

But the team in charge of game balance? What in tarnation are you guys doing? It's very unsettling and demoralizing to watch you guys nerf every new option that players like or that are worth using at every turn, instead of buffing all the worthless options in this game. You guys have absolutely no clue how to exploit the traits that make Warframe fun...

It's a power fantasy, and it's a horde game. Aiming at every single enemy with a rifle blows. That's why we use AoEs, abilities and melee weapons instead. Let us use them for goodness' sake...

But nope.

Nerf the Kuva Bramma instead. The only primary weapon in the entire game that was actually worth using over abilities or melee. Why even bother equipping a primary weapon at all at this point, you're just going to nerf it the moment people realize it's the next best thing to use.

Nerf the Xoris. Funny how it added zero damage, but "dealing too much damage" was apparently the reason why you nerfed it. What a bald-faced lie. All it did was add convenience. Oh, and stat-stick weapons with a Riven mod deal way much more damage. But the only option that didn't require dumping platinum into Trade chat and was available to all players for free was the one to get the shaft instead. So shady and hypocritical. And you guys never came back to it addressed this. You hid. You guys also never address how awful Rivens are. You guys prided yourselves on removing the "Kubrow Lever" in the Noclip documentary but aren't doing jack about the slot machines that Rivens are. Again, so shady and hypocritical. And the fact that you lied about the reasoning behind the Xoris nerf means we can never trust what you say again. Because you can just lie, give a BS reason for any change, and never come back to it.

Nerf the Helminth abilities. Yeah, nerf the compelling options that people enjoy, instead of buffing all the worthless options that nobody use... You guys are nuts. That last Devstream was oppressively demoralizing to watch. Rebecca's "But if you buff every useless abilities, what do you do?!" and Scott's "Take out Mesa from the game" comments got me dumbfounded. I'm genuinely speechless.

Al in all, I hope the balance team can have a chat together and seriously re-evaluate what their end goal is, because hot damn, the future looks bleak my friends.

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4 minutes ago, SprinKah said:

Nukes are...great I guess, it's great to clear rooms but then again...we got Saryn and what not, right? Who does the job soooo much better than M4D, waayy less complicated too. 

Unless I'm doing something wrong or don't have her modded correctly Sayrn struggles with anything getting into higher levels, on Hydron for instance first 5 waves ok, but after that she does not clear a room, damage ticks off very very slow,  on the other hand M4D could clear a room of 140's without batting an eye

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2 minutes ago, (PS4)Oracle-Raven said:

Nerf the Xoris. Funny how it added zero damage, but "dealing too much damage" was apparently the reason why you nerfed it. What a bald-faced lie. All it did was add convenience. Oh, and stat-stick weapons with a Riven mod deal way much more damage. But the only option that didn't require dumping platinum into Trade chat and was available to all players for free was the one to get the shaft instead. So shady and hypocritical. And you guys never came back to it addressed this. You hid. You guys also never address how awful Rivens are. You guys prided yourselves on removing the "Kubrow Lever" in the Noclip documentary but aren't doing jack about the slot machines that Rivens are. Again, so shady and hypocritical. And the fact that you lied about the reasoning behind the Xoris nerf means we can never trust what you say again. Because you can just lie, give a BS reason for any change, and never come back to it.

Nerf the Helminth abilities. Yeah, nerf the compelling options that people enjoy, instead of buffing all the worthless options that nobody use... You guys are nuts. That last Devstream was oppressively demoralizing to watch. Rebecca's "But if you buff every useless abilities, what do you do?!" and Scott's "Take out Mesa from the game" comments got me dumbfounded. I'm genuinely speechless.

Al in all, I hope the balance team can have a chat together and seriously re-evaluate what their end goal is, because hot damn, the future looks bleak my friends.

"xoris added zero damage" Thats a bold face lie, the fact is a xoris with a perfectly rolled riven was better then ANY other stat stick out there because no matter what it stayed at 12x combo because of its infinite combo duration which is a mistake. Oh boo hoo they nerfed it so you have to HIT people again to refresh the 12x combo. It did insane amount of damage and the fact you can't see that is laughable. The fact is the stigma of "you use this or you're doing it wrong" started to rear its ugly head again. 
Yea yea, lets have 2 damage abilites at max power. 160% damage buff roar? Nuke everything in the steel path with ease and make the game more of a joke and more nerfs to then whine and cry about. Eclipse has to me always been a situational mess because of its mechanic of needing light or darkness to pick your buffs where roar is tap and you get the damage. 

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5 minutes ago, Pendragon1951 said:

Unless I'm doing something wrong or don't have her modded correctly Sayrn struggles with anything getting into higher levels, on Hydron for instance first 5 waves ok, but after that she does not clear a room, damage ticks off very very slow,  on the other hand M4D could clear a room of 140's without batting an eye

i dunno dude, I don't even have Saryn. All I know is every time I see a Saryn in my squad, god knows how she's able to kill 90% of the enemies is...beyond me. 

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